The money which is annually raised for poor-rates in England and Wales has for some years amounted to from five to six millions. With all this expenditure cases are continually occurring of death from starvation, either of hunger or cold, or both together; wretches are carried before the magistrates for the offence of lying in the streets or in unfinished houses, when they have not where to hide their heads; others have been found dead by the side of limekilns, or brickkilns, whither they had crept to save themselves from perishing for cold; and untold numbers die of the diseases produced by scanty and unwholesome food. This money moreover is for the most part so applied, that they who have a rightful claim upon it, receive less than in justice, in humanity, and according to the intent of a law wisely and humanely enacted, ought to be their portion; while they who have only a legal claim upon it, that claim arising from an evil usage which has become prescriptive, receive pay where justice, policy, and considerate humanity, and these very laws themselves if rightly administered, would award restraint or punishment. Thus it is in those parts of the United Kingdom, where a provision for the poor is directly raised by law. In Scotland the proportion of paupers is little less, and the evils attendant upon poverty are felt in an equal or nearly equal degree. In Ireland they exist to a far greater extent, and may truly be called terrible. Is it fitting that this should be while there are fifteen millions of cultivable acres lying waste? Is it possible to conceive grosser improvidence in a nation, grosser folly, grosser ignorance of its duty and interest, or grosser neglect of both, than are manifested in the continuance and growth and increase of this enormous evil, when the means of checking it are so obvious, and that too by a process in which every step must produce direct and tangible good?