EVILS OF 
 
 UNDUE LEGISLATIVE 
 INTERFERENCE. 
 
 REV. THOMAS SPENCER, M.A., 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 To conquer still; Peace hath her victories 
 No less renown’d than war: new foes arise, 
 
 Threatening to omd our souls with secular chains: 
 
 Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
 Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.” 
 
 Milton's Sonnet to the Lord General Cromwell. 
 
 FIFTH THOUSAND. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 ■CHARLES GILPIN, 5, BISHOPSGATE STREET, WITHOUT; 
 AND SAMUEL GIBBS, 5, UNION STREET, BATH. 
 
 PRICE TWOPENCE. 
 
 1848. 
 
 No. 21. 
 
EVILS OF UNDUE LEGISLATIVE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 There are evils which idle and disorderly persons bring upon 
 themselves, which the most enlightened institutions cannot prevent. 
 There are also evils which are brought upon men by the unjust 
 arrangements of society, and without any fault of their own. 
 According as a legislature acts wisely or not in its domestic and 
 foreign policy will the honest operative have plenty of work, cheap 
 food, and good wages; or be condemned to short work, low wages, 
 and poverty. The cause which most injuriously affects the toiling 
 millions is —the mischievous interference of the Legislature, brought 
 about partly by the advocates of a spurious philanthropy and false 
 religion, and partly by persons who seek office and emolument at the 
 public cost by the appointment of new commissions under Govern¬ 
 ment, and who thus regard the House of Commons as a great 
 taxing machine to be worked for their own individual advantage. 
 Amongst the instances of interference may be adduced— 
 
 1. Factory Legislation. —The ten hours’ bill was a triumph of 
 brute force over justice. It was a victory gained by agriculture 
 over its more enlightened rivals, trade and commerce. It was the 
 officious meddling with the superior work and wages of the North 
 by a nobleman who would not see the degraded condition of the 
 Dorsetshire labourer at his own door. Statesmen were occupied 
 sixteen hours a-day in anxious avocations ; members of Parliament 
 were keeping out of bed their grooms and footmen till two o’clock 
 in the morning by midnight legislation; their speeches were printed 
 during the night for their perusal on the following day; and on 
 their estates, in the seasons of mowing, reaping, or any other urgent 
 occasion, the labourers were accustomed to work sixteen hours a-day; 
 yet they had not the moral courage to declare that manufacturers and 
 operatives ought also to be left to decide upon their own times of 
 labour, according to the demand for work and the necessities of the 
 workmen. Religion and education are both damaged, when a prime 
 minister adopts a measure which he admits to be wrong in principle 
 and dangerous in practice, in order to appease the clamour which 
 has been raised in its behalf. What is this but the treading in the 
 steps of the unjust judge, who though he feared not God nor 
 regarded man, yet in order to get rid of a nuisance would, whether 
 right or wrong, grant the petition of the importunate widow 1 The 
 ministers disapproved in their consciences of the ten hours’ bill, but 
 they dared not refuse it. They were told of the danger of delay; 
 that the operatives would be satisfied if they gained the object, and 
 that they never would be satisfied until they did gain it. And have 
 they been satisfied ?—Let the Chartist convention ; the speeches of 
 the delegates from the manufacturing districts; the Kennington- 
 
3 
 
 Common attempts at revolution* ; the turbulent language of trades’ 
 unions, answer that! 
 
 The concession confirmed the people in that most dangerous 
 of all opinions, that the improvement of their own condition 
 rests, not upon their own diligence and forethought, but upon the 
 Government, who could alter the distribution of property, fix the 
 hours of work and the wages of labour. Instead, therefore, of 
 relying upon their own industry and prudence, they determined to try 
 what effect increased intimidation might have. Let legislators rest 
 assured, that every deviation from rectitude, by seeking favour 
 with the leaders of a multitude at the expense of justice to any order 
 of the community, will bring its own reward ; and in the threats of 
 invasion of the House of Commons by 300,000 men, which invasion 
 nothing but the precautions and firm attitude of the authorities pre¬ 
 vented, let them read the natural results of such unworthy attempts 
 to interfere with the rights of private property. 
 
