The nature of these institutions appears to have been imperfectly understood in England. They are in fact large agricultural workhouses; and superior to the previous workhouses only so far as they may be less expensive, or, without being oppressive, objects of greater aversion. It is scarcely possible that they can be less expensive. The employing persons taken indiscriminately from other occupations and trades, almost all of them the victims of idleness and misconduct, and little urged by the stimulus of individual interest in farming the worst land in the country, (land so worthless that the fee-simple of it is worth only 24_s._ an acre,) at an expense for outfit, exclusively of the value of the land, of more than 130_l._ per family, and under the management of a joint-stock company of more than 20,000 members, cannot but be a ruinous speculation. Nor does the institution appear to have repressed pauperism by the disagreeableness of the terms on which it offers relief: we have seen, on the contrary, that it has not prevented its steady increase. It will be shown subsequently that a similar establishment has signally failed in Belgium, and we cannot anticipate a different result in Holland. BELGIUM AND FRANCE. M. Lebau, the Belgian Minister of Justice, has furnished a detailed report on the poor laws of Belgium, together with a considerable number of printed documents. Of the latter, we have printed only the regulations of the schools for the poor in Louvain, and of the out-door relief in Tournay; the laws of August, 1833, respecting the Dépôts de Mendicité; and some statistical papers respecting the relief afforded in different manners in 1833, and in some of the preceding years. The others were too voluminous for this publication; and though we have consulted them (particularly the Code Administratif des Etablissemens de Bienfaisance, M. Quetelet’s statistical works on the Netherlands and Belgium, and M. Ducpétiaux’s on Indigence,) with great advantage, we have been forced to omit them. Baron de Hochepied Larpent and Mr. Fauche, His Majesty’s Consuls in Antwerp and Ostend, have given valuable replies to the Commissioners’ questions; and Count Arrivabene a detailed account of the state of Gaesbeck, a village a few miles from Brussels. And we have inserted three reports as to the state of the Belgian poor colonies; one from Count Arrivabene, who visited them in 1829, and one from M. Ducpétiaux, and another from Captain Brandreth, both dated in 1832. The union and subsequent separation of Belgium and France, and afterwards of Belgium and Holland, occasion the Belgian laws on this as on every other subject to be divisible into three heads: First, those which she received when incorporated with France; secondly, those which were made during the union with Holland; and thirdly, those which have been passed since the revolution of 1830. By far the largest portion of the Belgian poor laws is derived from the first of these sources.