J\fachael Ernest Sadler' 
 
 Tlni 
 
 nvers 
 
 Oxford 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 Ex Libra 
 
 SIR MICHAEL SADLER 
 
 ACQUIRED 1948 
 
 WITH THE HELP OF ALUMNI OF THE 
 SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
 
 
 t
 
 TRACTS 
 
 PAUPERISM. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. 
 
 GLASGOW: 
 
 PRINTED FOR WILLIAM COLLINS; 
 
 JAMES RIDGEWAY, WHITTAKER, TREACHER, & ARNOT, HAMILTON, 
 ADAMS. & CO. AND SIMPKIN & MARSHALL, LONDON; OLIVER & BOYD, 
 W. WHYTE & CO. AND W. OLIPHANT, EDINBURGH; W. F. WAKEMAN, 
 AND WM. CURRY, JUN. & CO. DUBLIN. 
 
 MDCCCXXXIII.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I A Speech, delivered on the 24th of May, 1822, before 
 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Explanatory 
 of the Measures which have been successfully pursued in St. 
 John's Parish, Glasgow, for the Extinction of its Compulsory 
 Pauperism. With an Appendix. 
 
 II Statement in Regard to the Pauperism of Glasgow, 
 from the Experience of the Last Eight Years. 
 
 Ill On the Parliamentary Means for the Abolition of 
 Pauperism in England ; being the substance of the Fifteenth 
 Number of the Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE special interest which attaches at present to 
 the question of Pauperism, induces me, not to pre- 
 pare any new composition on the subject, but to 
 present a compilation of certain Tracts published 
 by me some years ago, and in the principles of 
 which I still retain unabated confidence ; verified 
 as they have been by a most decisive experience, 
 in regard both to the evils of the compulsory sys- 
 tem when persevered in, and to the perfect facility 
 of its piece-meal or successive abolition. 
 
 I might have inserted, in this little collection, 
 my "Evidence before the Committee of the House 
 of Commons on the subject of a Poor-Law for Ire- 
 land." But as this has been recently published by 
 another, in conjunction with that of Dr. Doyle's on 
 the same topic, I satisfy myself with simply refer- 
 ring to that little work, and with the notice, that I 
 have found the minutes of my examination, as 
 there given, to have been very little curtailed, and 
 to be substantially correct. 
 
 The first of the ensuing Tracts, relates to the 
 commencement of an experiment made by myself 
 in Glasgow ; and the second relates the conclusive 
 success of it. I now take the opportunity of again 
 
 r >^ 
 oJLOO
 
 4 PREFACE. 
 
 stating, at least for the hundredth time, and in op- 
 position to the obstinate and endlessly repeated 
 misconception of its being an ephemeral enterprise, 
 which begun and terminated with my labours, as 
 one of the ministers of Glasgow that it still sub- 
 sists in full vigour, on the inherent efficacy of the 
 system itself, and independent either of extraor- 
 dinary influence or extraordinary efforts on the part 
 of any individual. Were it otherwise, the scheme 
 would be altogether unworthy of public observa- 
 tion. 
 
 In regard to the pieces, which enter into this 
 little collection, it may be right to observe, that 
 my chief value is for the Appendix of the first, and 
 for the whole of the second whether as exhibit- 
 ing the principles of the gratuitous system of 
 charity, or the working of it among the families of 
 the poor themselves, and in the experience of the 
 parochial administrators. The third of these pieces 
 is an extract from a work, entitled, " The Chris- 
 tian and Civic Economy of Large Towns," to 
 which I refer for my views on the likeliest paro- 
 chial means, by which Pauperism might be abol- 
 ished in England. T. C.
 
 SPEECH, 
 
 BEFOHE THE 
 
 GENERAL ASSEMBLY 
 
 CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 EXPLANATORY OF THE MEASURES WHICH HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFULLY 
 PURSUED IN ST. JOHN'S PARISH, GLASGOW, 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 EXTINCTION OF ITS COMPULSORY PAUPERISM: 
 
 WITH 
 
 AN APPENDIX. 
 
 BY THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. 
 
 MINISTER OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, GLASGOW. 
 
 GLASGOW: 
 
 PRINTED FOR CHALMERS AND COLLINS; 
 
 WAUGH AND INNES, EDINBURGH ; 
 
 R. M. TIMS, DUBLIN ; 
 AND G. AND W. B. WHITTAKER, LONDON. 
 
 1822.
 
 Printed by W. CofflM & Co. 
 GVwgow.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE following is rather an awkward sort of pub- 
 lication, from the egotism pervading a narrative, 
 all of which, at the same time, behooved to be de- 
 livered ; and still more, from that egotism, reaching 
 even to the borders of an indelicacy, that was at 
 the same time unavoidable, in the work of man- 
 aging a hostile argument, which behooved to be 
 refuted. But there are times when one feels 
 himself imperatively called upon to break loose 
 from every common place restraint ; and we trust 
 that it may be deemed a sufficient apology for our 
 authorship on this occasion, that we can plead for 
 it, not the urgency of many friends, for the purpose 
 of drawing out to an exhibition of himself an in- 
 dividual who was the, object of their partiality, 
 but the urgency of many philanthropists, for the 
 purpose of drawing out the attention of the com- 
 munity to a great public and political question, on
 
 the right solution of which, the well-being of our 
 empire is at present so critically and so momen- 
 tously suspended. 
 
 We have been engaged, for some time, in pub- 
 lishing a series of periodical Essays on the treat- 
 ment of Pauperism, and to these alone, when com- 
 pleted, would we refer for the development of any 
 such plans or principles as may have occurred to us. 
 But, aware of the slow process of conviction, we 
 gladly avail ourselves of any practical impulse by 
 which it may be accelerated nor do we know of 
 any more fitted to arrest the. notice, or secure the 
 acquiescence of our Scottish population, than that 
 which emanates upon them from the voice of their 
 Supreme Ecclesiastical Judicatory and especially 
 when that voice, unbroken by partizanship, ex- 
 presses the unanimous sense and feeling of the 
 General Assembly of our Church. Any elucida- 
 tion that can be bestowed upon Pauperism, within 
 the compass of a spoken address, must be neces- 
 sarily imperfect ; and therefore it is chiefly because 
 of the venerable sanction wherewith it is associated, 
 that we have ventured to obtrude it at this mo- 
 ment on the public eye. Nor, apart from such 
 topics as are exclusively Christian, do we know 
 upon what occasion the wholesome ascendency of 
 our church over our population can be more 
 fitly or more usefully interposed, than when she 
 lends her testimony against the spread of that 
 moral nuisance in our land, by which the habits,
 
 and the character, and the whole economy of 
 our sister nation have been so wofully deteri- 
 orated. 
 
 We anticipated a much longer discussion than 
 what actually took place upon this subject in the 
 General Assembly nor are we able to conceive an 
 opportunity more precious, than would thus have 
 been offered, of treasuring up the prevalent impres- 
 sions of the country, on a topic where reason, and 
 sensibility, and the public interest, and the mo- 
 rality of the gospel, all appear to enter as so many 
 warring elements into a question, which is yet far 
 from having reached a satisfactory adjustment in 
 general estimation. Never, perhaps, was there an 
 argument where sound principles on the one hand, 
 are met in such imposing array by specious plau- 
 sibilities on the other, and it was natural to ex- 
 pect, in the midst of so much collective intelligence, 
 and feeling, and Christian philanthropy, as are 
 brought together in the great annual representa- 
 tion of our church, that a vast deal could have 
 been gathered from a conflict of minds and hearts, 
 on that theme, to which, of all others, in the pre- 
 sent conjuncture of affairs, both humanity and 
 patriotism are most alive. It was under the 
 foreboding of a protracted controversy on the 
 matter to which it refers, that the author of the 
 following short effusion, certainly meant to have 
 recorded all that struck him as most interesting 
 in the extemporaneous utterance of his brethren j
 
 6 
 
 and that, with the purpose of either correcting 
 his own views upon pauperism or rather, as he 
 must acknowledge his convictions to be somewhat 
 tenacious on this point, with the purpose of modify- 
 ing every hostile affirmation, by what he deems to be 
 the sound practice and philosophy of the question. 
 It is certainly in so far gratifying, that he has been 
 superseded in this intention, by the general and 
 almost instantaneous acquiescence, of his revered 
 ecclesiastical superiors, in the arrangement that he 
 himself wanted for the supply of his poor. Still, 
 there was a sufficient interval of doubt and of in- 
 quiry, to have enabled him to proceed a certain 
 way in the enterprise, and come forth with a 
 short specimen in an Appendix, of what he con- 
 templated on that occasion. It would, if com- 
 pleted, have furnished him with the opportunity 
 of meeting the most urgent objections to his own 
 theory, in another form than that of abstract ra- 
 tiocination ; and perhaps to have brought the whole 
 system into a broader and closer coalescence with 
 the popular mind, than it is possible to do by any 
 synthetic exposition of it from elementary prin- 
 ciples, or even by any reasoning, though grounded 
 on the clearest statements both of arithmetic and 
 experience. Such, indeed, is his distrust in the 
 efficacy of all formal argumentation on this matter, 
 that rather than this, would he be present at any 
 random colloquy of intelligent and sound-hearted 
 men about pauperism, where he might be permitted
 
 to seize on all the leading conceptions, that had 
 been sent forth during the free play and inter- 
 change of sentiment between them and to have 
 evinced the experimental soundness of what he con- 
 ceives to be the right theory, by evincing, as it were, 
 the flexibility of its applications, to all the diffi- 
 culties that might have been suggested, and the 
 practical readiness wherewith it can suit itself to 
 all the possible varieties of case and of circum- 
 stances which might be alleged in opposition 
 to it. 
 
 In addition to this, the Appendix contains first 
 Notes supplemental to, or illustrative of, the various 
 positions advanced in the course of the Speech 
 and, lastly, concludes with a brief exposition of 
 the way, in which the utter extinction of all com- 
 pulsory pauperism in Scotland might be accom- 
 plished by means of its ecclesiastical system. The 
 great practical importance of this latter object 
 was, indeed, the consideration which had chief 
 sway in the mind of the author, as he hesitated on 
 the propriety of this publication. And he shall 
 have fulfilled his aim to the uttermost extent, if 
 the auxiliary argument wherewith he .has endea- 
 voured to recommend the multiplication of chapels 
 or churches in our more populous parishes, shall 
 give any impulse to a cause that stands associated 
 with far higher interests than those which relate to 
 the temporal economy and well-being of social life, 
 ; a cause that should be dear to every Christian
 
 8 
 
 bosom, on account of its bearings upon the concerns 
 of human immortality and which points to a still 
 nobler emancipation for our city multitudes, than 
 even from that pauperism that not only has 
 brought degradation upon themselves, but also 
 undoubted distress and privation upon their fa- 
 milies.
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 THE argument set forth in my petition to the 
 Presbytery of Glasgow, will, I think, be held de- 
 cisive enough by itself, of the necessity that there 
 is for a Chapel of Ease in the parish of St. John's. 
 A population of 8,000, with a church only capable 
 of accommodating 1,640, make out a sufficient 
 plea, I should imagine, for another edifice, and 
 another labourer. But, there is a distinct and 
 additional cause, which I beg shortly to explain 
 to this venerable Court, and by which the neces- 
 sities of my people have been greatly aggravated. 
 So that, over and above all that is urged in the 
 statement which has now been submitted to you, 
 there do exist still weightier reasons for an earnest 
 and imperative call, than any which appear in our 
 written allegations. 
 
 My parishioners have not the benefit of this 
 church accommodation. Agreeably to the general 
 practice of all our large towns, the seats are held 
 out indiscriminately to bidders from all quarters
 
 10 
 
 of the city. This I think to be wrong, and that 
 it ought to be remedied by the offer of a preference, 
 in the first instance, for all the vacant room, to the 
 residenters within the parish. But, such not be- 
 ing the habit of our city administrators, the result 
 is, that in all our poorer parishes, the families are 
 overborne by the competition of the wealthier and 
 more favoured citizens of the place insomuch, 
 that, at the commencement of my labours in Glas- 
 gow, I had only one hearer for every 97 parishioners, 
 which is in the proportion of not one hundred sit- 
 ters in the parish church, out of all the inhabitants 
 of a parish that is upwards of 8,000 souls. 
 
 But this grievous deficiency is made up, it may 
 be thought, by the free access which my people 
 have to all the other churches. Not if they are 
 poor. The interest which failed them of success 
 in their applications for the church of their own 
 parish, will not be of mighty avail to them in the 
 competition for the church seats of other parishes : 
 and, accordingly, by a survey of three years back, 
 it appears, that of all these eight thousand, only 
 seven hundred and ninety-nine individuals had 
 seats in all the various churches of the Establish- 
 ment, in Glasgow. 
 
 But it may be thought of this vast and dreary 
 remainder of unprovided population, that they 
 were sufficiently engrossed, and had enough of 
 Christian tuition and discipline brought to bear 
 upon their families by Dissenters. On this point,
 
 11 
 
 too, I am enabled to furnish you with precise 
 authentical information. The total number of 
 individuals, then, who, at that time, attended on 
 all the places of worship, put together, whether 
 within or without the pale of our Establishment, 
 were two thousand two hundred and ten. Now, 
 though it appears, by this statement, that the 
 Dissenters have very nearly a double attendance 
 over the Establishment, yet in reference to the 
 whole parish, there still lies a wide and a melan- 
 choly waste, that has not been overtaken, for if 
 you add, agreeably to the most approved princi- 
 ples of computation on this subject, the three fifths 
 that ought to be at home, of the above number, 
 still you have only a church-going population of 
 three thousand five hundred and thirty-six leav- 
 ing, as ample materials for our proposed chapel, 
 a still unreclaimed host of four thousand seven 
 hundred and fifty-eight, who, if abandoned to 
 their present habits of Sabbath profanation, will 
 sorely retaliate the neglect by their week-day pro- 
 fligacy ; and sure result of the irreligious atmos- 
 phere in which they at all times breathe, and to 
 which the Christian's hallowed day, brings no 
 respite, and no intermission, will plebeian infidelity 
 be every year taking deeper root among the 
 people, and spreading wider the shadow of its 
 dark and deadly foliage over them, and to the 
 weight of all those moral and political distempers 
 which afflict our land, will it add the aggrava-
 
 12 
 
 tion of its many crimes, and the burden of its ill- 
 conditioned families. 
 