 2. Railway Legislation.— One of the greatest benefits conferred 
 by modern science lias been the introduction of railways; which have 
 been as useful as the discovery of thousands of square miles of rich 
 land in the midst of us. They not only save time and expense in 
 the conveyance of passengers and goods, thereby adding to the 
 length of human life and diminishing the cost of living, but they 
 open a new field for workers in earth, stone, wood, and iron; 
 they give fresh scope to talent; and offer to capital at home that 
 remunerative investment which it had begun to seek in foreign lands. 
 In order to obtain the land for the various lines the sanction of 
 parliament was required. Advantage was taken of that necessity ; 
 rival lines and ruinous competition were encouraged ; millions were 
 squandered amongst lawyers and witnesses, who, whilst kept in 
 useless attendance upon committees of the House of Commons for 
 months together, were allowed their five or ten guineas a-day, to the 
 great increase of the first cost of the railways, and the consequent 
 increase of charge to the public for travelling ; and not only were 
 the railways compelled to pay heavy taxes to the government, hut 
 the parishes through which they passed were permitted to throw 
 nearly the whole burden of their poor rates upon them. In order to 
 lead men to risk their property in so untried a scheme, great profits 
 were necessary; and in the natural order of things, by drawing 
 capital in that direction, great profits would have dwindled down to 
 the ordinary rate of profit; but this was too tempting an opportunity 
 to be neglected. The proceeds of industry were being invested by 
 millions in the new enterprise, and therefore the power which moves 
 the representative system was brought to bear upon the public mind. 
 The papers were filled with articles and letters from correspondents 
 concerning the wealth, the power, the monopoly of railway compa¬ 
 nies. Accidents were exaggerated, and described in the most 
 
 * Oue of the deputation from the Ten Hours’ Committee, who spoke at Bath in favour of 
 lord Ashley’s election, has since keen convicted of seditiou. 
 
4 
 
 alarming colours; terrible dangers were represented; the fares were 
 too high, and the comforts of the poor were disregarded ; these evils 
 were not ascribed to any inherent demerits of the system itself, but 
 to the want of a superintending and coercive power. Commission¬ 
 ers, inspectors, auditors, to be appointed by the government, could 
 alone cure the evil. It was not difficult for candid men to perceive 
 that these were the false accusations of interested parties having an 
 object in view. It was easy to discover that the accidents were less 
 frequent, and less fatal by far, than under the stage coach system. 
 Men travelled twice as far in one half the time, and for half the cost; 
 and even the poor had in their open carriages more accommodation 
 than was formerly provided on the outside of coaches; and were 
 enabled to travel in a few hours, for the same cost, the distance which 
 in stage waggons had formerly occupied several days and nights, 
 with the additional expense of loss of time and of buying provisions 
 by the way. Yet the Government could not let well alone, but 
 appointed commissioners, attempted the most tyrannical interference, 
 and on the condition of obtaining new branches, exacted promises for 
 the reduction of the fares upon the old lines below a remunerating 
 price, and laying aside all regard to private property, took the liberty 
 of ordering trains to be provided at a penny per mile, at a speed of 
 not less than twelve miles an hour. And what has been the result 
 of this interference ? It has been one great cause of the recent rail¬ 
 way panic. Capitalists have taken alarm, and have sold out their 
 shares at a great discount; thousands of shareholders have been 
 ruined by the tremendous fall in price of shares; the works on new 
 lines have been suspended; and thousands of labourers have been 
 turned off at a time when the want of employment renders them 
 dangerous to the peace of society. 
 
 3. Military and Naval Legislation. —Who does not know that 
 the machinery which acts upon the representative system has been most 
 energetically worked in order to obtain an increase of the army and 
 navy 1 It was not sufficient that 150 officers of the army and navy 
 and their immediate relatives should obtain seats in the House of 
 Commons, and take part in voting the taxes out of which their own 
 salaries are paid. It was not enough that the people had borne 
 patiently a greater charge for the army and navy than had ever been 
 known in time of peace. There appeared every day for many months 
 together articles in the London papers calculated to alarm the whole 
 island as to the danger from foreign invasion, when not a nation 
 in the world was thinking of invading us. These warlike appeals 
 to the fears of England, aided as they were by suitable support 
 from manufacturers of guns and of gunpowder, would have met 
 with success had not Mr. Cobden and other faithful men exposed 
 the artifice. 
 
 4. Public Health Legislation. —The art of manufacturing 
 commissions and places has long since been discovered by medical 
 
men. The more talented portion of that profession obtain an honour¬ 
 able income from private practice; but the profession is overstocked, 
 and there are hundreds who are ever on the look out for oppor¬ 
 tunities of fastening themselves upon the public rates and taxes, 
 and of securing to themselves as close a union with the state as 
 that which, without benefit to either party, the Church of England 
 now possesses. To this end they keep up a perpetual alarm, 
 through the public press, by details of coroners’ inquests, rumours 
 of epidemics, predictions of returning cholera, and cruelties in 
 parish workhouses. They not unfrequently usurp the character 
 of poor mans friend, encourage persons to apply for parochial relief 
 who would not otherwise have thought of becoming chargeable to 
 their fellow’ men ; they seek popularity amongst the inmates of work- 
 houses and prisons by ordering wine and porter and all kinds of 
 luxuries which, though common to the rich, are seldom obtained 
 by the rate payers in general. Under the operation of this system 
 many new’ offices have been created in our day; and when all places 
 are full, and there are no more vacancies for registrars, vaccinators, 
 surgeons of union districts, of union workhouses, .and gaols, they 
 work the public press for the extension of medical office and medical 
 pay. They openly declare that it is degrading to allow medical men 
 to be paid by fees, and that they ought to be paid by the State for 
 taking charge of men’s bodies, as the clergy are for taking care of 
 men’s souls; in each case the real object being to take possession of 
 men’s substance. Who has not -witnessed with astonishment the 
 display of zeal respecting ventilation, drainings, pestilential air, and 
 the confinement, at the public cost of every woman with her 
 first child, the last proposal being introduced into parliament by 
 Lord Ashley, as the crowning act of a course of old womanish 
 philanthropy. 
 
