Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847.Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847.
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
1. Nothing must be done to relieve of their legal obligations those
who are bound by law to support the infirm poor. Wherever a poor law
is established, it must, we conceive, be fully and fairly enforced
against those liable in relief, to the extent of what is imposed upon
them. In no other way will selfish or thoughtless men be taught a due
interest in the social condition of their neighbours, and make the
necessary exertion to raise or preserve them from a state of
pauperism, the effects of which they are themselves to feel in their
only sensitive part.
2. It must be a rule, all but inflexible, that the able-bodied,
receiving relief, shall give, at the time, or engage to give
afterwards, a corresponding amount of labour in return; and that
engagement must be strictly enforced. This rule is not necessary
merely for the purpose of economising the fund, and benefiting the
public by useful employment. It is essential for preserving the
destitute both from the feeling, and from the reality, of that
degradation which attends on eating the bread of idleness. We believe
that much mischief was done, in 1837, by exonerating those who had
obtained aid from the obligations of labour which they had undertaken,
and which we know, in some districts, broke down all the restraints of
self-respect, and implanted a spirit of dependence and mendicity, even
in persons of a decent station. The evils of famine itself are
great,--its moral no less than its physical effects are fearfully
destructive. But the injury done is hardly less when the poor are
deprived, by gratuitous and reckless largesses, of those habits of
industry, independence, and self-respect, which are their best
possessions, and their only means of rightly bearing their lot or
raising themselves in the scale of existence.
3. A peculiar portion of the population, consisting chiefly of
solitary females unfit for active employment, and yet not sufficiently
disabled to be objects of parochial aid, will require a humane and
indulgent consideration. The Committees hitherto seem to have advanced
them little stores of wool and flax, to enable them to give some
return for their support; and a great deal of meritorious exertion has
in this way been fostered. We presume that at least to a certain
extent this humane system may be continued.
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