 It is a question altogether pertinent to the topic 
 that now engages us, why has Dissenterism not 
 been able to take up a greater number of these out- 
 cast families ? Why has she fallen short of her aim, 
 and left the vast majority beyond the pale of spi- 
 ritual cultivation? In this land of tolerance she 
 can ply at will all the resources and all the ener- 
 gies which belong to her; and yet the heathenism 
 of our people has not only stood its ground, but ga- 
 thered into more colossal magnitude and strength, 
 under the incessant play of all her moving forces, and 
 all her flying artillery. There is a suburb domain 
 of Glasgow of 27,000 people, which, bating a soli- 
 tary chapel under the wings of our Establishment, 
 they have had all to themselves, and we are sure, 
 that over this whole extent they have not drawn 
 above 3000 hearers and many are the crowded 
 vicinities that have formed each into a strong-hold 
 of alienated families, which they have found to be 
 impregnable. Whether, we ask, will it be the 
 Church or the Sectaries that shall, at last, get pos- 
 session of the hold; and with which of these two 
 do the best spiritual tactics lie, for the best onset 
 to assail and to carry it? 
 
 The might and the mastery of an Establishment, 
 when brought to bear on such a mass of resistance 
 as this, all hang on the superior efficacy of territo- 
 rial cultivation. The Dissenter builds his chapel,
 
 13 
 
 and he draws hearers indiscriminately from all the 
 places around ; but drawing none save those who 
 have a predisposition for what is sacred, he can only 
 retard the degeneracy of his townsmen, but never, 
 with his present processes, is he able to recall it. 
 The. Establishment builds its chapel also ; but, be- 
 sides this, it metes off a geographical vineyard to 
 him who officiates therein ; and it lies with himself 
 to be, in a very few months, a respected and a re- 
 cognized functionary among all its tenements ; and 
 without any romantic sacrifice of his time or of his 
 ease, but just in the quiet and regular discharge of 
 the assiduities of his office, among the ignorant, 
 the sick, and the dying, will he be sure to find good 
 welcome in every heart, and good-will in every 
 home towards him. Now, it is by these week-day 
 attentions among the people of his local territory, 
 that he, at length, diffuses over the whole of this 
 contiguous space an interest and a desire after his 
 Sabbath ministrations; and gathers new recruits' 
 to his congregation from the most worthless of its 
 families. It is just because the every day move- 
 ments of a minister through his parish, create 
 among the parishioners a tendency to his church, 
 that a priority of admittance for them should be 
 an invariable principle in the rule of seat-letting. 
 By adopting it as our rule in our constitution for 
 a chapel, we have no doubt that its future minis- 
 ter will soon fill it to an overflow with family 
 groupes, from the deep recesses, and the putrid
 
 14 
 
 alleys, and the now loathsome hovels of the district 
 that is assigned to him, and that all outlandish as 
 is the present aspect of its still ungainly and un- 
 tutored population ; the pastor who lives and who 
 labours there will soon be regaled by the greetings 
 of a home-walk, and will soon surround him- 
 self with the breath and the blandness of a village 
 economy. 
 
 But the principle of locality, when it leads to a 
 territorial rule of seat-letting, is not only of use in 
 adding to the amount of church-going; it is also 
 of equal avail, when it leads to a parochial adminis- 
 tration of poor's money in reducing the amount 
 of pauperism. Our proposed chapel will be built 
 in a plebeian district, and, in virtue of one rule in 
 its constitution, it is primarily designed for the ac- 
 commodation of the resident plebeian families and 
 we have no doubt, that in the course of time, it 
 will mainly be occupied by a local congregation. 
 In best possible keeping with this, its peculiar con- 
 dition, is another rule of its constitution, whereby 
 we provide that its weekly collections shall be de- 
 posited with the kirk-treasurer of the parish, and 
 be made exclusively applicable to the behoof of the 
 parish poor. Opposed to this arrangement is the 
 proposition, that these collections shall be deposit- 
 ed with the treasurer of a general fund, and be 
 placed under a general administration, for behoof 
 of the poor in the whole city. In advocating our 
 own article, we shall have to prove the advan-
 
 15 
 
 tage of a separate and independent administration 
 of pauperism for each parish, over a general ad- 
 ministration for all the parishes and in so doing, 
 we shall have to submit a rather lengthened nar- 
 rative of the plans that have recently been adopt- 
 ed in Glasgow for the management of the poor, 
 and of the results that have flowed from them. 
 
 I remember that more than twenty years ago, 
 when I attended the lectures of Professor Robison, 
 among all the felicities of thought and of illustra- 
 tion in which he abounded, there was none which 
 delighted me more at the time, or which has clung 
 to me more tenaciously ever since, than one that 
 he uttered when in the act of drawing a parallel 
 between those two great branches of mathematical 
 science, geometry and algebra. His taste and his 
 preference were altogether on the side of geome- 
 try; and that, because in the business of its de- 
 monstrations, the thinking principle is at all times 
 in close exercise and contact with the quantities 
 themselves. The lines, and the angles, and the 
 surfaces, are never out of the mind's eye during the 
 whole of the investigating process; and whether 
 you know much of the mathematics or not, you 
 can, at least, conceive how much more freshly and 
 deliciously the understanding is regaled, when thus 
 set to work immediately, and without the interven- 
 tion of any artificial medium, on the realities of the 
 question. 
 
 Now the same does not hold of algebra. The
 
 16 
 
 quantities are not in the eye of the mind, because 
 removed and hidden therefrom under the veil of an 
 arbitrary nomenclature. It is not with the things, 
 but with the terms expressive of the things, that the 
 mind has immediately to do. Instead of the un- 
 derstanding being employed on actual truths, or 
 actual relations, it is rather the hand which is em- 
 ployed in shifting and shuffling among the hiero- 
 glyphics of a formula. It is thus that algebra, how- 
 ever powerful as an instrument of research, does 
 not afford so satisfying an intellectual repast to its 
 disciples as does geometry. Insomuch that the 
 late Dr. Gregory, who seems to have regarded with 
 mortal aversion the very physiognomy of an alge- 
 braical page, came forth with the memorable say- 
 ing, that algebra was an invention for enabling the 
 mind to reason without thinking. And Professor 
 Robison, than whom a truer philosophic spirit 
 never graced the University of Edinburgh, has 
 given us a deliverance upon this subject, which is 
 equally memorable; that he liked geometry better 
 than algebra, because in the former the ipsa cor- 
 pora of the question were present to the mind, and 
 in the latter they were not present to it. 
 
 Now there are just two such ways of taking up 
 and treating the question of pauperism, which ad- 
 mit of being similarly contrasted. The ipsa cor- 
 pora of this great problem in political science lie 
 seated and spread out before you among the popu- 
 lation. They hold immediately on the familiar
 
 17 
 
 and ascertained elements of our nature ; and you 
 come to close quarters with them, when going forth 
 on a parochial territory, you have to deal with the 
 hearts, and the habits, and the whole economy of 
 its families. It is in this way, that I have been 
 permitted for upwards of two years and a half, to 
 prosecute my designs for the extirpation of pau- 
 perism placed in the very middle of its near 
 and besetting realities ; and these rendered greatly 
 more urgent, and of course, greatly more stimulat- 
 ing, by the great vicissitudes which, within that pe- 
 riod of time, have befallen our exclusively manu- 
 facturing population. There is nought of which 
 all the while I have been more fearful, than any 
 premature explosion, or an untimely interruption of 
 the process, on the ground either of civil or eccle- 
 siastical law though, on that ground too, I deem 
 myself invulnerable. The interruption, however, I 
 have now most unexpectedly met with. An article 
 of our constitution for a chapel of ease, copied in 
 from models that had been previously sanctioned 
 by this venerable assembly, has been the spark to 
 light up a controversy which, on the present occa- 
 sion, I most assuredly, did not anticipate; and a 
 movement that was made, purely and exclusively 
 for the religious interests of my people, has be- 
 come the signal of an attempt to reland my pa- 
 rish in a system of pauperism that I hold to be de- 
 leterious. It is great consolation, however, that 
 with all the recoil I feel from the stormy element of
 
 18 
 
 debate, and all the discomfort wherewith I breathe 
 amid the agitations and the invectives of its turbid 
 atmosphere, the tempest has not arisen till the har- 
 bour has been gained the attack has not been made 
 till the enterprise has been carried onwards to its sa- 
 tisfying termination and one vessel, at least, laden 
 with a rich harvest of experience, has been suffered 
 to deposit its spoils in a place that is impregnable. 
 There is one parish that has been thoroughly re- 
 claimed from the legal charity of England that has 
 been conducted back again to the mild and peaceful 
 administrations of our own better economy and 
 has now traversed the whole distance which lies be- 
 tween a state of compulsory pauperism, and the pau- 
 perism which is strictly Scottish, and Sessional, and 
 altogether gratuitous. It is well that the voyage has 
 been finished ere this unlooked-for whirlwind arose ; 
 and in such circumstances too, as to prove that the 
 voyage may, at any time, be repeated, and that, by 
 every-day instruments and with every-day materials. 
 It may now be seen, that instead of a wild adven- 
 ture only fit for the darings of a wild enthusiasm, 
 there is not a city or country parish in Scotland 
 which may not, if she will, find a most practicable 
 opening, by which to rid herself of all contagious 
 fellowship with that system, that now bows down, 
 so oppressively, upon our sister nation ; and that 
 all the daring, and all the frenzy, which have been 
 conceived to place this enterprise beyond the 
 reach of imitation, were only called for at the out-
 
 19 
 
 set, when the matter was still untried, anil the blasts 
 of radicalism had, at one time, well nigh over- 
 whelmed it. But now that the channel has been 
 forced, and sounded, and explored, it may be ob- 
 viously attempted by any vessel with ordinary pilot- 
 age, in ordinary times. And therefore, do with the 
 first adventurer what you will order him back again 
 to the place from which he had departed compel 
 his bark out of its present secure and quiet landing- 
 place or let her be scuttled, if you so choose, and 
 sunk to the bottom j still, not to magnify our doings 
 but to illustrate them, we must remind you that the 
 discovery survives the loss of the discovery ship; 
 for, if discovery it must be called, the discovery 
 has been made a safe and easy navigation has 
 been ascertained from the charity of law to the 
 charity of kindness : and therefore be it now reviled, 
 or be it now disregarded as it may, we have no 
 doubt upon our spirits, whether we look to the 
 depraving pauperism, or to the burdened agricul- 
 ture of our land, that the days are soon coming 
 when men, looking for a way of escape from these 
 sore evils, will be glad to own our enterprise and 
 be fain to follow it. 
 
 So much at present for the ipsa corpora of the 
 problem or as it lies spread out in diagram before 
 you on the parochial territory. But, at the mo- 
 ment of its being translated from the parish to the 
 Presbytery, at that moment did it pass from the 
 state of an experimental to the state of a legal ques-
 
 tion; and "then too, sheathed in the algebra of 
 style and form ecclesiastic, did the ipsa corpora dis- 
 appear from the field of vision altogether. I can 
 scarcely recognise my old acquaintance pauperism, 
 in the attire of new and strange phraseology where- 
 with they have invested her; and far more appal- 
 ling to my imagination, than all the surds and sym- 
 bols of algebra put together, are the mystic and 
 unknown characters which some of my reverend 
 brethren have graven upon her forehead. When 
 met and confronted with pauperism on the geo- 
 graphical tablet of my own vineyard, I found nothing 
 unmanageable, but that all went smoothly, and 
 pleasantly, and prosperously forward; but when 
 transferred from thence and laid on the table of 
 the Presbytery, I felt, with Professor Robison, my 
 inclinations to be all towards the ipsa corpora of 
 the question. Even at the time when a clamorous 
 and distressed population asserted their right to ali- 
 ment on the principles of English law and be- 
 sieged, with angry remonstrance and manifesto, the 
 houses of the clergymen and sent in their whole 
 columns of signatures, appended to written para- 
 graphs of stout and sullen defiance and, on the 
 eve of our great radical explosion, plied the 
 administrators of public charity with messages of 
 no ambiguous import and hung upon the ques- 
 tion of pauperism all the felt or fancied grievances 
 which inflamed them even then, was it not so 
 difficult to acquit ourselves on the native arena of
 
 the question, as we now feel it unpleasant to have 
 been dragged forward on the arena of our present 
 controversy. And such is the superior comfort we 
 feel in a close engagement of the understanding, 
 with the naked elements of the question that 
 much rather would we hold parley, on this subject, 
 with all the radical members of the population of 
 Glasgow put together, than we would hold parley 
 with but one or two refractory members of the 
 Presbytery thereof. 
 