 Already Parliament is called upon to confer upon the Health of 
 Towns Commission powers of the most arbitrary kind. An organiza¬ 
 tion, cunningly devised, for taking from the people the few matters 
 over which they still exercise some control is proposed. It 
 remains to be seen whether the dangerous system of centralization, 
 which places the affairs of the people in the management of central 
 boards, is any longer to be sanctioned. If so, it will require innume¬ 
 rable officers, entail unbounded expense, and will be followed by an 
 ultimate confession of total failure, and a demand for a more com¬ 
 prehensive and more costly scheme. If the advocates of public 
 health legislation are sincere, how is it that they have not shewn 
 their zeal in matters within tlieir reach ? How is it that they have 
 connived at the continuance of the window tax,—a tax on air, and 
 light, and health, and ventilation. Lord Ashley declared to his 
 constituents at Bath his disapprobation of this tax, and yet when 
 a vigorous opposition would have ensured its repeal, he voted 
 for its continuance. 
 
6 
 
 5. Ecclesiastical Legislation. —The only effective religious 
 teaching the state can give is to act religiously and to govern right¬ 
 eously ; the only way in which government can educate the people 
 is to set before them at all times an example of wisdom in acts of 
 legislation, and of justice in administering the laws. The British 
 press has been most effectually worked for the increase of ecclesiastical 
 endowments. Whilst Dissenters have been contending about much 
 smaller items in church rates, those offices which should have been 
 provided for out of church property have been steadily advancing in 
 their claims upon the poor rate. The six hundred Poor Law Unions 
 in England and Wales, the new gaols, and other institutions, have 
 been adding probably 1000 to the number of the stipendiary clergy 
 deriving a maintenance from rates and taxes, and not from church 
 endowments. The cost of the Chapel of the Bath Union Workhouse, 
 which is more than £1000, and a chaplain’s salary of £100 a-year, 
 and all the expenses attending the performance of divine service and 
 the administration of the sacraments, are defrayed, not from church 
 property, but from an increased taxation of the people in the form of 
 an unobserved charge upon the poor rates. We have a rich church 
 establishment, yet certain papers and periodicals contain perpetual 
 appeals to public sympathy respecting the spiritual destitution of the 
 people. In a circular, recently issued by the Bishop of Exeter in 
 behalf of the spiritual destitution of Plymouth, the Lords of the’ 
 Admiralty are put down for £4000. By what authority they made 
 this grant of public money his Lordship does not say. Can any 
 one doubt the need of some new arrangement of the enormous 
 revenues of the Church rather than of fresh acquisitions of wealth. 
 Of the present income of the Church, probably not a third part 
 ever reaches the clergy who do the work. We have lately seen 
 thousands of pounds added to the incomes of the bishops, and still 
 more for their palaces, yet at the death of a prelate no one is 
 astonished to learn that he has left to his relatives £120,000. 
 
 On the subject of Church Property, the Westminster Revieiu 
 contains the following:— 
 
 “ The reports of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for 1831 give the amount 
 of the nett revenues administered by the Church as under 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Sees of Archbishops and Bishops . 
 
 Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, and Ecclesiastical 
 
 Corporations . 
 
 Prebends and other Preferments in Cathedral and 
 
 Collegiate Churches. 
 
 Renewal of Leases (average of three years). 
 
 Benefices (10,718). 
 
 CHURCH OF IRELAND. 
 
 Sees of Archbishops and Bishops. 
 
 Deans and Chapters .. .. . .. . 
 
 Economy Estates of Cathedrals. 
 
 Other subordinate Corporations . 
 
 £160,292 
 
 208,289 
 
 44,705 
 
 21,760 
 
 3,055,451 
 
 £151,128 
 
 1,043 
 
 11,056 
 
 10,526 
 
Prebends, &c., without cure of souls 
 
 Glebe Lands. 
 
 Tithes . 
 
 Ministers’ Money .. .. .. 
 
