With regard to the increase of the poor-rate, since free trade and the new monetary system were introduced, we have the best possible authority in the following statement in the last number of a leading journal. "It appears," says the _Edinburgh Review_, "from Mr Commissioner Symmon's report on pauperism, that the poor-rate in England has now become _heavier than it was before 1835_ when _the New Poor law was introduced_. It was, in 1834, £7,373,807; it was in 1848, £7,817,459. _Every ninth person now in England is now a pauper_: and the increase of paupers during the last two years has been double in proportion to the relative numbers of criminals."[30] In Ireland, above 2,000,000 persons are paupers; and the poor-rate since 1846 has risen from £260,000 a-year to £1,900,000, though it was in the first of these years only (1846) that there was any general failure of the potato crop. In Scotland the poor-rate, has nearly tripled in the last three years; it has risen from £185,000 a-year to £560,000. In Glasgow, the poor-rates, which anterior to 1846 were under £30,000 yearly for the city and suburbs, rose in the year 1848-9 to £200,000, and in the present year (1849-50) amount to £138,500. Nor is it wonderful that assessments have increased so prodigiously, when the augmentation of paupers has been so alarming. The following is the increase in the city of Glasgow parish, being about a half of the city and suburbs, during the last three years:-- [30] _Edinburgh Review_, October 1848, p. 524. Year. Total number of Paupers. 1845-6, 7,454 1846-7, 15,911 1847-8, 51,852 The total number of paupers relieved in the city of Glasgow and suburbs in the year 1848-9 was 122,000; being exactly _a third of the population_ receiving parochial relief. The enormous and unprecedented increase of emigration in the last three years is still more alarming and descriptive of the fatal disease under which the body politic is labouring. Previous to 1846 the annual emigration had stood thus:-- 1838, 33,222 1839, 62,207 1840, 90,743 1841, 118,592 1842, 128,344 1843, 57,212 1844, 70,686 1845, 93,501 1846, 129,851 But free trade and a fettered currency soon doubled these numbers. The emigration stands thus in round numbers:-- 1847, 258,461 1848, 248,582