 But I must now pass on to our narrative of facts ; 
 nor would I have indulged to such length in preli- 
 minary matter, had it not been for the general and 
 almost overwhelming impression that there is of 
 the question of pauperism as being a question of 
 exceeding difficulty. It is so in one sense of the 
 term, and not at all so in the other. There is an 
 all-important distinction here, between the natural, 
 and what may be called the political difficulties of the 
 question between the difficulties which attach es- 
 sentially to the problem, from the constitution of 
 human nature and the mechanism of human society, 
 and those wherewith, adventitiously, the problem 
 is encumbered, from the weight of civil or munici- 
 pal regulation that has been laid upon it between 
 the difficulties which be in the habits and circum- 
 stances of the poor, and the difficulties which be in 
 the authority and practice of those who are the estab- 
 lished functionaries for the poor. Now, what we 
 affirm is, that the former class of difficulties, which
 
 22 
 
 have their locum standi in the parish, vanish into no- 
 thing on the simple removal of certain artificial sti- 
 mulants that have called the whole of our pauperism 
 into being ; and that the latter class of difficulties, 
 which have their locum standi in the hall of de- 
 liberation or debate, form the only obstacles to 
 the requisite solution of the problem. You will at 
 once perceive, that if there be any truth in these 
 observations, they do most materially affect the 
 philosophy of the subject. But what we chiefly 
 want by pressing them home at this moment upon 
 you is, that if you have any freedom at all to move 
 between the extremes of the law in its rigour, 
 and the law in its relaxation, you may be per- 
 suaded to take the side of relaxation, and not un- 
 necessarily hamper the man whom you find to be 
 honestly intent on the abolition of pauperism 
 that if you participate with him in his desire to 
 sweep this moral nuisance away, you may look in- 
 dulgently on the operation by which it has been ex- 
 punged from more than a tenth part of the most po- 
 pulous city within the limits of our establishment 
 that you make the success of his enterprise atone 
 for any deviations from strictest legalism, of which 
 he, at the same time, is perfectly unconscious, 
 though he doubts not, that to the jealous and mi- 
 croscopic eye of his adversaries in the question, 
 they appear as monstrous, as they have alleged 
 them to be manifold. And if there be space or 
 latitude for such a connivance, surely it were bet-
 
 23 
 
 ter to tolerate, in some degree, that brevi manu style 
 of proceeding, by which unquestionable good is to 
 be achieved, than to clench and perpetuate unques- 
 tionable evil, by either adding to the restraints, or 
 tightening the harness of an artificial jurispru- 
 dence. 
 
 But I feel that I must be brief, and brief, too, on 
 an argument under which I really stand before you 
 burdened and oppressed with a sense of its un- 
 wieldiness. What might be expanded into a trea- 
 tise, must be compressed within the limits of an 
 oral delivery and I do entreat the indulgent ear 
 of this venerable Assembly, while, as rapidly as 
 I can, I hurry through the most essential of those 
 topics, which may serve to guide their arbitration 
 on the point at issue. 
 
 And here let me make a distinction between the 
 compulsory and the gratuitous pauperism of Glas- 
 gow. The former i? that which is upheld by a 
 levy; the latter is that which is upheld by a vo- 
 luntary contribution. Our object is, if possible, 
 to do away the former, and to demonstrate the 
 sufficiency of the latter for all the fair and legiti- 
 mate demands of the poor. But, for this purpose 
 certain changes and amendments in the old system 
 were indispensable and to make you understand 
 more distinctly the nature of these changes, let me 
 first read to you the following extract, wherein an 
 account is given of that complex and unwieldy ap- 
 paratus of distribution, which wont to send forth all 
 their supplies of aliment to the poor of our city.
 
 24 
 
 " Each parish is divided into districts called pro- 
 portions, over which an elder is appointed; whose 
 business it is to receive from the people belonging 
 to it, and who are induced to become paupers, their 
 first applications for public relief. The fund which 
 principally arises from the free-will offerings that 
 are collected weekly at the church doors of the 
 different parishes, is kept distinct from the fund 
 that arises out of the legal assessments ; so that 
 when any application was made to the elder from 
 his district, he had to judge whether the case was 
 of so light a nature, as that it could be met and 
 provided for out of the first and smallest of these 
 funds ; or whether it was a case of such magnitude 
 as justified the immediate transmission of it to the 
 administrators of the second fund. It so happens, 
 that excepting on rare occasions, the primary ap- 
 plications for relief, are brought upon the fund 
 raised by collections, and therefore comes in the 
 first instance, under the cognizance and control of 
 the Kirk-Session of that parish, out of which the 
 applications have arisen. So that generally at the 
 first stage in the history of a pauper, he stands 
 connected with the Kirk-Session to which he be- 
 longs, and is enrolled as one of their paupers, at 
 the monthly allowance of from two to five shillings. 
 
 " It is here, however, proper to remark, that the 
 different Kirk-Sessions did not retain their own 
 proper collections, for a fund out of which they 
 might issue their own proper disbursements ; but
 
 25 
 
 that all the collections were thrown into one mass, 
 subject to the control of a body of administrators, 
 named the GENERAL SESSION, and made up of all 
 the members of all the separate Sessions of the 
 city. From this reservoir, thus fed by weekly pa- 
 rochial contributions, there issued back again such 
 monthly supplies upon each subordinate Session, 
 as the General Session judged to be requisite, on 
 such regard being had, as they were disposed to 
 give to the number and necessities of those poor 
 that were actually on the roll of each parish. So, 
 that in as far as the administration of the voluntary 
 fund for charity was concerned, it was conducted 
 according to a system that had all the vices which 
 we have already tried to enumerate, and the mis- 
 chief of which was scarcely alleviated, by the oc- 
 casional scrutinies that were made under the autho- 
 rity of the General Session, for the purpose of 
 purifying and reducing the rolls of all that pau- 
 perism, which lay within the scope of their juris- 
 diction. 
 
 " But we have already stated, that even in the 
 first instance, some cases occurred of more aggra- 
 vated necessity and distress, than a Kirk-Session felt 
 itself able for, or would venture to undertake. These 
 were transmitted direct to the TOWN HOSPITAL, a 
 body vested with the administration of the com- 
 pulsory fund, raised by legal assessment, through- 
 out the city, for the purpose of supplementing that 
 revenue which is gathered at the church door, and 
 
 D
 
 which, with a few trifling additions from other sour- 
 ces, constitutes the sole public aliment of the poor, 
 in the great majority of our Scottish parishes. 
 There were only, however, a small number who 
 found their way to the Town Hospital, without 
 taking their middle passage to it by the Kirk-Ses- 
 sion ; so that the main host of that pauperism which 
 made good its entry on the compulsory fund, came 
 not directly and at once from the population, but 
 through those parochial bodies of administration 
 for the voluntary fund, whose cases, as they either 
 multiplied in number, or became more aggravated 
 in kind, were transferred from their own rolls to 
 those of this other institution. This transference 
 took place when the largest sum awarded by the 
 Session was deemed not sufficient for the pauper, 
 who, as he became older, and more necessitous, 
 was recommended for admittance on their ampler 
 fund, to the weekly committee of the Town Hos- 
 pital. So that each Session might have been regard- 
 ed as having two doors one of them a door of 
 admittance from the population who stand at the 
 margin of pauperism ; and another of them, a door 
 of egress to the Town Hospital, through which the 
 occupiers of the outer court made their way to the 
 inner temple. The Sessions, in fact, were the 
 feeders or conductors by which the Town Hospital 
 received its pauperism, that after lingering a while 
 on this path of conveyance, was impelled onward 
 to the farther extremity, and was at length thrust
 
 27 
 
 into the bosom of the wealthier institution, by 
 the pressure that constantly accumulated behind 
 it."* 
 
 Now, the compulsory pauperism of Glasgow, 
 under this old style of it, just trebled its expenses 
 in fifteen years. In 1803, the assessment for the 
 poor, amounted to above three thousand pounds ; 
 in 1818, it approached to twelve thousand pounds, 
 which added to the collections, made up about one 
 half the expenditure of Manchester. We were 
 thus in sure and rapid career towards the corrupt 
 and extravagant system of England and after the 
 attentive observation of three years, there was no- 
 thing of which I felt more intuitively certain, than 
 that under the then existing economy of a general 
 fund, and a general management, the case was ut- 
 terly irremediable. 
 
 The evils of such a system are these. The more 
 that you generalize the administration for the poor, 
 the more does it stand before the eye of the popu- 
 lation in the imposing characters of power and of 
 magnitude; and the delusive confidence which they 
 are thus led to place in its resources, is one of the 
 main feeders of pauperism. And, again, the more 
 also, in this way, do you widen the distance between 
 
 * This Extract is from No. XL of a periodical work entitled, " The 
 Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns," and from which the reader 
 will gather a far ampler demonstration of the evils attendant on the old sys- 
 tem, than could possibly have been given in the course of an address to the 
 General Assembly.
 
 28 
 
 the dispensers and the recipients of charity, adding 
 thereby to the helplessness of the former, and giving 
 far more advantageous scope and license to the 
 dexterity of the latter and on this second principle, 
 too, do you behold another and most copious feeder 
 of pauperism. Or, if to escape the evil here, you 
 have separate administrations, but all hanging on a 
 common fund, then you relax the care and vigilance 
 of the subordinate managers in the concern for 
 never is any business so well economised, when 
 you can draw indefinitely for the expenses of it 
 out a large and general reservoir, as when its own 
 peculiar charges must be defrayed out of its own pe- 
 culiar resources. It was on these most obvious con- 
 siderations, as sound, we trust, as they are simple, 
 that I longed and laboured with all my might for the 
 dissolution of all general funds, and general juris- 
 dictions in city pauperism ; thoroughly persuaded, 
 that with a very humble fraction of the old ex- 
 penditure, the same thing could be better done 
 under the economy of local and independent man- 
 agements, that, when once public charity stood 
 divested of the glare and magnificence which had 
 been thrown over it by the one stately institution ; 
 and broken down into separate and sessional admini- 
 strations, it shrunk to the popular eye within the 
 humble dimensions of a parish economy ; and each 
 distinct eldership had to labour closely and exclu- 
 sively among their own people, with a fund of 
 which they knew the limits, and, at the same time,
 
 29 
 
 had the independent disposal why, under this new 
 arrangement, which you will perceive to be in most 
 entire accordancy with all the characteristics of 
 Scottish pauperism, I did most surely and most 
 sanguinely anticipate, that, in a very few years, 
 we should get rid of the assessment altogether, 
 and be conclusively delivered of an evil that has 
 not only distempered the whole social economy of 
 England, but might soon, amongst ourselves, have 
 been the vitiating fountain of many moral and 
 many political disorders. 
 
 With such views and principles as these, I held 
 it to be indeed a most providential opening, when 
 the new parish of St. John's, to which the Magis- 
 trates and Council, did me the honour of grant- 
 ing the presentation, was erected in Glasgow 
 and not the less so, that it comprehended so large 
 a population of operatives, as to constitute it one of 
 the poorest and most plebeian of our city districts. 
 They carried, I believe, in this appointment, a 
 prospective regard, as well as myself, to the estab- 
 lishment of a reform on the methods of our exist- 
 ing pauperism but to prove how legally and con- 
 stitutionally they went to work, they first, in the 
 Deed of Erection, by the Lords of Session, acting 
 as Commissioners of Teinds, obtained from them 
 a clause, relating to the management of the poor, 
 which fully authorised them to assign an inde- 
 pendent management to the Kirk-Session of St. 
 John's*
 
 30 
 
 It was after my appointment to the parish of 
 St. John's, that I wrote the following letter to the 
 Lord Provost, on the subject of its pauperism : 
 
 Glasgow, Aug. 3d, 1819. 
 " MY LORD, 
 
 " When I received the intimation of 
 my appointment as Minister of St. John's, it gave 
 me sincere pleasure to be informed at the same 
 time, that a letter written by myself to Mr. Ewing, 
 was read to the Magistrates and Council previous 
 to my election, as it gave me the flattering assur- 
 ance, that the leading objects adverted to, in that 
 letter, met with the approbation of the Honour- 
 able Body over which your Lordship presides. 
 
 " In that letter I adverted to the wish I had long 
 entertained, and which is publicly enough known 
 by other channels, for a separate and independent 
 management on the part of my Session, of the fund 
 raised by collections at the Church door, and with 
 which fund, I propose to take the management of 
 all the existing Sessional poor within our bounds, 
 and so to meet the new applications for relief, as 
 never to add to the general burden of the City 
 by the ordinary poor of the parish of St. John's. 
 
 " And I here beg it to be distinctly understood, 
 that I do not consider the revenue of the Kirk-Ses- 
 sion, to be at all applicable to those extraordinary 
 cases, which are produced by any sudden and un-
 
 31 
 
 looked-for depression, in the state of our manu- 
 factures. Nor, if ever there shall be a call for 
 pecuniary aid on this particular ground, do I un- 
 dertake to provide for it out of our ordinary means, 
 but will either meet it by a parochial subscription, 
 or by taking a fuH share of any such general mea- 
 sure, as may be thought expedient under such an 
 emergency. 
 
 " Your Lordship will not fail to observe, that if 
 the new cases of ordinary pauperism, accumulate 
 upon us in the rate at which they have done for- 
 merly, they would soon overtake our present col- 
 lections. And yet my confidence in a successful 
 result, is not at all founded on the expected mag- 
 nitude of my future collections, but upon the care 
 and attention with which the distribution of the 
 fund will be conducted, a care and an attention, 
 which I despair of ever being able to stimulate ef- 
 fectually, till I obtain an arrangement, by which 
 my Session shall be left to square its own separate 
 expenditure, by its own separate and peculiar re- 
 sources. 
 
 " At the same time, I can also, with such an 
 arrangement, stimulate more effectually than be- 
 fore, the liberality of my congregation ; and with 
 this twofold advantage I am hopeful, not merely 
 of being able to overtake the whole pauperism of 
 St. John's, but, of leaving a large surplus appli- 
 cable to other objects, connected with the best in- 
 terests of the population in that district of the city.
 
 32 . 
 
 " What I propose to do with the surplus, is, to 
 apply it as we are able, to the erection and en- 
 dowment of Parochial Schools, for the purpose of 
 meeting our people, not with gratuitous education, 
 but with good education, on the same terms at 
 which it is had in country parishes. 
 
 " My reason for troubling your Lordship with 
 this intimation, is, that I require the sanction of 
 the heritors of the parish, ere I can allocate any 
 part of the sum raised by collections in this way. 
 Without this sanction, I shall make no attempt to 
 stimulate the liberality of my congregation, beyond 
 what is barely necessary for the expenses of pau- 
 perism. With this sanction, I shall have the best 
 of all arguments, by which to stimulate the liber- 
 ality of my hearers and the care of my distributers, 
 and (most important of all) the zealous co-opera- 
 tion even of the poorest among my people, who 
 will easily be persuaded, to observe a moderation 
 in their demands, when they find it stands associa- 
 ted with a cause so generally dear to them, as the 
 education of their families. 
 