 ■■Ed, 35(5,032 
 
 Tt is now known, from the progress of the tithe commutations, and other 
 evidence, that the real incomes of the clergy were largely understated in these 
 returns ; and they do not, besides, include the incomes derived from college and 
 school foundations administered by the Church (supposed to amount to about 
 £800,000), nor those derived from lectures and chaplainships. The church-rates 
 are of course excluded, not being a source of income; the annual burden of 
 which to the Public is about £550,000. 
 
 The Commissioners state that the average of the stipends paid to English 
 curates (5,282 in number), is £80 per annum. A re-distribution of the national 
 revenues held by the Church (assuming them to amount but to £4,350,000 per 
 annum) would admit of the following arrangement:— 
 
 15,000 Curacies, or religious professorships for rural districts, 
 
 with salaries of £100.£1,500,000 
 
 500 Religious professorships for towns, with salaries of £500.. 250,000 
 
 15,000 Infant school mistresses, with salaries of £50 . 750,000 
 
 10,000 Masters for day and evening schools, with salaries of £100 1,000,000 
 2,000 Masters for superior town schools, with salaries of £250.. 500,000 
 
 500 College professorships (including school inspection), with 
 
 salaries of £500 . 250,000 
 
 100 Heads of colleges and normal schools, with salaries 
 
 of £1000 . 100,000 
 
 £4,350,000 .” 
 
 It is commonly believed that the gross income of the Church of 
 England exceeds twice the sum mentioned in the above statement; 
 and it has not escaped public attention that great national objects 
 might be accomplished by this enormous wealth. When once the 
 masses know that the ecclesiastical revenues would pay all the poor- 
 rates and church-rates, or the income tax, or one third of the 
 national debt; or that they would remove a burden from the 
 shoulders of industry equivalent to a gift of half-a-crown a-week for 
 ever to every workingman in the kingdom, they will not be willing to 
 tolerate the existing abuses. If, therefore, the bishops and clergy 
 still continue to oppose Church Reform; if the Legislature still 
 permit the fooleries of Puseyism to exhibit themselves in more than 
 half the churches of the land, at the public cost, then will the people 
 begin to think that religion and education will flourish the better 
 without the aid or interference of the State, and they will demand 
 that ecclesiastical and educational endowments be appropriated to 
 some better purposes. 
 
 6. Irish Poor Law. —It was by the energetic working of 
 this machinery some years ago that the Irish Poor Law was 
 obtained. The press teemed with vivid descriptions of horrible evils, 
 but did not suggest the natural remedies. It was easier to 
 recommend charity at the public cost, and it was more profitable to 
 parties who got up the agitation. Were the Irish idle ?—charity 
 
8 
 
 would make their idleness permanent. In the midst of rags and 
 filth you discerned levity, drinking, smoking, and faction fights. 
 Did you try to get at the national character ? Anecdotes without 
 end portrayed Irish superstition, Irish fun, Irish wit, Irish treachery, 
 and Irish assassination. So sure as mischief will always be found 
 for idle hands to do, so sure was it that employment might remedy 
 these evils, and equally sure that charity could not. But how was 
 employment to be promoted ? Estates were mortgaged, and landlords 
 could neither sell nor cultivate them. A law, enabling them to sell 
 the estates to those who could cultivate them, or to sell part and cul¬ 
 tivate the remainder themselves, would have increased the quantity of 
 employment, would have formed habits of industry, and would lead to 
 prosperity. This was talked of, hut not done. A Poor Law, by adding 
 to the burdens, would increase the evil; yet as justice would meet 
 with opposition from interested parties, aiid as charity would he so 
 easy and so popular, all arguments were turned in that direction. 
 There were prophets too in those days. The Irish would he so 
 quiet, so contented, if they had but a Poor Law. They would remain 
 at home, and cries for repeal would cease. In reply to predictions 
 of universal pauperism, predictions backed by the authority of Mr. 
 O’Connell, it was said that relief should be confined to the work- 
 house, and that not as a right, but only by a judicious selection of 
 cases. On these conditions the Irish Poor Law was granted, but the 
 people were not quiet; they did not stay at home; they did not 
 cease to cry for repeal. 
 
 Then the men who had already obtained office and pay became more 
 bold, and said, “ Grant out of door relief, and let them claim it as 
 a right, and all will he well.” This was done, and matters are now 
 worse than ever. Can any man doubt that the two millions sterling 
 taken by force last year from the oppressed ratepayers of Ireland, who 
 would otherwise have devoted the money to the employment of profit¬ 
 able labourers, have to that extent impoverished the best portion of 
 the Irish people, and made more helpless and discontented the worst 
 portion? The evil did not stop with the forcible collection of 
 Irish poor rates at the point of the bayonet, but by a similar working 
 of the taxing machine certain parties in England were persuaded to 
 consent, and the rest were compelled to submit without their consent, 
 to the appropriation of ten millions from the imperial treasury in aid 
 of the Irish Poor Law. The potatoes had failed, it was said, and 
 the people were in distress ; the generosity of England would anni¬ 
 hilate Irish jealousy and Irish hatred, and would for ever win the 
 affections of the people. The potatoe rot in England was kept out 
 of sight, and the hardships of industrious men in England were over¬ 
 looked, because it was thought they might still be taxed a little more 
 without being goaded to rebellion, whereas to expect industry and 
 self-help from the Irish was out of the question. The money was 
 granted, some of it found its way into the pockets of paid officers; 
 
