Either an increase of the evils of pauperism, or a clearer perception of them, has induced most of the States during the last 10 years to make, both in their laws for the relief of the poor and in the administration of those laws, changes of great importance. They consist principally in endeavouring to avoid giving relief out of the workhouse, and in making the workhouse an abode in which none but the really destitute will continue. Compared with our own, the system is, in general, rigid. In the detailed account of the workhouses in Massachusetts, (pages 68 to 93,) the separation of the sexes appears to be the general rule wherever local circumstances do not interfere: a rule from which exceptions are in some places made in favour of married couples. And in the returns from many of the towns it is stated that no relief is given out of the house. The following passages from the returns from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York, are also evidences of a general strictness of law and of administration. By the laws of New Jersey, The goods and chattels of any pauper applying for relief are to be inventoried by the overseer before granting any relief, and afterwards sold to reimburse the township, out of the proceeds, all expenses they have been at; all sales of which by the pauper, after he becomes chargeable, are void.[2] The same rule prevails in Pennsylvania. When any person becomes chargeable, the overseers or directors of the poor are required to sue for and recover all his property, to be employed in defraying the expense of his subsistence.[3] By the laws of the same State, No person shall be entered on the poor-book of any district, or receive relief from any overseers, before such person, or some one in his behalf, shall have procured an order from two magistrates of the county for the same; and in case any overseer shall enter in the poor-book or relieve any such poor person without such order, he shall forfeit a sum equal to the amount or value given, unless such entry or relief shall be approved of by two magistrates as aforesaid. (p. 142.) Nor is the relief always given gratuitously, or the pauper always at liberty to accept and give it up as he may think fit; for by a recent enactment[4] the guardians are authorized--