 " There is another object, which I shall not 
 press immediately, but which your Lordship will 
 perceive to be as necessary for the protection 
 of the other parishes of Glasgow as of my own. 
 And that is, that the law of residence shall take 
 effect, between my parish and the other parishes 
 of the city. I am quite willing that every other 
 parish shall have protection by this law, from the
 
 33 
 
 ingress of my poor, in return for the protection of 
 my parish, from the ingress of theirs. It is prac- 
 tically the simplest of all things, to put this into 
 operation from the very outset. But I mention it 
 now, chiefly with a view to be enabled to remind 
 your Lordship, when it comes to be applied for 
 afterwards, that it is not because of any unlocked 
 for embarrassment, that I make the application, 
 but in pursuance of a right and necessary object, 
 which even now, I have in full contemplation. 
 
 "I shall only conclude with assuring your Lord- 
 ship, that nothing will give me greater pleasure, 
 than to transmit, from time to time, the state of 
 our progress in the parish of St. John's, respect- 
 ing all the objects alluded to in this communica- 
 tion ; and that I hold myself subject to the same 
 inspection and control from you, as the heritors 
 of my parish, which the law assigns to the heritors 
 of other parishes* 
 
 " A Deed of consent and approbation, relative 
 to the various points that have now been submit- 
 ted through your Lordship, to the Magistrates and 
 Council, will very much oblige, 
 
 My Lord, 
 Your Lordship's most obliged and obedient Servant, 
 
 (Signed,) THOMAS CHALMERS."
 
 34 
 
 Now it is the reply to this letter, of consent and 
 approbation on the part of the Magistrates and 
 Council of Glasgow, which I have all along acted 
 upon, with the feeling of its being a full constitu- 
 tional warrant for doing all that I have done. 
 
 But here I must introduce to the notice of the 
 venerable Court, another Body, designated by the 
 name of the General Session, and composed of all 
 the members of all the eight Kirk-Sessions in the 
 city of Glasgow. The habit was to deposit all the 
 collections at the eight respective churches, with 
 the Treasurer of this Corporation, whence it ema- 
 nated back again as from a fountain-head, on the 
 existing parishes. But, when the additional parish 
 of St. John's was formed, and under the authority 
 of its peculiar clause for the poor, in the Deed of 
 Erection, the Magistrates, acting as heritors, au- 
 thorised the minister thereof, to take upon himself 
 the peculiar management of his own pauperism, 
 did certain members of the General Session inter- 
 pose, and laying claim to the same jurisdiction over 
 the new parish, that they had all along exercised 
 over the old ones, the question was stirred in a full 
 assembly ; and the result was, that they formally 
 divested themselves of all authority over the ad- 
 ministration of the money weekly collected at the 
 church doors, in favour of a general body of man- 
 agement, into whose hands they were willing to 
 resign all their wonted power of superintendence 
 and control.
 
 35 
 
 But this is not the final decision of the General 
 Session. The matter was again taken up about a 
 year afterwards. And by their very last deliver- 
 ance on the topic, they abandon the recommenda- 
 tion of a general fund, and again finally denude 
 themselves of all authority, in favour of that very 
 system of distinct parochial administrations, which 
 is all that we contend for.* 
 
 By this time, I trust, you will now recognise the 
 perfect legitimacy of this whole operation that, 
 more especially, it is not a lawless adventure, ta- 
 ken up gratuitously and at random, but with full 
 approbation of all the authorities concerned that, 
 the parish from its birth was destined to the very 
 independence for which it now has to struggle and 
 that nothing has been done with its church, nor 
 proposed for its chapel, which is not the fair and 
 natural development of that germ that the Hon- 
 ourable the Commissioners of Teinds deposited 
 with their own hands among the earliest rudiments 
 of its formation. To talk of me as having overleaped 
 
 * The clause, in the Deed of Erection, relative to the poor of St John's 
 the Deed of authority to the Kirk-Session thereof, for an independent man- 
 agement of their own poor both the Deeds of resignation by the General 
 Session, together with certain recent extracts from the minutes of that Bo- 
 dy, in proof that they now held themselves stript of all authority over the 
 Kirk-Sessions of the city these were fully read out in the hearing of the 
 General Assembly. A complete account of the whole transaction, down, 
 at least, to the original settlement of matters for the parish of St. John's, is 
 to be met with in Mr. Cleland's Work on the " Public Institutions of Glas- 
 gow," from p. 20G to 216.
 
 36 
 
 all the fences of legality, is an affirmation put to 
 the blush by the narrative that I now have submitted 
 to you and from which it is most abundantly man- 
 ifest, that I have all along acted on an original im- 
 pulse, issuing from the highest fountain-head of 
 law that, in every step of the process I have had 
 an approving magistracy to go along with me and 
 even now, when forced out to battle against this in- 
 vasion on my parochial birthright, I am only fight- 
 ing by their side, And as to the General Session 
 of Glasgow, the only high place from which the 
 frown of hostility was ever known to descend up- 
 on our enterprise such, at length, has been the 
 deference they have rendered us, that not only to 
 let us pass have they, by an act of civility, bowed 
 themselves even unto the ground but profounder 
 homage still, have they, by an act of suicide, laid 
 their authority and their honours in the bottom of 
 a self-consigned grave. Figure our astonishment 
 then, when from this deep receptacle we heard 
 the spectre's hollow voice, and saw his cold and 
 withering look at us ; when a cry from the ashes 
 of the dead offered to arrest our progress or more 
 appalling still, when from that domain of silence 
 and of terror, there issued forth an avenging 
 knighthood, with fell and uplifted arm, to inflict 
 upon us their blow of annihilation. 
 
 The venerable Assembly is not merely a Court to 
 be addressed and reasoned with on the principles 
 of law but we are quite sure, that you will not
 
 turn to us a deaf and listless ear, when we further 
 offer to address you on the high interests of patrio- 
 tism. We should like to obtain for our present 
 treatment of pauperism, the high sanction of your 
 most rightful and revered authority and for this 
 purpose, suffer us now to plead in behalf of the 
 obnoxious article in our constitution for a chapel, 
 the unquestionable good that is secured by it. 
 
 And here let me beg most earnestly, that you will 
 give two distinct places in your understanding, to 
 two things which are really distinct and distinguish- 
 able from each other and by the mingling of 
 which into one confused mass of argument, a most 
 obstinate and hitherto impracticable delusion has 
 gotten its immoveable hold on the judgment of all 
 my opponents in Glasgow so that foiled again 
 and again in my attempts for the dispersing of it, 
 I have ceased very much to talk of pauperism 
 choosing rather quietly to do, than to lift up my 
 voice in a wilderness. The two things which I 
 most feelingly implore you to keep apart in your 
 thoughts the one from the other, is the pauperism 
 that has already been made, in any parish, under 
 the old system ; and the pauperism that is yet to 
 make under the new, on the event of its being a- 
 dopted. It is quite obvious, that in a few years, 
 death will sweep away the now accumulated pau- 
 perism and the question, therefore, as to the 
 power of a new method in at length reducing this 
 sore evil, or, perhaps, extinguishing it altogether,
 
 38 
 
 depends simply upon its fitness to meet the demands 
 and to restrain the admissions of the new pauperism. 
 I am for no act of violence done to any of the ex- 
 isting cases, no sudden or forcible reduction upon 
 their comforts but would rather, for the sake of 
 gradualising the operation, and making a perfectly 
 smooth and even-going process of it, see every now 
 enrolled pauper to his grave, in the full sufficiency 
 of all his wonted allowances. The jet of the op- 
 eration, lies in the treatment and disposal of the 
 new applicants. It may require a great fund to 
 maintain the old pauperism ; but as it dies away, the 
 expense of it is in constant diminution, and by the 
 sure and speedy operation of mortality, will, at 
 length, vanish altogether. But, if along with this 
 process on the old pauperism, it should be found 
 that with a very small fund one can meet and satis- 
 fy, or, at least, do justice to all the new applications, 
 then after the last vestiges of the. old system have 
 all melted away, will it be succeeded by a humble 
 and moderate economy, then standing upon its 
 ruins. 
 
 Now the fund by assessments is just what I should 
 look to for upholding the pauperism that is already 
 formed, and the fund by collections the one where- 
 with I should undertake all the new applications 
 letting the assessments cease on the moment that 
 the old pauperism has disappeared j and if the col- 
 lections shall be found adequate to all the new 
 cases, accomplishing in towns the restoration of a
 
 39 
 
 strictly Scottish pauperism, in the place of that 
 by which our sister kingdom has been so distressed 
 and so demoralized. 
 
 Thus then it is that I have all along met, though 
 I have not been able as yet to overbear, the cease- 
 less cry, that my plan is not imitable, because of the 
 unexampled magnitude of my collections. My 
 collection consists of two parts that which is giv- 
 en by the day congregation, ' assembled from all 
 quarters of the city, and justly chargeable, I do 
 admit, with the imputation of magnitude, amount- 
 ing, as it does, to about j450 and that which 
 is given by the evening congregation, distinct from 
 the former, as being opened primarily for the ac- 
 commodation of parishioners, whose humble half- 
 pence afford me a yearly sum of eSO. Now, let 
 it be well and pointedly noticed, that it is with 
 this evening collection, and it alone, that I per- 
 form the essential step in the solution of this much 
 perplexed and agitated problem. The day collec- 
 tion that has been so pertinaciously, and one would 
 almost say, reproachfully urged, against me, has no- 
 thing to do with it. I allocate it to the support of 
 the old pauperism, and have now relieved the fund 
 by assessment of the whole weight of those cases 
 that ever came upon it from the parish of St. 
 John's. In so doing, I have only anticipated, by 
 a few years, the operation of death. That day 
 collection, of which I have often been tempted to 
 wish that it were out of the way altogether, as it
 
 40 
 
 has only served to darken and embarrass a specta- 
 cle, that might else have lighted up an instanta- 
 neous conviction in the minds of observers, is but 
 a temporary phenomenon, and is only applied to the 
 temporary purpose of relieving, by a few years 
 sooner, that compulsory fund, which soon by the 
 hand of death would have been relieved at any 
 rate. But it is to the power of the evening collec- 
 tion, that we have t6 look for all that is interesting, 
 or for all that is capable of wide and enduring ap- 
 plication. It is at the place of concourse be- 
 tween the small parochial fund gathered from the 
 parochial congregation on the one hand, and the 
 new applicants from the parish that apply for pa- 
 rochial aid upon the other it is there where the 
 controversy is to be decided ; and it is from the 
 humble and unnoticed history of this administra- 
 tion, that we obtain the only satisfactory light on 
 the question of pauperism. And, indeed, most sat- 
 isfying it has been. For two years and a half we 
 have, with the evening collection alone, rightly 
 met all the new cases, and rightly provided for 
 them, and though its annual amount be 80 only, 
 yet we have a surplus on hand of 65 ; and judging 
 of the future from the past, and after having tra- 
 versed the dreariest and most distressful period that 
 ever occurred in the history of Glasgow, we all 
 feel most proudly confident, that ere the new pau- 
 perism shall have overtaken the evening collection, 
 the old pauperism shall all have disappeared or,
 
 41 
 
 in other words, that the whole public charity of 
 our plebeian district, shall be defrayed, to the last 
 shilling of it, by plebeian offerings. 
 
 It might serve, perhaps, to simplify this exhibi- 
 tion, and to give you a more lucid and satisfying 
 view of all that is essential in this process, just to 
 suppose that there had never been any such day 
 congregation as now attend us ; and that the even- 
 ing congregation, occupying their places, did, out 
 of the same scanty offerings which they now give, 
 only afford me the one collection of eighty pounds 
 a-year. Instead of my present complex revenue, let 
 it be imagined, for a moment, that I, just like the 
 rest of my brethren. in the city, had but one au- 
 dience and one collection, but inferior to them all, 
 had only ^80 a-year, as the whole yearly amount 
 of the money gathered at my church door. This 
 would not have deterred me from entering upon 
 the new system. Its only effect would have been 
 that I could not, in such circumstances, undertake 
 to relieve the assessment fund of any of that pau- 
 perism which, at present, lies upon it but I would 
 have had no hesitation in committing myself to the 
 necessity of providing for all the new cases, and 
 leaving the compulsory fund to be gradually ligh- 
 tened of its whole burden, by the operation of 
 death. This is precisely what we are now doing 
 with our evening fund, and so with no other revenue 
 than just a collection, equal to my humble paro- 
 chial offerings, might any parish in the city be 
 eventually cleared of all its compulsory pauperism.
 
 The plan, in all its essential respects, is imitable, 
 and accordingly has been imitated first, by the 
 Outer Kirk parish, under Mr. Marshall, and lat- 
 terly by three more. The only difference between 
 them and me is merely circumstantial. They give 
 no such relief to the assessment fund as I am now 
 doing, but this distinction is altogether of a tem- 
 porary nature; for death will soon clear away 
 all our old assessment cases, and leave, I have 
 no doubt, in a few years, the one-half of Glas- 
 gow wholly delivered of its compulsory pau- 
 perism.* 
 
 It is curious to mark the gradation that obtains 
 in the confidence of our various clergy, respecting 
 the efficacy of what has been called the new sys- 
 tem. First, certain of them, who have not adopted 
 it, are quite sure that it is altogether a visionary 
 speculation. Secondly, two of them, who have 
 wealthy parishes at the fashionable end of the 
 city, and who have adopted it, speak of it merely 
 as an experiment that is worthy of a fair chance, 
 but are not at all sanguine as to the result of it. 
 Thirdly, one, who has indisputably the poorest 
 and most profligate district of Glasgow assigned 
 to him, is quite confident of being able at length 
 to carry it through, without any recourse upon 
 the assessment. Fourthly, one, who was the first 
 
 * At this point in the delivery of the Address, were read to the General 
 Assembly extracts of letters, from certain of the Clergy of Glasgow, testify- 
 ing the degrees of success wherewith they had hitherto conducted the man- 
 agement of their poor, independently of the assessments.
 
