Hitherto these institutions have had a salutary and beneficial effect on the nation, inasmuch as many thousand individuals have been prevented from strolling about as beggars, and many thousand children have received a good education, and have grown up to be useful and orderly citizens. Neither as yet have any remarkable symptoms of dissatisfaction appeared among the wealthier classes. But we cannot be without some apprehension for the future, since the poor-rates have been augmented to such a degree that it would be very difficult to collect larger contributions than those now paid. And as sufficient attention has not been paid to this circumstance, that the farmers are continually building small cottages, in which poor people establish themselves, since the government have been unwilling to throw any restraint on marriages between poor persons; there seems reason to fear, that in the lapse of another period of twenty years, the poor in many districts will to such a degree have multiplied their numbers, that the present system will yield no adequate means for their support. In the towns much embarrassment is already felt, the poor having increased in them to a much greater extent than in the country. All the taxes of a considerable merchant of Dram in Norway, who owns eight trading vessels actually employed, amounted during last year to not more than the school and poor-rates of one large farm in the heath district which you visited last year. (p. 279.) M. N. N., a correspondent of Mr. Browne’s, and the author of a very detailed account of the existing law, after stating that, Benevolent as the Danish poor system will appear, it is generally objected to it that the too great facility of gaining admittance, particularly to the third class, encourages sloth and indolence, especially in the country, where the means are wanted to establish workhouses, the only sure way of controlling those supported: And that, It is further objected to the present system, that it already begins to fall too heavy on the contributors, and that in course of time, with the constant increase of population, it will go on to press still more severely on them, inasmuch as their number and means do not by any means increase in a ratio equal to the augmentation of the number wanting support: (p. 274.) Adds, in answer to more specific inquiries,