some of it went to the landlords in shape of rent; much was 
 spent in fraud and drunkenness; and Ireland has been no more 
 contented, and less thankful than ever. This unjust perversion of 
 the powers of the legislature has produced its natural result. The 
 minds of the Irish are more than ever fixed upon this country for 
 support; their mendicant habits have been confirmed; and believing 
 that a country which could send them so much money must have an 
 inexhaustible treasury, they come over by thousands; and now they 
 cover the land, not to work but to beg, and only quitting a place 
 when they discover that work will be required for money. Nor are 
 they who stay at home at all better. With English money they 
 purchase pikes and rifles. In the hope of another shower of gold 
 they utter words of murder and sedition, and yet during the year of 
 Ireland’s distress the Irish were able to spend eight millions sterling 
 in intoxicating drinks. 
 
 There were also circumstances connected with the obtaining of 
 the Irish Poor Law which were strikingly dishonest. Two commis¬ 
 sions were appointed, of each of which the enlightened Archbishop 
 Whateley was a member, and these successively reported against the 
 adoption of a Poor Law. The interested advocates, however, were 
 bent upon having it; and they sent over Mr. Nicholl, one of the 
 English Poor Law commissioners, to investigate the matter. After a 
 six weeks’ tour, he made a report so decidedly in favour of a Poor Law 
 as to enable the Government to obtain it from Parliament. It might 
 have caused the agitators for compulsory charity, as a remedy for Irish 
 rags and Irish sedition, to be more modest in their assertions had 
 they known that similar statements of misery and crime might be 
 made of the Irish in Liverpool and in St. Giles’s, and also 
 throughout the United States of America, where they are the only 
 people usually seen in rags, and where they form seven out of ten 
 of the inmates of the gaols and poorhouses; where also they are 
 mixed up with every savage fight among gangs of workmen, and in 
 every dangerous excitement at political elections. So serious, 
 indeed, has been the grievance, as to compel native Americans to 
 form societies for the obtaining of a law preventing foreigners from 
 voting until they have been twenty-one years in the country; which 
 law they declare has chiefly for its object to exclude the Irish 
 emigrants, from whom alone they consider the republic to be in danger. 
 
 7. The English Poor Law. —Prior to the year 1700 there were 
 but few persons chargeable to the poor rates; and those rates, one 
 hundred years ago, were only a tenth part of the sum which is now 
 required. The following table of poor rates in England and Wales, 
 derived from parliamentary returns, will show that the increase has 
 taken place since the beginning of the reign of George the third:—• 
 1748 I 1767 I 1785 I 1803 I 1815 
 
 £690,000 I £1,531,000 [ £2,004,000 | £4,268,000 | £6,130,000 
 
 The amount, which progressed rapidly during the reign of George 
 
10 
 
 the third, continued to increase till, in the year 1S30, the poor 
 rates amounted to about £8,000,000. At that time, especially in 
 the southern counties, in which this system of relief had been 
 ittbst encouraged by the magistrates, the labouring classes were fast 
 descending to pauperism; and the paupers were becoming more 
 vicious and insolent. The inventions of Watt and Arkwright enabled 
 this country to raise money for the war, and to bear its burden of 
 poor rates; but there is a limit even to the wealth-creating power 
 of machinery, and the most flourishing ; manufacturer will sink under 
 an overwhelming load of taxation. An alteration in the Poor Law 
 Was essential, but a few simple enactments would have sufficed. The 
 chief requirements were to take from magistrates the power of 
 ordering relief; and in every parish to commit to a vestry, annually 
 chosen by the ratepayers, all applications for relief. A central 
 board was desirable for a few years, in order to suggest the most 
 approved modes of parochial management. But the new Poor Law 
 was introduced into the world by men who were too much enamoured 
 of a system of centralisation; who after destroying all former vested 
 interests fastened upon , the country a tremendous staff of clerks, 
 relieving officers, masters of workhouses, medical officers, chaplains, 
 &cj i At first the new system produced a great reform. Thousands 
 of idle paupers went to work, believing that their day of idleness was 
 over; but soon finding their mistake they returned to their former 
 habits, and pauperism beoame more rampant than ever. 
 