 43 
 
 after St. John's to strike off from the General 
 Session, and set up a separate administration of 
 his own, has, in his parish, which is also a ple- 
 beian one, been going on most triumphantly. 
 And, lastly, as if to mark that the nearer you 
 approach the actual territory on which lie the 
 materials of the question, the more consistent 
 and clear is the testimony of observers, I can 
 vouch, both for myself and for all who are engaged 
 with me, that we have ever found pauperism to 
 be frightful only when seen through the medium of 
 distance, or by the alarmed eye of him who 
 refuses to grapple with it that, like every other 
 bugbear, it shrinks on approaching it into small 
 and manageable dimensions that it vanishes 
 almost into nothing before the touch of personal 
 intercourse that the habit of our labouring classes 
 can be made almost instantly to coalesce with the 
 kindlier intercourse, but, at the same time, the 
 humbler and homelier allowances of a sessional 
 administration or, in one word, that in the worst 
 of places, and the worst of times, the simple and 
 parochial economy of our beloved land, is the best 
 apparatus that can be raised for the substantial 
 well-being of the poorest of her children. 
 
 You will now understand the tenderness that I 
 feel about this one article in our constitution for a 
 Chapel of Ease. When once it is raised, the 
 evening congregation will be disbanded, and it is 
 presumed, that, chiefly out of their scattered frag- 
 ments, an ordinary day congregation in the chapel
 
 will be formed a chapel which may, at any time, 
 by the will of our Magistrates, be transformed in- 
 to a church, with its territorial district into a 
 parish. At all events, its collection comes in 
 place of that evening collection wherewith, as I 
 have already explained to you, I am now achiev- 
 ing all that is essential in the problem of pauper- 
 ism. With my present day collection, I am po- 
 sitively doing nothing but clearing away the 
 rubbish of the old system. It is with the paro- 
 chial collection now offered to us in the evening at 
 church, and then to be offered through the day at 
 the proposed chapel it is with it, and with it alone, 
 that I am building up my experimental demonstra- 
 tion of the specific virtue which lies in the old and 
 unadulterated methods of our Scottish pauperism. 
 Touch this collection then, and you touch the apple 
 of mine eye. Absorb it in a general fund, and place 
 it under a general management, and you wrest from 
 my hand the only instrument I have for bringing 
 about this great civic and economical reformation. 
 What I want is, that this humble revenue, drawn from 
 parishioners alone, and the humble administration 
 of it, confined by a local and independent econo- 
 my to parishioners alone, shall stand out in separate 
 and distinct exhibition altogether, from the glare, 
 and the tumult, and the bustling attendance, and the 
 wealthy offerings of the general congregation. I 
 want thus to disencumber the operation from all 
 that has misled the popular eye, and thrown a dis-
 
 45 
 
 guise over the real powers and principles of its in- 
 ternal mechanism. It will positively be beyond the 
 endurance of human nerves, if, at this most critical 
 and momentous of all turning points, that weekly 
 offering shall be seized upon, wherewith, apart from 
 all the might and magnificence that have been 
 charged on the crowded church, and the high- 
 sounding popularity, there maybe raised a spectacle 
 which, in the eye of truth and calm intelligence, is 
 worthier than it all even the modest and belfried 
 edifice, where the plain services of Christianity are 
 held in the midst of a plain and parochial congre- 
 gation ; and the adequacy of whose humble but 
 willing contributions, to all the urgencies of the 
 large manufacturing district wherewith they are 
 associated, shall be a monument to the end of time, 
 both of the wisdom and the sufficiency of our own 
 original, and sound, and Scottish pauperism. 
 
 And you must be aware, that the General As- 
 sembly cannot of itself legislate on pauperism 
 that this is a question which affects the civil rights 
 and interests of those who are concerned in it and 
 that if there be any thing wrong or defective in 
 the constitution of a parish, relative to the mat- 
 ters of its poor, this must be submitted to the re- 
 vision of another tribunal, ere the affair can be 
 fully and finally adjusted. 
 
 Now suppose for a moment, that there is some- 
 thing civilly and constitutionally wrong in our pre- 
 sent operations. We have no wish whatever to 
 stand out against the awards of law and at all
 
 46 
 
 times subject to its authority, we offer the entire 
 and unconditional surrender of our sessional re- 
 venue into its hands. The General Assembly 
 does not need to embarrass itself with this ques- 
 tion, and all, in the mean time, that we supplicate 
 at your hands is, that the collections at the chapel 
 shall just be under the same disposal, and be applied 
 generally to the same purpose, with the collections 
 at the church that as now the one is deposited 
 with the Treasurer of our Kirk-Session, so the 
 other shall be deposited with him also, and be ex- 
 pended at our discretion, subject of course to the 
 control and inspection of the heritors, for behoof 
 of our parish. Should the competent court after- 
 wards assign a different application from this to the 
 church offerings, let the chapel offerings be made 
 to follow in the same direction and with the en- 
 actment of some such clause, which will be abun- 
 dantly satisfying to us, this venerable court will 
 both maintain that delicate and dignified reserve 
 which has ever characterised its proceedings, when 
 it felt itself bordering on the department of civil 
 law ; and, at the same time, will avoid the mon- 
 strous anomaly of enacting one destination for the 
 poors money of a parish church, and another des- 
 tination for the poors money of a chapel belong- 
 ing simply and exclusively to that parish. 
 
 To enact that the chapel collection shall go into 
 a general fund, would be enacting for the city of 
 Glasgow another constitution for its pauperism, 
 than that which it at present enjoys. It would be
 
 47 
 
 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 
 sitting in legislative authority over the civil and 
 municipal arrangements of its Burghs. The thing 
 is utterly incompetent and I am persuaded of this 
 venerable Body, that it will resist any attempt 
 which may be made to enlist it upon the side, or to 
 engage it in the squabbles of a partizanship, that is 
 altogether local and temporary and, further, I am 
 quite sure, that it will never lend itself to such an 
 outrageous act of injustice towards the parish of 
 St. John's, which still continues to pay its full share 
 to the assessment fund, without drawing a single 
 shilling out of it to the support- of its families, as 
 to thwart and overbear us in our attempts to im- 
 prove our own condition, by means that are strictly 
 constitutional, and out of capabilities which lie 
 completely within ourselves. 
 
 And this is a subject on which I feel hopeful, 
 that I shall not merely carry the convictions, but 
 also propitiate the kindness of the Church of Scot- 
 land. For what is it after all that we are doing ? 
 Are we putting forth the sacrilegious hand of an 
 innovator on the fabric of your venerable consti- 
 tution ? Any innovation of ours is but directed 
 against the corruption of former innovators it is 
 to relieve the venerable pile of all those meretri- 
 cious additions wherewith it has been overborne in 
 later days and clearing away that modern disguise 
 which had hidden from the public eye its brow of 
 deep and revered antiquity, it is to cause the pure, 
 the patriarchal economy of the olden time, come
 
 48 
 
 forth again in the might of its wonted ascendancy 
 over all the habits of all the population. And 
 well may I speak of my bosom's pride in the estab- 
 lishment to which I belong and well may I claim 
 to be numbered among the most affectionate of her 
 children, when I tell that the fondest of my earth- 
 ly ambitions, is to demonstrate the power, yet the 
 peacefulness of her triumphs and while the pro- 
 foundest homage of the Christian minister is due 
 to our venerable mother, because of the spiritual 
 authority wherewith she is invested, to overawe 
 and to repress the profligacy of our land, well may 
 it be reckoned the next in worth and in dignity of 
 her honours, that before the rebuke not of her se- 
 verity, but of her persuasive kindness, she can 
 chase away pauperism from all its dwelling-places. 
 It is indeed a noble testimony to the ancients, and 
 the counsellors who have gone before us, that, in 
 the practical wisdom of our Scottish Kirk, there lies 
 deposited a secret, which has baffled the whole 
 political economy of our English Parliament and 
 that while the Legislature of our empire are now 
 standing helpless and aghast at the sight of that sore 
 leprosy which hath spread itself over their'ten thou- 
 sand parishes, the country in which we live, healthful 
 and strong, in the yet unbroken habits of her pea- 
 santry, might, by the pure force of her moral and 
 religious institutions, have kept herself untainted 
 altogether, and is still able to retrace her footsteps, 
 and to shake the pestilence away from all her bor- 
 ders.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 No. L 
 
 NOTE 1. P. 10. L. 12. It is fair to mention here, that 
 the vacant sittings of St. John's Church are now let on the 
 understanding of a preference for parishioners. But it is 
 obvious that this must tell very gradually on the congrega- 
 tion, of whom, meanwhile, the vast majority are extra-paro- 
 chial. 
 
 NOTE 2. P. 11. L. 16. We here proceed on the sup- 
 position, of five-eighths of the inhabitants of a city parish 
 being the number that ought to be in church leaving 
 three-eighths at home, and so estimating the whole popula- 
 tion who are provided for, by adding three-fifths to the num- 
 ber of sittings that are actually taken or occupied. 
 
 NOTE 3. P. 14. L. 8. It is one of the most valuable 
 properties of wise legislation, to reach its object with as little 
 violence as possible done to the feelings of individuals; and 
 with as little disturbance as possible inflicted on the existing 
 order of things. 
 
 For the purpose of making this out, it will often wait a 
 gradual process, rather than carry per saltum, or at once, the 
 desired reformation. We know not a greater improvement 
 
 G
 
 50 
 
 in the ecclesiastical state of cities, than the substitution of 
 local, instead of general congregations, in all the parish 
 churches and this might be arrived at immediately, by the 
 dismissal of all extra-parochial sitters, and the offer of their 
 places to parishioners. But this were a cruel disruption on 
 the habits and attachments that have been already formed 
 by the people of our existing generation and, therefore, it 
 were far better that the thing should only be arrived at ulti- 
 mately, as the fruit of an invariable regulation, whereby a 
 preference for the vacancies should be held out to parishion- 
 ers, as they occurred from year to year, by removals or by 
 deaths. In this way no violence is done to any man alive. 
 The change comes round smoothly and progressively. We 
 find that such vacancies do take place, at the rate of nearly 
 a hundred annually, in a congregation of sixteen hundred. 
 This is a very comfortable rate, at which a minister is per- 
 mitted to extend his interest and connection among the 
 families of his parish and he does well, if, in the course 
 of a lengthened incumbency, he bequeaths to his successor 
 an entirely parochial congregation. 
 
 But again, on the same principle, and to save from all 
 injury the feelings of individuals, will legislation often be sa- 
 tisfied with having reached its object in the main, though 
 not in full and absolute entireness. For the sake of this, 
 it will often put up with a small fractional deduction from the 
 amount of good that is proposed and so, in order that its 
 processes shall go on smoothly, will it make a partial sacri- 
 fice of its own views, as well, in the extent of reformation 
 aimed at, as in the time of its accomplishment. It is for 
 this reason, that, while by one article in the constitution of 
 our chapel, we hold out a preference for the vacant sittings 
 to the residenters within its district ; we, by another article, 
 provide that these sittings shall not be forfeited by the re- 
 moval of those who occupy them to some other quarter of 
 the town or neighbourhood, if they have a wish to retain 
 jhem. It is well that the connection has been formed at
 
 51 
 
 first, in virtue of residence within the privileged territory- 
 but, should a strong attachment to the ministrations of the 
 chapel be felt in consequence, it were hard, we think, on a 
 mere change of residence, that the connexion in question should, 
 therefore, be forcibly dissolved. It is true that, in this way, 
 an exclusively local congregation can never be arrived at 
 but yet one so mainly and substantially local, as without vio- 
 lence to any, will secure to the clergyman a comfort and an 
 efficacy in his duties, of which hitherto, in our large towns, 
 there has been little or no experience. 
 
 The truth is, that both the fluctuation of city household- 
 ers, and the effect of this fluctuation in defeating the great 
 object of a parochial audience upon the Sabbath, have been 
 greatly over-rated. We are aware that some of our Elders, 
 whose districts have a population of about three hundred, 
 can allege a change of families, at particular terms, to the 
 extent of more than a fifth part of the whole. But many of 
 these removals are to contiguous streets, which are still 
 within the limits of the parish and besides, such a rate of 
 fluctuation is only partial so that in the whole parish, there 
 is not certainly a greater emigration on any single year, 
 than of one tenth of the whole population. 
 
 But, far the most effective solution of this difficulty lies 
 in the consideration, that, of this tenth who leave the parish 
 in one year, the greater part consists of those who first en- 
 tered the parish only on the year before. We have nothing 
 to apprehend like the successive liftings of the separate 
 tenths of the population on each distinct term so as, in tea 
 years, to lose all the old, and stock the parish with an entire 
 set of new and strange families. The real state of the mat- 
 ter is, that a certain number of families, in everv term, are 
 constantly upon the wing, and alternate, almost every year, from 
 one part of the city to another; so as to cause an unceasing 
 vibratory movement over the heads of a stable and permanent 
 population. It is of these last that the church or chapel 
 eongregation would, in the main, be ultimately formed and
 
 with them, the great principle of territorial cultivation would be 
 felt in the full power of its kindly and beneficent influences 
 and the week-day attention of the minister to these, will be 
 found of happiest effect, in reclaiming their sabbath atten- 
 dance upon him. Under such an arrangement, the ascen- 
 dency of all our established clergy in towns would be incon- 
 ceivably strengthened; and a far closer and kindlier relation- 
 ship would, from that moment, ensue between them and their 
 respective parishes : insomuch that, with all the deductions 
 which it might be proper to make, we are not aware of any 
 human device by which the ecclesiastical system of our cities 
 would be more effectually renovated, than the simple enact- 
 ment of that rule of parochial seat-letting which we have 
 ventured to recommend. 
 
