According to the spirit of the British laws, labour can only be enforced as the penalty of crime. Mr Carlyle would change this, and would place the pauper upon precisely the same level as the convict. We are not prepared to say that some important improvements might not be made in the practical operation of the poor-laws. We have read various pamphlets, published in this city and elsewhere, which strenuously recommend the employment of the able-bodied poor in the reclaiming of waste lands, and their immediate removal from the towns. There is, however, much more philanthropy than philosophy in these schemes. In order to discover a proper remedy, we ought in every case to direct our primary attention to the nature and origin of the disease; and this is precisely what our modern philanthropists neglect to do. People do not crowd into towns of their own choice. Give them their free will, and the means of subsistence, and one and all of them will prefer the fresh air, and the sights and sounds of nature, to the stifling atmosphere, the reeking filth, and the discordant cries of the city lanes and courts. But no such free will exists: the balance has not been kept between the country and the towns. No encouragement has been given to the small manufactures, which in former times were the support of villages now rapidly falling into decay. The gigantic power of machinery, set in motion by large capital, has nearly abolished the hand-loom. Worsted knitting, yarn-spinning, straw-plaiting, are now rendered almost profitless occupations. In order to live, the villagers have been forced to migrate to the towns. We need hardly refer to the earliest of the Free-trade measures, which, by substituting Spanish barilla for kelp, threw whole districts of the West Highlands at once into a state of pauperism. At this moment, a new cause is aggravating the evil. The stagnation of agricultural employment occasioned by the abolition of the corn duties, has given a new impetus to rural emigration; and those who cannot afford their passage to foreign parts naturally seek refuge in the towns. In another year--if the experiment should be continued so long--the effects of this last change will become more evident than they are now. The able-bodied ploughman is the last of the agricultural class who will suffer. Those who have already been compelled to change their homes, or to go upon the parish-list, are the cottars, who derived their subsistence from the employment given them by resident proprietors. So long as encouragement to agricultural improvement existed, these poor people never wanted work; but now the calamitous fall in the price of produce, and the prospect of a great diminution of rents, have compelled the landlords to discontinue their improvements, and to reduce the expenses of their establishments to the lowest possible limit. In this way, country labour is lessened, and town labour, by the increasing competition of hands, is cheapened. This is the true