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"Neither drunk nor sober, but neighbour to both, I met with a man in Aylesbury vale; I saw by his face that he was in good case, To speak no great harm of a pot of good ale." We slept at Aylesbury. The landlord, who seemed sensible, told me that the land round the town, being the richest in England, lets at £3, or £3, 10s. and some so high as £4 per acre. But the poor-rates are 13s. to the pound.
In the churchyard of one of the parishes of Walsall, Staffordshire, is the following epitaph on a person named Samuel Wilks, who appears, like other persons of his name, to have been a great stickler for the rights of the people: "Reader, if thou art an inhabitant of the Foreign of Walsall, know that the dust beneath thy feet was imprisoned in thy cause, because he refused to incorporate the poor-rates of the Foreign of Walsall and those of the Borough of Walsall.
Such a crisis usually recurs once in five years after a brief period of activity and general prosperity; the home market, like all foreign ones, is glutted with English goods, which it can only slowly absorb, the industrial movement comes to a standstill in almost every branch, the small manufacturers and merchants who cannot survive a prolonged inactivity of their invested capital fail, the larger ones suspend business during the worst season, close their mills or work short time, perhaps half the day; wages fall by reason of the competition of the unemployed, the diminution of working-time and the lack of profitable sales; want becomes universal among the workers, the small savings, which individuals may have made, are rapidly consumed, the philanthropic institutions are overburdened, the poor-rates are doubled, trebled, and still insufficient, the number of the starving increases, and the whole multitude of "surplus" population presses in terrific numbers into the foreground.
The actor displayed his figures. So much for the hall, so much for the lighting, so much for poor-rates, so much for the actors. On that question of the actors he was firm. "The best point about the affair," he said, "is that we shall have no leading man to pay. Our leading man will be Bibi." Tell me, isn't that true?" Risler did not reply.
O'Blareaway complained sadly to me the other day that the poor-rates were becoming 'heavier and heavier' had nearly reached, indeed, what they were under the old law. . . . But there is one who does not complain, but gives and gives, and stints herself to give, and weeps in silence and unseen over the evils which she has yearly less and less power to stem.
And as if that was not enough to destroy and drive into almighty shivers a decent fair-play Britisher like myself, I hear he is just in treaty for some patent infernal invention that will make his engines do twice as much work with half as many hands! That's the way those unfeeling ruffians increase our poor-rates! But I 'll get up a riot against him, I will! Don't talk to me of the law!
Lancelot started, and blushed crimson. 'Oh, that I had your tongue, sir! And the keeper blushed crimson, too, and went on hastily, 'But why could you not charm all alike! Do not the poor want you as well as the rich? 'What can I do for the poor, my good fellow? And what do they want? Have they not houses, work, a church, and schools, and poor-rates to fall back on? The keeper smiled sadly.
Of course, 'it is He that hath made us and not we ourselves, but that is a text that cuts both ways; and when all is said and done, the failure detracts from the force in the universe; he is the clog on the wheel of fortune. To say that the successful man benefits by the failure of others is as true as it would be to say that the ratepayer benefits by the poor-rates.
They will pay directly and at once, in the saving of poor-rates. They will pay by exterminating epidemics, and numberless chronic forms of disease which now render thousands burdens on the public purse; consumers, instead of producers of wealth. They will pay by gradually absorbing the dangerous classes; and removing from temptation and degradation a generation yet unborn.
The net revenue is larger in France, because there are no poor-rates and the tithe is more moderate in that country. The price of arable land he calculates to be on an average 20 Pounds per acre; rent 15 shillings 7d. per acre = 3 9/10 per cent. of the salable value.
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