 The neglect of this arrangement has inflicted a sore para- 
 lysis on the establishment in cities. It has slackened the re- 
 lationship between each clergyman and his parish. It has 
 taken the whole benefit of locality away from him; and 
 brought him down, in respect of moral and Christian influ- 
 ence over the families, to the precise level of the dissenting 
 ministers. The assignation of a territorial district to each 
 chapel, with a rule of preference for the seats to all who live 
 in it, we hold of mighty importance to all the new erections 
 that are going forward. In this way they will become the 
 instruments of a distinct reclaiming process on the outfield 
 population that has been assigned to them. Otherwise, this 
 population might still abide in a state of unmoved heathenism; 
 and the chapel congregation, instead of being formed or re- 
 cruited out of their families, will be drawn very much at the 
 expense of previous congregations, from that class of the 
 community whose habits of church-going are not only already 
 established, but may be said to have been refined into fasti- 
 diousness; to whom change is luxury, and who, ever agog on 
 the impulse of novelty, are, in fact, the deadliest adversaries 
 of that territorial system, wherein the great strength of our 
 establishment lies. For these too, there may always be some
 
 53 
 
 room, even after the claims of locality have been fully recog- 
 nized; for though the preference be to parishioners in the 
 first instance, yet in so far as the preference is not taken, the 
 seats may still be held out to the general public. For a 
 fuller exposition of this topic, see No. III. of the Christian 
 and Civic Economy of Large Towns. 
 
 NOTE 4. P. 34. L. 5. It must be confest, that we now 
 give salaries out of the day collection to our four school- 
 masters, to the extent of a hundred pounds a-year; to the 
 great benefit, certainly, of our parish poor, and along with 
 them, of our whole parochial community, whose families 
 are now provided with the best elementary education, at 
 country rates. We have not yet obtained any express sanc- 
 tion from the Magistrates and Council of Glasgow, the sole 
 Heritors of our parish, for such an application of the money 
 gathered at our church-doors. And our only apology for 
 such a freedom is that whereas we have repeatedly announced 
 from the pulpit such a destination to our weekly offerings, if 
 found more than adequate to the pauperism of the parish, 
 and have, in consequence, stimulated the liberality of our 
 congregation we deem it quite legal to apply their contribu- 
 tion to the specific end for which they were solicited. We 
 have no doubt of the legality of this destination on other 
 grounds: but we fondly hope, for reasons which shall be 
 urged presently, that any question on this subject will be 
 superseded by a formal arrangement between the Heritors 
 and Kirk-Session, making it quite competent to raise, from 
 the overplus of the collections, a fund out of which shall 
 emanate, in all time coming, the salaries of our parish school- 
 masters. 
 
 NOTE 5. P. 36. L. 27. We are abundantly sensible 
 that there are occasional passages in the speech, which, how- 
 ever essential in the delivery, for the purpose of gaining a 
 favourable decision, are not essential to the manifestation of
 
 54 
 
 our process, in regard to the management of pauperism, which 
 is the great end of this publication. We allude more parti- 
 cularly to those few sentences which may appear to touch on 
 the borders of personality, and which might certainly have 
 been omitted without disadvantage to the argument. But 
 the truth is, that they have been so distorted, and so aggra- 
 vated in the printed reports of the business of the Assembly, 
 as to make a correct exhibition of these alleged severities 
 necessary, in point of justice, both to the author, and to the 
 subjects of them. 
 
 It can be no impeachment on our adversaries in this argu- 
 ment, that there should be a difference of understanding be- 
 tween them and us, about a matter on which there still exists 
 so wide a diversity of opinion as pauperism ; and it is all in 
 fair and honourable warfare that they should have fought out 
 this difference to the very last. More particularly, do we 
 regard it as a thing of official propriety, that Principal Tay- 
 lor would not quit the cause of an old institution till he had 
 tried every chance for preserving it. He, as minister of the 
 original parish in Glasgow, was entitled to feel a peculiar in- 
 terest in this question ; and while, certainly not more tena- 
 cious than he had a right to be of his own views in the public 
 controversy, we gladly bear him witness, that, in all our pri- 
 vate interviews we have met with nothing but the most per- 
 fect kindness and urbanity at his hands. 
 
 And, while offering this explanation, we cannot refrain 
 from a testimony which we owe to the cordiality and good-will 
 that, with some very rare exceptions, we have ever expe- 
 rienced within the limits of our own parochial community. 
 
 A very few may have been misled in a season of great 
 political delusion and a few more may have mistaken the 
 character and tendency of our endeavours against pauperism 
 and the many may have thus been influenced, under cir- 
 cumstances of peculiar urgency, to something like a public 
 demonstration of their wish for the compulsory provision of 
 England, and of their hostility to that system by which our own
 
 55 
 
 country has been so long, and so happily characterized. But 
 every one may know how easy it is to raise a temporary and 
 artificial ferment throughout every assemblage of human be- 
 ings, so as to call out a conventional exhibition of feeling, 
 altogether diverse from that which meets our regards, when 
 holding converse with families or individuals apart, we find 
 them open to argument, and ready to enter on the fellow- 
 ship of mutual explanations, with all the reason and right 
 feeling of companionable men. 
 
 Jt is not from the warfare of formal meetings and formal 
 manifestoes that we can gather the real character of a popu- 
 lation, or acquire the right wisdom in the management of 
 human nature. These are only to be gotten from that closer 
 and more specific intercourse, which takes place during the 
 treatment of particular cases, and the process of dealing with 
 particular applications; and, often while so engaged, have we 
 been reminded of an observation of Talleyrand's, that there is 
 nothing formidable in the lower orders of society, if our in- 
 tercourse with them Ije only conducted in frankness and ho- 
 nesty. The truth is, that it is upon their sympathies, one 
 with another, that we would mainly devolve the solution of 
 this whole difficulty sympathies which are never wanting 
 when they are not seduced from the exercise of them by the 
 deceitful glare of public and proclaimed charity; and which, 
 when restored to their natural play, amongst neighbours and 
 kinsfolk, by the abolition of pauperism, will be sure to guide 
 us ultimately forward unto a better served and better satisfied 
 parish than before. 
 
 It is impossible, with such convictions as these, not to bear 
 in our heart the utmost respect for the operative classes, and 
 the utmost desire for all that is kind and conciliatory towards 
 them. And sure we are that no feeling and no expression 
 of cordiality towards them are ever thrown away. And it is 
 indeed a strong prudential argument for committing the 
 management of this concern to separate parochial jurisdic- 
 tions, that, whereas, under a more general superintendence,
 
 56 
 
 there must necessarily be an unwieldier multitude to deal 
 with, and a wider distance of misunderstanding and jealousy 
 between the parties so, under a sessional superintendence, 
 the mass is not only broken down into more practicable frag- 
 ments, but the very nearness and personality of the inter- 
 course admits a more copious descent of those regards and 
 courtesies upon humble life, which do away a thousand as- 
 perities from the popular mind, and serve as an oil to lubri- 
 cate and uphold in kindlier movement the whole mechanism 
 of human society. 
 
 NOTE 6. P. 42. L. 1. We trust that enough has been 
 said in the course of the speech, to disprove the very general 
 impression, that the retracing movement, by which the pa- 
 rish of St. John's has been conducted from a state of compul- 
 sory, to a state of gratuitous pauperism, is not imitable in 
 other parishes, because of the fancied magnitude of our re~ 
 sources. It will be seen, that all which can be alleged of 
 extraordinary or unexampled magnitude in our sessional re- 
 venue, goes to no other purpose than the speedier liquida- 
 tion of the old system by assessments a liquidation which 
 has now been accomplished in our parish, and which, but for 
 the admission of new cases on the compulsory fund would, 
 in other parishes, be accomplished in a few years by the 
 operation of death. If the new cases then can all be in- 
 tercepted by the gratuitous fund, as they have hitherto been 
 with us by a very small fund then, there is not a parish in 
 Glasgow, and we shall add, not a city or country parish in 
 Scotland, which has not means within itself, and that lie 
 within reach of the purely ecclesiastical system of our land, 
 for upholding all its pauperism on its weekly church offerings 
 alone. 
 
 But there is another impression against the practicability 
 of our method, than that of the unexampled magnitude of 
 our parochial means and that is, of the unexampled and in- 
 imitable strenuousness of our parochial management. It has
 
 57 
 
 often been alleged against us that out of average and every- 
 day humanity, no such living apparatus can be raised of men 
 embarked upon a cause, where the impulse of novelty, and 
 the ambition of success, and the consciousness of many eyes 
 turned in intense and eager scrutiny towards them, 'have al- 
 together upholden them in a habit of activity and vigilance 
 that cannot be looked for in other parishes. 
 
 Now this, if possible, is a greater and more groundless 
 delusion than the other; and we rejoice that we can quote 
 the testimonies of at least twenty competent and creditable 
 men to its being a mere imagination. Each of the individuals 
 who has been charged with the new pauperism of St. John's 
 can vouch for the perfect facility of his own separate district 
 though the average population of each be from three to 
 four hundred, and some of the gentlemen have had a man- 
 agement of at least eight hundred laid upon them. The 
 truth is, that even in the winter of 18191820, the trouble 
 and time requisite for the business, did not amount to one- 
 half of what was anticipated for the most ordinary seasons- 
 and now that matters have sunk down into a state of quiescence, 
 the office, when compared with what has been fancied or al- 
 leged of it, is in truth the veriest of all sinecures. Many 
 of the agents have, no doubt, a pleasure in holding friendly 
 intercourse with the families but certain it is, that all the 
 work of constraint or necessity, which is laid upon them by 
 the demands of the people, creates no sensible infringement 
 on their own private business. In the office now, there is 
 felt all the comfort of a great emancipation from the harass- 
 ments of the old system where, additionally to the whole la- 
 bour of treating with the population, one had to clear his way 
 through the labyrinth of a complex apparatus; and connected 
 as he was with several bodies of management, had to waste 
 his time in attendance on many meetings, and waste his 
 strength on the fatigue of many controversies. All now is 
 simple, and direct, and unencumbered as in a country parish 
 yet great as the relief is from the parochial and independent 
 character of our present management, by which we stand dis- 
 
 II
 
 58 
 
 embarrassed of all the more general corporations in the place, 
 the most precious effect of the whole management is, that we 
 have thereby been landed in a far more easy and better sa- 
 tisfied population. 
 
 The truth is, that they, and not we, have the merit of 
 resolving this problem. All that is done by the administrators 
 is, to meet civilly, yet intelligently, every application and, 
 in the treatment of it, to give, on the one hand, every possi- 
 ble countenance to the industry of the people themselves, and 
 the kindness of their relatives, or neighbours; and, on the 
 other hand, every possible discountenance to idleness, or im- 
 morality, or the hard-heartedness of kinsfolk. And in this 
 way, each individual application may be more troublesome 
 than under the old system but then, the number of appli- 
 cations is greatly fewer than they were during the currency 
 of its lax and careless administration. There is the forth- 
 putting of a greater strenuousness than before, on the cases 
 that do come forward but the preventive influence of this 
 on the many new cases that are, in consequence, withheld, 
 forms at once the compensation and the reward for this 
 strenuousness. It all resolves itself into the efficacy which 
 lies in a natural treatment of the people, who, when emanci- 
 pated from the delusions of public charity, betake themselves 
 to their own expedients; and find in the shifts, and the sym- 
 pathies, and the numberless resources that do cast up 
 throughout every assemblage of human beings, more than 
 an equivalent for all which has been withdrawn from them. 
 
 So thoroughly, indeed, are we persuaded of the evil of 
 public charity for the relief of indigence, that we should count 
 it a heavy misfortune to a parish, if an annuity was granted 
 to it for the purpose of being expended on this object. We 
 should feel seriously embarrassed, and would deplore it as a 
 great parochial calamity, were it rendered imperative on us 
 to restrict the application of our day-offerings to pauperism 
 alone. We should refuse the importation of any money for 
 this purpose, from the other and the wealthier parishes of 
 Glasgow. Humble as our expenditure on the new pauperism
 
 59 
 
 has been, we find that about one-half of it has been occasion- 
 ed by cases of immorality, and the dissolution of relative 
 ties and should we be doomed to the cruel necessity of re- 
 ceiving a thousand a-year from any quarter whatever, and 
 laying it openly out on the necessities of our population, 
 we should only anticipate therefrom a greater number of 
 exposed infants, and deserted families. 
 
 Still it may appear a mystery to the reader, why a parish 
 should be in better condition with a moderate, than with an 
 ample public expenditure for the relief of indigence; and it 
 may help to bring it down more plainly and familiarly to his 
 conceptions, to come forward with a few historical instances, 
 taken at random, from the management of our own parochial 
 concerns. 
 
 1. The first case that occurs to us, is that of a weaver, 
 who, though he had sixpence a-day as a pension, was certainly 
 put into circumstances of difficulty, when two winters ago, 
 in a season of great depression, the typhus fever made its 
 deadly inroads upon his household. His distress was, in the 
 highest degree, striking and noticeable: and it may, there- 
 fore, look strange that no sessional movement was made to- 
 wards the relief of so afflicted a family. Our confidence was 
 in the sympathies and kind offices of the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood ; and we felt quite assured that any interference of 
 ours might have checked or superseded these to such a de- 
 gree, as would have intercepted more of aid, than is ever 
 granted by the most liberal and wealthiest of all our public in- 
 stitutions. An outcry, however, was raised against us and 
 we felt compelled, for our own vindication, to investigate as far 
 as we could, the amount of supplies that had been rendered, 
 and actually found that it exceeded, at least, ten times the 
 whole sum that would have been allowed, in the given circum- 
 stances, out of the fund raised by assessment. It reconciled 
 us the more to our new system, when given to understand, 
 that the most liberal of all the benefactions was called forth 
 by the simple information, that nothing had been done by any 
 of the legal or parochial charities nor did we meet with any
 
 60 
 
 thing more instructive in the course of these inquiries, than 
 the obvious feeling of each contributor, that all he had given 
 was so very insignificant. And it is just so, that the power 
 of individual benevolence is greatly under-rated. Each is 
 aware how incommensurate his own offering is to the neces- 
 sity in question, and would therefore, desiderate or demand 
 a public administration of relief, else it is feared that nothing 
 adequate has been done. He never thinks of that arithme- 
 tic by which it can be computed, that all the private offerings 
 of himself and others, far outweigh that relief which, had it 
 issued from the exchequer of a session or an almshouse, 
 would have arrested those numerous rills of beneficence that 
 are sure to flow in, upon every case of visible destitution or 
 distress, from the surrounding vicinity. 
 
