1. The first important point, in Mr. Monsell's opinion, was to consider how they were to spend the large sum necessary to sustain the people. Is it, he asks, to be spent on productive or unproductive labour? If on the former, the capital of the country would be vastly increased, and the means of giving future employment increased in proportion; if on the latter, every pound so spent would be taken away from that capital, and the means of employing labour proportionably reduced. It seemed, therefore, to follow very evidently that, as the leading feature of the Labour-rate Act was to employ the people on unproductive labour, its direct tendency was not only to pauperize the country, but to run it into complete ruin. 2. Another fault in the Act, but one of inferior magnitude, was that it necessitated the congregating together of large masses of the people upon public works, which tends to demoralize the labouring classes; and inflicts, besides, a great hardship upon them, by compelling them to walk great distances to and from those works, making it almost impossible for them to have their mid-day meal carried to them. 3. The experience of the last year proved that fully one-fourth of the money granted to support the labouring poor was expended on the purchase of land, on horse labour, and on blasting rocks. Hence, according to his estimate of the money required for the coming year, there would be a million and a-quarter of it diverted from its intended purpose--the relief of the destitute. "The Government cannot," he says, "by act of Parliament compel drainage or fencing; but they can compel the owner of land to employ the poor, and make those who refuse to employ them on productive labour pay for their employment on public works." Appeals to public spirit, social duties, and so forth, have no effect; nothing will avail but an appeal to self-interest. Make it, then, the interest of landowners who neglect their duties to employ the destitute poor upon profitable labour, by taxing them to pay those poor for public works--unprofitable labour. As the Labour-rate Act did nothing of this kind, it inflicted a positive injustice on the good improving landlord, by taxing him equally with the landlord who never made an improvement; who, in many instances, was an absentee, forgetful and culpably ignorant of the state of his property, his sole aim being to get as much as possible out of it, without expending anything. The tenants of such a man would be sure to be more destitute than those of an improving landlord, who is thus taxed unfairly to support them,--taxed in another way too,--taxed by giving employment, whilst the other gives none. Indiscriminate taxation was, therefore, a positive injustice to the improving landlord, and an actual bar to improvement; for, of course, he would be rated higher on account of his improvements. Such, however, was taxation under the Labour-rate Act.