“There are three great workhouses for the whole of _Holland_, which are situated, one at Amsterdam, another at Middleburgh, and a third in the commonalty Nieuve Pekel A, in the province of Groningen. _Belgium_ has five great workhouses, situated respectively at La Cambré, near Brussels, for the province of Brabant; at Bruges, for the two Flanders; at Hoogstraeten, for the province of Antwerp; at Mons, for Hainault, Namur, and Luxembourg; and at Reickheim, for Liege and Limburgh. Under their present regulations, these provincial workhouses, or depôts de mendicité, both in Holland and Belgium, are I think, judging from what we could learn and what we saw, very defective institutions; and hence seems to have arisen the necessity for resorting to some stricter measures, which ended in the establishment of the poor colonies. In England, the defects of the old workhouses were remedied by the introduction of regulations calculated to render them efficient tests, by the aid of which we have succeeded in establishing the distinction between poverty and destitution: for the latter we have provided relief, but we have left the former to its own natural resources. In Holland and Belgium no such distinction has been made, or test established. Their workhouses remain as they were originally formed—nurseries for indolence, and stimulants to pauperism. But in order to correct this evil, the Dutch have had recourse to the establishment of penal colonies, to which all persons found begging (or committing vagabondage as it is termed) are sent, if able to work, and compelled to labour for their subsistence, under strict discipline and low diet. Had the workhouses been made efficient, there would have been no occasion for these establishments; but the workhouses not being efficient, recourse has been had to the penal colonies, where the test of strict discipline, hard labour, and scanty diet, is so applied as to be held in the greatest dread by the vagrant classes. All beggars are apprehended by the police; if able to work, they are sent to the penal colonies; if aged or infirm, or unable to perform out-door work, they are sent to the workhouses; and although the discipline of the workhouses is defective, and the management in many respects faulty, yet with the aid of the penal colonies they secure the repression of mendicancy.