 2. Our next case is that of an aged person, who, disabled 
 from his ordinary work, made repeated applications for paro- 
 chial relief, which were as repeatedly evaded, on the know- 
 ledge that he had competent and respectable kinsfolk, of 
 whom we felt assured that they only needed a fair and candid 
 representation of the matter and we have no doubt, that 
 they did acquit themselves rightly of ah 1 their natural obliga- 
 tions. \Vas it wrong, we ask, to devolve the application on 
 this quarter and we appeal to the surviving relatives, now 
 that the applicant is in his grave whether they do not look 
 back with a truer satisfaction, than they would otherwise 
 have felt, that a father and an uncle has been borne onward 
 to the termination of his earthly career, in a style of inde- 
 pendence which does honour to all the members of his family? 
 
 3. The next matter that is suggested to our remembrance, 
 is that of an accidental visit to an old woman, and of the in- 
 formation she gave relative to the kindness of her next-door 
 neighbour, in whose presence she told that she had received 
 a dinner from her for every day during the preceding month. 
 Was it wrong to encourage and applaud this liberality; to as- 
 sure the humble donor that she had been doing more for the 
 object of her kindness, than the wealthiest Session of the city 
 would have awarded her; and that were it not for the mutual
 
 61 
 
 kindness of the people among themselves, it were utterly 
 impossible to carry on the management of the poor with 
 any degree of comfort or efficacy ? Is it not right that 
 the people should be taught the importance of their own gen- 
 erosity and does not the free and undisturbed exercise of 
 this virtue add to the amount of parochial happiness, as well 
 as to the amount of parochial morality/ 
 
 4. A mother and daughter, the sole occupiers of a single 
 apartment, were both afflicted with cancer, for which the one 
 had to undergo an operation, while the other was so far gone 
 as to be irrecoverable. A case so impressive as this, required 
 only to be known that it might be met and provided for; and 
 on the first warning of its necessity, a subscription could 
 easily be raised, out of the unforced liberalities of those, who 
 have been attracted from a distance, by the mere report of the 
 circumstance having made its natural progress to their ears. 
 And what then is it that suspends the necessity of such a 
 measure? the exuberant, and as yet untired kindness of 
 those who are near, and whose willing contributions both of 
 food, and of service, and of cordials, have lighted up a moral 
 sunshine in this habitation of distress? Were it right that 
 any legal charity, whatever, should arrest a process so beauti- 
 ful? Were it even right that the interference of the wealthier 
 at a distance, should lay a freezing interdict on the play of 
 those lesser streams, which circulate around the abode of 
 penury and pain? We want not to exonerate the rich from 
 their full share in the burden of this world's philanthropy. 
 But it is delightful to think that while, with their mightier 
 gifts, . an educational apparatus could be reared for good 
 Christian tuition to the people, and good scholarship to their 
 families, and so a barrier be set up against the profligacy of 
 cities there is meanwhile a spirit and a capability among 
 the poor wherewith it is easy to ward off the scarcely inferior 
 mischief of a corrupt and degrading pauperism. 
 
 5. Crime, that fertile source of pauperism, has exposed 
 us to occasional demands, most of which have been reduced 
 or disposed away from us by investigation. A person under
 
 sentence of transportation, had left his infant daughter a likely 
 burden on the parish. The application in its behalf was 
 made by two aunts, when, on inquiry, it was found, first, 
 that a pension, due to the father, could be fairly detained for 
 the maintenance of the child; and, secondly, that the affec- 
 tion of its grandmother prompted her to offer this mainte- 
 nance, on condition of being allowed the keeping and society 
 of the child under her own roof. We just mention this as 
 an instance, out of the many, of the power of patient inves- 
 tigation, in conducting us either to some resource, or to some 
 right feeling, on which a necessity, that looked alarming at 
 the outset, is at length done away. 
 
 6. We have given a few cases, taken from the short his- 
 tory of the sessional administration of St. John's parish. A 
 very fine example of the natural sufficiency that there is 
 among the people, under even the most trying of domes- 
 tic reverses, took place a few years anterior to our connection 
 with St. John's. A family of six lost both parents by death. 
 There were three children, unable to provide for themselves, 
 and the other three were earning wages. On an impression 
 that they were not able to maintain themselves, application was 
 made by them, to their elder, for the admittance of the three 
 youngest into the Town Hospital; where, at the average of 
 in-door pensioners, their maintenance would have cost at least 
 twenty pounds a-year. He remonstrated with them on the 
 evil of thus breaking up the family on the duty of the older, 
 to see after the education and subsistence of the younger 
 branches and on the disgrace it would bring to them, by con- 
 signing their younger brothers and sisters to pauperism. He 
 assured them, that they would find comparatively little differ- 
 ence, in the sum which it required to maintain them, when they 
 all remained together; and offered them a small quarterly allow- 
 ance, so long as they should feel it necessary, would they try 
 the experiment of keeping together, and helping on each other 
 to the best of their ability. They gave way to this right 
 moral suasion, and application for the stipulated quarterly 
 sum was only made twice. Thus, by a trifling expendi-
 
 63 
 
 ture, a sum, at least fifty-fold, was saved to the Town Hos- 
 pital. But the worth of such management to the habit and 
 condition of the family cannot be estimated in gold. Who 
 is there that does not applaud the advice, and rejoice in the 
 ultimate effect of it? We could hold no sympathy either 
 with the heart or understanding of him who should cen- 
 sure such a style of proceeding and our conceptions lie in 
 an inverse order from his altogether, of the good, and the 
 better, and the best, in the treatment of human nature. 
 
 The elder whom we have just alluded to has now stood 
 nine years associated in this capacity, with a plebeian district 
 of the town, that bears upon it a population of nearly four 
 hundred. At the outset of his connection with it, the num- 
 ber of sessional paupers amounted to ten. They are now 
 reduced to one; which, with the importation of one from an- 
 other part of the city, make out the whole pauperism of this 
 proportion to consist of only two individuals. He has not 
 created any new pauperism in it since he first entered upon 
 his functions having found it quite easy, and at an expense 
 that is altogether imperceptible, rightly, and most satisfac- 
 torily, to dispose otherwise of every application. 
 
 7. W r e have met with no one instance, during nearly these 
 three years of our separate administration, out of which any 
 thing like an argument could be drawn, for the practical ne- 
 cessity of a Town Hospital, or of any establishment that ad- 
 mitted in-door pensioners. There did, we understand, occur 
 recently, in another parish of Glasgow, a case that might have 
 alarmed a more indolent set of parochial rulers into the con- 
 clusion, that some supplementary or extraneous institution of 
 this sort was quite indispensable. An aged and infirm fe- 
 male was ordered away from her tenement by its proprietor; 
 and, on inquiry, it was found that there did not exist a single 
 earthly relative, with whom she could be lodged. The pa- 
 tent way, in such circumstances, would have been to pass her 
 to the Town Hospital, where she might have been received 
 as one of the inmates. On making a round, however, amongst 
 a few of the likeliest households in the vicinity, it was soon
 
 64 
 
 ascertained, that an old woman, the solitary occupier of a hum- 
 ble apartment, would willingly admit her to a place at her 
 fire-side, and the shelter of her roof, for the very moderate 
 allowance of sixpence a-week. Will any one say, that the 
 very comfort of this poor and interesting person, was not more 
 effectually consulted hy an arrangement, that served to domes- 
 ticate her in a neighbourhood, where she still found a harbour 
 and a home on the field of general society than, if transported 
 thence, she had been doomed to breathe out the remainder of 
 her days in the cheerless atmosphere, and among the unhappy 
 exiles of a poor's house ? And, meanwhile, it may serve, per- 
 haps, to rectify our notions of the apprehended necessity that 
 there is for a Town Hospital when made to know that, out 
 of a nearly operative population of fifteen thousand, there 
 has not occurred, in one half of them, a single instance of such 
 necessity for about three years; and, in the other half, when 
 there did occur, within the space of a twelvemonth, the threat- 
 ening semblance of such a necessity, it was speedily dissi- 
 pated by a few trifling inquiries. The friends and advocates 
 of the parochial system were beginning to be a little fearful, 
 from this solitary instance, of some mighty argument against 
 their own favourite economy. But they were quieted again, 
 on finding that, for sixpence a-week, they had purchased to 
 themselves the entire benefit of a most decisive practical re- 
 futation. 
 
 Since we begun this narrative, some more examples have 
 crowded upon our remembrance; but we should be in danger 
 of becoming quite garrulous did we expatiate any further. 
 The conclusion that we feel ourselves impelled to draw from 
 the whole is, that legal charity is injurious, and in no way 
 essential to the well-being of any assembled population that 
 the extinction of it will instantly be followed up by the reno- 
 vation of such habits among the lower orders, as are eminently 
 productive both of comfort and virtue amongst them and, 
 that upon the removal of this hurtful excrescence from the 
 body politic, there will speedily become apparent, not only a 
 tone of greater healthfulness than before, but a far kindlier
 
 65 
 
 coalescence among all its members. The gratuitous and paro- 
 chial will, at length, become the popular system; and, after 
 it has lived down the many jealousies, and stood out the many 
 hard speeches, wherewith now it is beset, among the ultra- 
 politicians on either extreme of heated partizanship will it, 
 at length, be recognized as the only effectual instrument for 
 bringing the rich and the poor into friendly approximation, 
 and for harmonizing the now adverse elements of disdain on 
 the one hand, and discontent on the other, into the perma- 
 nent order of a tranquil and well-conditioned society. 
 
 \V^e feel anxious to satisfy the reader, that the process 
 which we have instituted for the extirpation of pauperism, in 
 our own parish, is most perfectly imitable in all other parishes; 
 and that with no other regime than that of nature and com- 
 mon sense, and no other treatment than a rational and re- 
 spectful treatment of the population, there is no difficulty 
 whatever in meeting the demands of human want, on the 
 strength of such gratuitous means as may be drawn from the 
 local territory within which it is situated. 
 
 And, of all the imitations which are now going forward, 
 of this enterprise, in other places, there is none by which we 
 are more gratified, or to which we look with a deeper and 
 more engaged interest, than that which has been entered up- 
 on, with so much zeal and vigour, in the parish of Canongate. 
 This populous suburb of Edinburgh contains, we understand, 
 upwards of 10,000 inhabitants, and, till August last year, 
 had the expenses of its pauperism defrayed, partly out of a 
 compulsory, and partly out of the ordinary gratuitous fund,' 
 both of which were placed under the one administration of 
 the Charity Workhouse. The Kirk-Session was mainly art 
 organ of conveyance between the Charity Workhouse and the 
 population; and the whole expenditure, under this system, 
 was, in the year ending May, 1821, upwards of nine hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 In the work of disengaging the gratuitous from the com- 
 pulsory administration, this parish had not to contend with 
 
 I
 
 66 
 
 the same political difficulties which beset the commencement 
 of our own undertaking. It had not to unwarp itself from 
 any general or extended combination of parishes. It was not 
 at all implicated in the system of Edinburgh. It stood in- 
 dependent and alone within itself; and all that was necessary 
 to set up a pure Scottish economy in the midst of it was, that 
 its own two bodies, the Kirk-Session and the Managers of 
 the Charity Workhouse, should be brought to a common un- 
 derstanding. They were thus relieved of the endless con- 
 flicts and complexities which are attendant on the business of 
 taking down an old and very intricate apparatus; and when 
 once the arrangement was concurred in, by which the Kirk- 
 Session was vested with the sole and independent disposal of 
 the Sessional revenue, the only remaining struggle was with 
 those natural difficulties which lie in the management of the 
 actual cases in the treatment of the poor themselves. 
 
 The terms of the understanding appear to have been most 
 distinct and reasonable; that the Session should assume 
 the entire management of its own revenue, relieve the Work- 
 house of all its out-pensioners, and further, charge itself with 
 all the new cases that should be offered from the population. 
 At this rate, it is obvious that the assessment will expire with 
 the dying away of the in-pensioners, and the payment of any 
 debts that may have been contracted by the Workhouse. 
 Should the experiment succeed, then will the Canongate pau- 
 perism, which now costs upwards of 900, be defrayed by a 
 Sessional revenue that does not now amount to 400; there- 
 by accomplishing a reformation, the value of which is not to 
 be estimated by the mere difference between these two sums, 
 but by the arrest that is thus decisively laid on a growing 
 mischief, which carries in its womb the principles of its own 
 acceleration, and bears still more deleteriously on the lower, 
 than it does oppressively on the higher orders of society. 
 
 They have not yet had a long trial of their new mode of pro- 
 ceeding. But it argues well for their ultimate success, that 
 what with their scrutiny of the old cases, and their care in
 
 67 
 
 the admission of new ones, the number of paupers in the 
 hands of the Kirk-Session has not only not increased beyond 
 what they took in at first from the Charity Workhouse, but has 
 even fallen from ninety-three to seventy-seven. They have, 
 of course, kept by their original agreement of sending no new 
 cases to the Workhouse; but, as if this were not enough of 
 itself, to evince the power and productiveness of a Sessional 
 management, they have, by an act of supererogation, which 
 few, in the infancy of such an undertaking, would have dared 
 to imitate, given, out of their first year's income, no less than 
 115 to the Charity Workhouse, towards the speedier liqui- 
 dation of its debts. And, on the other hand, the manage- 
 ment of this last seems to be equally prosperous; for, relieved 
 as it now is by the Session, from the influx of new cases, it 
 has, by deaths, and dismissals, and voluntary resignations, 
 and the disposal of cases out of doors, reduced its number of 
 in-pensioners from eighty-nine to forty-two. The object 
 which appears to be aimed at is, as speedily as possible, to 
 translate all their paupers into the condition of out-pensioners; 
 a far more natural and comfortable state, certainly, for them 
 after which, a house, with its establishment, might be dis- 
 pensed with altogether; and thereby a gieat saving of money 
 be effected, none of which goes, in a personal or direct way, to 
 the benefit of the poor themselves. 
 