 : The continuance of the Poor Law commission for fifteen years, 
 and the increase of expenditure, have arisen from the action of the 
 press upon Parliament. Poor Law commissioners when persecuted 
 for attempting to carry out the intentions of the law, were not always 
 supported by Government; in consequence of which they intro¬ 
 duced so many exceptions into their original orders as to destroy 
 their efficacy. The expense of the commission increased as its utility- 
 decreased ; and the management of their own affairs was gradually 
 taken from the people and placed in the central board. At length 
 the Poor Law commission is actually engaged in the direct promotion of 
 pauperism, by teaching the people that it is not necessary to provide 
 for a time of sickness and old age. This retrograde movement was 
 reserved for the month of July, 1848, when Mr. C. Buffer, President 
 of the Poor LawBoard, introduced a Biff into the House of Commons 
 to sanction pensions for life to all the officers of Poor Law Unions, 
 and temporary 1 pensions during sickness. There are twenty-eight 
 paid officers in the Bath Union, and, perhaps, ten or fifteen thousand 
 in all 'the unions, from which the magnitude of the expense may 
 be judged. 
 
 8. The Scotch. Poor Law. —Efforts to deceive the public by 
 means of thepress have not unfrequently been made respecting pauper¬ 
 ism in Scotland. Statistics of the poverty and misery of Glasgow have 
 been paraded before the public eye; and the scenes of wretchedness have 
 
11 
 
 been ascribed to the absence of a Poor Law like that of England. Yet 
 similar scenes have been witnessed in Liverpool, with its thousands 
 of wretched cellars, although it had a Poor Law. The agitators for 
 paid officers in Scotland and more power to tax the Scotch, kept out 
 of sight the real cause of poverty. Ardent spirits made their poor 
 ragged and destitute. Could parish pay prevent this effect ? Would 
 it not rather increase it ? Has Glasgow been improved by the more 
 liberal allowance to the poor of late years ? Let the recent riots 
 answer that. Glasgow is poor! yet Glasgow last year spent one 
 million sterling in intoxicating drinks ! Is charitable aid the remedy 
 for such a state of things ? Is not a system of entire sobriety 
 required ? Why not stop the leak, rather than compel all hands to 
 continue at the pumps ? Of 30,000 houses in Glasgow 3,000 are 
 devoted to the sale of intoxicating liquors. It has also been ascertained 
 that at least 30,000 persons, or a tenth part of the population, go to 
 bed drunk every Saturday night. 25,000 persons were committed for 
 drunkenness and disorderly conduct during the year; and of these 
 10,000 were women. Nor is it uncommon, for the police to convey 
 to the station-house in wheel barrows thirty or forty persons in a 
 state of beastly intoxication. In Edinburgh, 130 females were brought 
 to the watch-houses in a state of intoxication in a single week. In 
 Aberdeen last year 2,000 men and 5,000 women were taken out of 
 the streets in a state of drunkenness; and at one time 45 drunken 
 women were huddled together in a small cell in the police office. 
 Yet the rabble of Aberdeen have recently attempted to form them¬ 
 selves into an armed national guard against some supposed oppressors. 
 If each of them would keep guard against the despotic sway of his 
 own evil habits it would prove more efficacious. There is an enemy 
 about to invade the drunkards of Aberdeen. His advance is thus 
 described :—“ So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and 
 thy want as an a rmed man.” Against such an enemy Birmingham 
 guns are powerless. Would the people of Scotland learn by what 
 means they may best avoid sickness and poverty, and best preserve 
 health and emplojunent, let them consider the case lately recorded in 
 their own newspapers;—Janet Sutherland, a native of John-o’-Groat’s, 
 during a life of 90 years, never tasted wine or spirits, never 
 knew pain or sickness, and taught a school until the last year of 
 her life. 
 
 9. Government Education.— An agitation is kept up for grants 
 of public money for national education. Nothing is said of the 
 endowments already existing, winch were intended for the education of 
 the masses, but which are devoted to the use of a few. Notwithstand¬ 
 ing the past results of endowments, more money, more inspectors, 
 more paid masters, monitors, and apprentices are demanded, that a 
 centralised system of great pow r er may be worked from Downing 
 Street, ostensibly for the enlightening, but possibly for the enslaving, 
 of the whole community. 
 
If the object of the Legislature be to increase knowledge? 
 why retain the duty on paper, and the penny stamp on newspapers ? 
 When Messrs. Chambers were engaged in providing useful know¬ 
 ledge for the working classes, the sum which they ought to have 
 retained for their trouble was taken from them by the duty upon paper. 
 Many persons are now endeavouring to enlighten the people through 
 cheap periodicals; but in order to supply them at the cost of a penny 
 they are obliged to publish them at Jersey, or the Isle of Man, by 
 which they avoid the penny stamp, which thus operates as a tax upon 
 knowledge. In the United States men can purchase their daily paper 
 for a halfpenny; whereas, when there is an endeavour to enable the 
 people of this country to have the Daily News at their own house 
 for threepence, instead of being compelled, by the high price of 
 papers, to go to a public-house to hear the news, the Government 
 
 interferes with taxes of fifty per cent, on the cost. 
 
