Mr. Malthus’ writings made such a powerful impression on the minds of his contemporaries, that in 1834 an entire revolution took place in the Poor Laws of England and Wales. Mr. Gladstone, in an admirable speech on Free Trade, delivered in Leeds in the summer of 1881, refers to the passing of this Act as the most beneficent change that had preceded the long and earnest struggle which immediately followed upon the principles of Free Trade, and which culminated in 1846 in the abolition of the duties on food supplies. Mr. John Stuart Mill is enthusiastic in his admiration of the Act of 1834. In his magnificent and well-known chapter on Popular Remedies for Low Wages (Book ij. chap. 12, § 2.), he thus speaks of the English Law of 1834:— “To give profusely to the people, whether under the name of charity or of employment, without placing them under such influences that prudential motives shall act powerfully upon them, is to lavish the means of benefiting mankind without attaining the object. Leave the people in a situation in which their condition manifestly depends upon their number, and the greatest permanent benefit may be derived from any sacrifice made to improve the physical well-being of the present generation, and raise, by that means, the habits of their children. But remove the regulation of their wages from their own control; guarantee to them a certain payment, either by law or by the feeling of the community; and no amount of comfort that you can give them will make either them or their descendents look to their own self-restraint as the proper means for preserving them in that state. You will only make them indignantly claim the continuance of your guarantee to themselves, and their full complement of possible posterity.” “On these grounds some writers have altogether condemned the English Poor Law, and any system of relief to the able-bodied, at least when uncombined with systematic legal precautions against over-population. The famous Act of the 43rd of Elizabeth undertook, on the part of the public, to provide work and wages for all the able-bodied; and there is little doubt that if the intent of that Act had been fully carried out, and no means had been adopted by the administrators of relief to neutralize its natural tendencies, the poor-rate would by this time have absorbed the whole net produce of the land and labour of the country.”