13 
 
 10. Foreign Slavery Legislation. —It is high time to cease 
 from the attempt to superintend the affairs of the whole earth. 
 The province of government is to protect the persons and property of 
 the people subject to its sway; and as far as possible to preserve 
 peace at home and abroad, that men and nations may trade freely and 
 without fear. It is for this purpose that men consent to be taxed, 
 and that certain funds are placed at the disposal of the Government, 
 which is only a trustee of public money for certain definite uses. 
 Whenever, therefore, governments collect an unnecessary amount of 
 taxes from the people, and apply to other purposes the sums collected 
 under that solemn trust, it is nothing less than a public robbery. 
 Such is the expenditure now going on for the support of an armed 
 force on the coast of Africa; and its effects have been as injurious as 
 that appropriation of public money has been unprincipled. The slave 
 trade is undiminislied, and the horrors of the passage are greater 
 than at any previous period. 
 
 Since the publication of the first edition, containing these observations on 
 the Slave Trade, the author has received a letter, respecting slave-grown sugar, 
 from a magistrate with whom lie iiad acted in former years at anti-slavery 
 conventions in London, from which the following is an extract:— 
 
 “ While writing, the Anti-Slavery Reporter of the 1st July has been handed 
 to me, by which I perceive the Sugar Bill of 184(i is likely to be continued. By 
 all accounts, that bill, admitting slave-grown sugar to be consumed iu England, 
 has given a great stimulus to slavery and the slave trade, with all its attendant 
 horrors and sufferings; and 1 am of opinion the whole responsibility of that 
 misery rests with you and a few others. If you had not created a division 
 among the anti-slavery friends, [believe slavervin Cuba and Brazil, and, perhaps, 
 most other countries, would, ere this, be nearly extinct; for a resolution of 
 Parliament to have free trade with all the world in articles the produce of free 
 labour, and to exclude the produce of slaves, would have gone far towards 
 inducing slave countries to abolish slavery and cultivate with free labour. If 
 the anti-slavery friends had been united, this could easily have been obtained; 
 but you and a few others succeeded in sowing the seeds of discord, which 
 rendered the anti-slavery body powerless. The old adage, 1 Divide and conquer,’ 
 was apparent; you succeeded in carrying your point, which has increased the 
 slave trade, and is likely to perpetuate slavery. The triumph may afford you 
 pleasure now, but I doubt if it will on a death bed. With my views on the 
 subject I would not have your responsibility for a million worlds 1 The cruelties 
 practised on the coast of Africa, the horrors of the middle passage, and the 
 groans of slavery would be ever present to my imagination. Trusting your life 
 may be spared to make some reparation to the oppressed slave, 
 
 4 th July, 1848. “ I am, yours sincerely,-.” 
 
 Amongst the few others above referred to, are the distinguished names of 
 Richard Cobden, M.P., John Bright, M.P., &c. But the worthy magistrate, 
 whilst overflowing with benevolence towards distant slaves, is unable to exercise 
 ordinary charity towards those of his fellow-countrymen who maintain opinions 
 contrary to his own, but with move than papal infallibility consigns them to 
 perdition. This severe language, however, the author is aware only expresses 
 the sentiments which many of his anti-slavery friends entertain towards him, 
 and he therefore lays hold of the opportunity afforded by this new edition to set 
 forth some of the reasons which formerly induced him to defend the right of the 
 people of England to cheap sugar, from whatever part of the earth they could 
 obtain it; in the validity of which reasons the years which have since elapsed 
 have the more fully confirmed him. 
 
 1. Legislative attempts to keep out slave-grown sugar, made, on the part of 
 some persons, honestly, but by others hypocritically, have robbed the people of 
 
ms, to obtain freedom for the slave; and, when in 
 it slavery to a congregation chiefly consisting of 
 et to learn that the products of slave labour can, 
 
 7. It is time to look at home, and for Government to use their power, and 
 jxpenil the revenue for the good of the people at home. To make sugar dearer, 
 
 Is to make the people work longer in order to pay for it, and this is slavery. To 
 mprove the condition of the West-India proprietor, by taking from the English 
 operative, is robbery. To do this on pretence of benevolence is hypocrisy ; to 
 lo it by indirect taxation is meanness. It is thus that “ the hire of the labourer 
 is kept back by fraud,” and even if good were to result to the slave, the act is 
 
 8. Weaker brethren amongst the early Christians dared not eat meat which had 
 been offered to idols, and men of stronger minds were content in their presence 
 voluntarily to abstain. But the Apostle Paul would sanction no compulsion in 
 
 slave-grown produce abstain therefrom ; and let him, if he pleases, try to 
 persuade others to unite with him in such voluntary surrender of their comforts; 
 but let him not play the tyrant, and seek, by force of law, to compel millions of 
 his fellow men, who have no such scruples, to abstain or else to pay an 
 exorbitant price! 
 
 Is it then too much to say that in adding to the taxes of the coun¬ 
 try for all these purposes, governments have reversed the divine 
 intention in their origin ? They were intended to be a “ terror to evil 
 doers,” hut they have interfered with trade, and robbed the wages 
 fund until they have become a terror to honest men. 
 
 Legislative interference usually assumes the form of religion or 
 charity; but its piety and its kindness are either pretended or 
 mistaken. It robs one man that it may he generous to another. 
 In its piety it takes from the dissenter to pay for the worship of the 
 churchman. ,It makes Christian England contribute towards the 
 support of the Idol Juggernaut; with taxes paid by men of sound faith 
 it educates the students of Maynooth in an exploded superstition; rather 
 
16 
 
 than remove the abuses of the Protestant Church in Ireland, it would 
 give salaries to 3000 Catholic priests at the expense of those sincere 
 Christians who regard both with abhorrence. In its charity it has 
 emancipated distant slaves, and has saddled domestic industry with an 
 addition of twenty millions to the National Debt. It has relieved 
 mendicancy in Ireland by a tax of ten millions upon British industry. 
 In its pity it has dismissed women from collieries and children from 
 factories, where they earned their own living; it has shaken the 
 felon by the hand, and has smiled upon the indolent pauper; hut 
 it has treated roughly the oppressed mechanic, by whose toil the 
 wants of the country are supplied. It is owing to undue legislative 
 interference that there are now so many thousands of unemployed and 
 disorderly persons; it is owing to acts of justice in passing the 
 Reform Bill, repealing the Com Laws, and reducing the duties upon the 
 necessaries of life, that the most dangerous elements of discontent 
 have been removed from the midst of us, and that this country has 
 not suffered so much from recent convulsions as most of the conti¬ 
 nental nations. By persevering in legislative interference, trade and 
 commerce will disappear; poverty and rebellion will cover the land; 
 the National Debt and the National Church will he destroyed. By 
 removing the evils caused by past interference, and by governing 
 justly in the time to come, the blessing of heaven will be upon us; 
 prosperity and contentment will return; England will be placed 
 beyond the reach of revolutionary disturbance; and the throne will be 
 established in righteousness. 
 
 Bath ; Nov. 25, 1848. [First Thousand May 15,1848. 
 
 JgF Each of the following Tracts, (price 2 dj by the Rev. T. Spencer, 
 weighs, with an envelope, less than half an ounce 
 
 1. —THE PILLARS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND . lath Thousand. 
 
 2. —THE PRAYER BOOK OPPOSED TO THE CORN LAWS. 17th Thousand. 
 
 '3.—RELIGION AND POLITICS. loth Thonsand. 
 
 4—PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS ON CHURCH REFORM. 11th Thousand. 
 
 Si— REMARKS.ON NATIONAL EDUCATION. 11th Thousand. 
 
 6. —CLERICAL CONFORMITY AND CHURCH PROPERTY. Kith Thousand. 
 
 7. —THE PARSON'S DREAM AND THE QUEEN’S SPEECH. 17th Thousand. 
 
 S.—THE OUTCRY AGAINST THE NEW POOR LAW . 10th Thousand. 
 
 9.—THE NEW POOR LAW, ITS EVILS, AND THEIR REMEDIES 4th Thousand. 
 
 10. —WANT OF FIDELITY IN MINISTERS OF RELIGION. 11th Thousand. 
 
 11, 12, 13, 14.—REASONS FOR A POOR LAW CONSIDERED, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4. 
 
 15.—THE REFORMED PRAYER BOOK . 5th Thousand. 
 
 -16.—THE SECOND REFORMATION. 17tll Thousand. 
 
 17.—THE PEOPLE'S RIGHTS : AND HOW TO GET THEM. 10th Thousand. 
 
 ■ IS.—OBSERVATIONS UPON THE DIOCESAN SCHOOL RETURN.. 26th Thousand. 
 
 19. —WHAT DAVID DID—A REPLY TO THE QUEEN’S LETTER.. 3lst Thousand. 
 
 20. —JUSTICE TO THE INDUSTRIOUS CLASSES . 6th Thousand. 
 
 21. —EVILS OF UNDUE LEGISLATIVE INTERFERENCE. oth Thousand. 
 
 ,Any numbe 
 
 e or distribution, 
 nj pi e tion c nt 
 
 I.ONDON: CHARLES GILPIN, 5, BISHOPSGATE STREET, WITHOUT. 
 BATH: SAMUEL GIBBS, 5, UNION STREET.