 We have no doubt on our minds, that, with a perseverance 
 in this career of true benevolence, their point will be carried; 
 and a most impressive example be held out to the country of 
 the cure of pauperism. We know not, out of Glasgow, 
 where such another decisive experimentum cruets could be 
 made, as in the Canongate of Edinburgh ; and we are sure 
 that it will be a most gratifying reward, both to the respec- 
 table ministers, and other official men of that parish if, as the 
 fruit of a cordiality and co-operation, which are but too rare 
 among public bodies, the managers of the Workhouse, on the 
 one hand, with the members of Session, on the other, shall, 
 each labouring in their assigned places, at length succeed in
 
 68 
 
 clearing away, from the domain of their joint superintendence, 
 that sore nuisance, which is at once che bane and the burden 
 of England. 
 
 It says much both for the Directors of the Town- Hospi- 
 tal of Glasgow, and the Charity Workhouse of the Canon- 
 gate, that, without jealousy, or any offended sense of impor- 
 tance, they lend their willing concurrence to a measure, the 
 final success of which consists in their own official annihila- 
 tion. We deem it a nobler sacrifice to their country's good 
 than any of which we read in Greek or in Roman story. 
 Honour is dearer to many than existence; and sooner would 
 they consent to the destruction of the person they wear, than 
 to the destruction of the place they occupy. The latter 
 therefore is, of the two, the higher votive offering at the 
 shrine of patriotism.
 
 69 
 
 No. II. 
 
 WE can figure nothing more instructive than the extem- 
 poraneous argument and remark of such an enlightened body 
 of men as the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 
 on the interesting topics of the popular habit, and the popu- 
 lar necessity, both as to church-going and pauperism. The 
 unanimity of the venerable court on the first of these topics, 
 and the very slight and momentary resistance that was offered 
 to our expositions on the second of them, have abridged very 
 much the benefit that we had before anticipated from this 
 stage of the proceedings. 
 
 The ecclesiastical part of the constitution for the various 
 chapels, was all, in fact, conclusively arranged in the commit- 
 tees, and not at all stirred or questioned about, in the Assem- 
 bly. It was remarked, by one of the members of Committee, 
 that the regulation by which the sittings in the chapel were 
 not to be forfeited by a removal of the occupier, beyond the 
 confines of its territorial district, appeared to nullify the pre- 
 ference that was given for the vacant places, to those who re- 
 sided within these confines. This is a natural impression, on 
 the instant that the matter is first offered to one's contem- 
 plation, and we have frequently met with it. For our vindi- 
 cation of the article, notwithstanding, we refer to Note 3, of 
 No. I. of the Appendix. 
 
 The Committee improved that article which provided for 
 the minister's salary, by providing an eventual security for 
 its being raised from 150 to 200 a-year. We should 
 like if the state of the attendance were to warrant a much
 
 70 
 
 larger emolument; nor do we despair of its at length doing 
 so. We should feel inclined, however, to make the discre- 
 tionary augmentation of his living depend, not on the suc- 
 cess wherewith he fills the chapel from all quarters of the 
 city, but on the extent at which he recruits and has formed 
 his congregation out of the local vicinity that has been as- 
 signed to him. The temptation with a man of acceptable 
 pulpit qualifications is, that he might feel satisfied if he can 
 merely draw a full and crowded auditory, even though it 
 should be at the expense of previous congregations ; and 
 therefore, without any accession of Christian good to the 
 place, or any distinct and special blessing on the families of 
 his own territory. It would multiply his usefulness ten-fold, 
 if, on the office of minister to the chapel, there could be 
 grafted the office of missionary to the alienated population 
 around it. Every possible inducement should be held out 
 to the habit of localizing his visits and his examinations 
 among them: and it is just the parochial character of his 
 sabbath congregation which serves, at once, as the indica- 
 tion and the trophy of his week-day laboriousness. 
 
 \Ve are quite sure that we express the unanimous feeling 
 of all the gentlemen who had to negotiate the business of 
 chapels at the last assembly, when we say, that nothing could 
 exceed the pains, and the patience, and the perfect cordiality 
 wherewith all the details were modified, and arranged in 
 the various committees nor are we aware of any better title 
 on which the supreme court can earn the gratitude of the 
 country, than the ready patronage that has thus been awarded 
 by it, to such measures as bear on the religious welfare of 
 our population. 
 
 In the Assembly we had to sustain a few interrogations 
 on pauperism, which served, in some degree, to mark the 
 most urgent and prevailing impressions that are upon this 
 topic. The question relative to the disposal of the accumu- 
 lated surplus, is the one in which we feel most desirous to 
 carry the sense and acquiescence of the public mind along
 
 71 
 
 us because, if the application of every such surplus 
 must be restricted to the mere subsisting of human indigence, 
 we see not how a complete and conclusive deliverance from 
 the evils of pauperism can ever be arrived at whereas, if 
 made applicable to other objects connected both with the good 
 of the poor, and the general interest of the community, we 
 see a cheering and most beautiful walk of philanthropy in- 
 stantly opened to us. 
 
 We, in the first place, hold the most plebeian of all our 
 parishes to be adequate, on its own resources, to the main- 
 tenance of its own poor; and that after the retracing move- 
 ment, which we have endeavoured to point out, has been 
 completed, it will be landed in a better condition than that 
 which it has been made to emerge from. 
 
 But again, and agreeably to this, we further conceive, 
 that any sum imported to such a parish, for public charity, 
 from abroad, would put it into a worse condition than it would 
 naturally assume, on being left to its own separate manage- 
 ment and separate capabilities that, as an example, it were 
 better both for the comfort and morale of the Canongate, if, 
 with its own sessional means, it had to meet its own pauper- 
 ism, than if these means were augmented out of the surplus col- 
 lection of St. George's and, for ourselves, we should cer- 
 tainly decline the offer of any such foreign aid, as fitted both 
 to slacken the care of our parochial administrators, and to 
 deaden the sympathies, and the economies of our parochial 
 population. 
 
 And, thirdly, if the surplus of revenue in the wealthier 
 parishes of a city, is to be transferred for the relief of indi- 
 gence to the poorer parishes, this necessarily calls for a body 
 of superintendence, that shall preside over the distribution of 
 it. And so it becomes unavoidable, that the town shall 
 again be landed in a general management and that all the 
 advantages of the strictly parochial system shall be again 
 forgone and that all the laxity of administration, on the 
 one hand, and all the delusive imagination, on the other,
 
 which are quite inseparable from a bulky superintendence, 
 shall be again entailed upon the community. So that we 
 despair of any effectual reformation in the pauperism of cities, 
 which does not proceed on the sufficiency even in the poorest 
 districts of the parochial resources, under a strict parochial re- 
 gimen, for all that ought to be publicly done towards the re- 
 lief of indigence. 
 
 The question then recurs if there is a surplus of collec- 
 tions in any parish after the demands of its indigence have 
 been met how ought it to be disposed of? \Ve rejoice, 
 that in as far as the sentence of the General Assembly pos- 
 sesses any authority upon this subject the disposal of the 
 collections lies at the joint option of the Heritors and Kirk- 
 Session. It ought never, on this account, to be alienated 
 from the interests of the population; and, therefore, do we 
 regard it as the fittest application that can possibly be made 
 of this surplus, to expend it, in the first instance, on the erec- 
 tion and endowment of parochial schools, for a cheap and 
 good education to the parochial families. 
 
 But the parish of largest surplus, may stand least in need 
 of any such provision for the scholarship of its children 
 and if not to be applied for the indigence of other parishes, 
 is it therefore to lie idle and unoccupied, or must the liberal- 
 ity of the congregation be deadened, for the purpose of keep- 
 ing down an inconvenient excess ? No : It may, on the 
 joint resolution of its Heritors and Session, be applied to the 
 education of other parishes. The wealthier extreme of the 
 city may send forth a tide of munificence, not to feed, but to 
 undermine the pauperism of its operative districts there, to 
 rear in schools, or even in chapels, a moral apparatus, where- 
 with to tutor into loftier independence, the coming genera- 
 tion, and out of the hearts and habits of a more christianised 
 people, to build up an everlasting barrier against the inroads 
 of a system, which carries vice, and degradation, and wretch- 
 edness along with it. 
 
 It is thus, that after the old pauperism has all been liqui-
 
 73 
 
 dated, and the poorer parishes have been left, as to the pub- 
 lic relief of indigence, to manage and to provide for them- 
 selves it is thus, that a right outlet may be found for the 
 liberality of all the affluent congregations ; from which there 
 might issue forth a stream of healing water, to the remotest 
 outskirts of a now corrupt and neglected population. This 
 were, for many years, a befitting absorbent to all the surplus 
 collections throughout a city and with such an application 
 for them, instead of acting like oil upon a flame, or nourish- 
 ing, as they no.w do, that sore distemper which nought but 
 a process of amputation will ever do away, they will neutra- 
 lize the first elements of pauperism, by stifling them in 
 embryo, on the soil of the popular character. With so high 
 a destination for the Sabbath offerings, there would a spirit 
 and alacrity be given to the benevolence that prompts them. 
 For example, we know not how a more effectual impulse 
 could be devised for the charity of those polite and wealthy 
 congregations that assemble in the St. George and St. An- 
 drew's of Edinburgh, than by making it subserve the en- 
 dowment of schools in the Cowgate, or the extension of a 
 village economy in the Grassmarket. We see not how, after 
 the overthrow of the present system, the rich could better 
 acquit themselves of the claims that destitute humanity has 
 upon the 'bounty and beneficence of the higher orders. Nor, 
 does it follow that the naked would cease to be clothed, or 
 the hungry to be fed by them. Let hateful and heteroge- 
 neous legality be once detached from these ministrations 
 let that which ought ever to have been a question of sponta- 
 neous kindness, cease henceforth to be a question of right 
 let the cause of indigence, instead of being carried to our 
 courts of justice, be fearlessly devolved on the compassion 
 and unforced sympathies of nature let but that transverse 
 movement be rectified, whereby a matter of feeling has been 
 turned into a matter of obligation, and fierce litigation has 
 made its stormy inroads on a province which gratitude and 
 good-will alone ought to have occupied let every right thing 
 
 K
 
 74 
 
 that should be done amongst human beings, be suspended on 
 the right and appropriate principle that has been implanted in 
 our constitution, to stimulate the doing of it let the pay- 
 ment of debts, and the fulfilment of bargains, be laid upon the 
 sense of equity in our bosoms, and the succour of distress be 
 laid on that pity which, when unruffled by the din of claims, 
 or controversies, is ever awake to her imploring voice and 
 when nature is thus relieved of the strain wherewith, in the 
 excess of jurisprudence, it has been so sadly overborne, it 
 will break forth at larije over the whole domain of human 
 
 o 
 
 suffering : The rich and the poor will again meet in confi- 
 dence together and that field, which by one blunder of our 
 legislature, has been strangely transformed into an arena of 
 outcry and debate, will again be refreshed by the growth 
 of those free-born charities, that are fully adequate of them- 
 selves to all the needs and all the exigencies of our species. 
 
 It was on these principles, that when asked how we meant 
 to dispose of the surplus revenue of the Kirk-Session of 
 St. John's, our reply was, that we wished to allocate it to the 
 endowment of parochial schools, for the sake of cheap and 
 good education to the families of the parish. 
 
 In the speech of Principal Taylor, we could observe such 
 a substantial agreement between him and ourselves on some 
 of the more important principles of the question, that we 
 will not despair of at length obtaining his most desirable and 
 valuable concurrence in the parochial system. He doubts 
 whether the collections be applicable to any other object than 
 the relief of indigence. But this might be postponed as an 
 ulterior question, the settlement of which is not essential at 
 the beginning of a separate and sessional administration. 
 And he thinks it impracticable to enforce a law of residence 
 amongst the parishes of Glasgow. Neither is this indispen- 
 sable at the outset though we do not apprehend greater 
 difficulties in the practical observation of it, than such as we 
 have daily experience of in the movements that are ever taking 
 place between the city and its suburb parishes. We should
 
 75 
 
 certainly feel relieved by such a law, for our imports from the 
 pauperism of Glasgow have exceeded considerably the ex- 
 ports that have been made from our own pauperism. We 
 most cordially admit the truth of his observation, that the 
 poor shall never cease out of the land and just for the pur- 
 pose of reaching these poor with a kindlier and better minis- 
 tration, we should like to have pauperism done away. It is 
 true, as he rightly remarks, that in every great city the rich 
 and the poor live apart from each other ; yet we feel assured 
 that there are better ways of filling up the distance between 
 them, than by a committee of general superintendence, which 
 shall be the organ of distribution for all the money that is 
 levied from the wealthy, and whose care it shall be to equal- 
 ize the public charity, according to the necessities of the re- 
 spective districts. 
 
 But, in no part of his speech were we so fully disposed 
 to go along with him, than when he offered what appears to 
 us a just and sound explanation of the abridgment that has 
 taken place last year on the expenditure of the Town Hos- 
 pital. Many of the friends of the parochial system have as- 
 cribed it to the relief which that institution has experienced 
 by the influx of new case shaving ceased from St. John's, and 
 some of the other parishes. For ourselves, we should rather 
 wave this compliment. We hold the Principal's account of 
 it to be the right one namely, that it is referable in the 
 main, to the improved condition of our operative classes, and 
 the fall in the price of necessaries. We count it possible, 
 that while the present state of things lasts, no great or sensi- 
 ble relief may be experienced by the Town Hospital. It is 
 true, that five parishes are in a fair way of being at length 
 disengaged from it. But other five still continue to receive 
 their wonted supplies out of the fund which is administered 
 by the Directors of that institution ; and with a very slight 
 relaxation of management, may their pauperism be not only 
 kept up to the present amount of the assessments, but may 
 even call, as of old, for larger levies than before. Nor is
 
 76 
 
 it at all unlikely, that on such being the event, this perverse 
 and injurious construction may be founded on it that the 
 parochial system has done no good that it has been tried 
 and found wanting that it has been established in one half 
 the parishes of Glasgow, and yet the burdens of the whole 
 community are as great as ever. The reflecting observer 
 must, at once, see where the fallacy of such a conclusion lies. 
 The parochial system makes a most complete and conclusive 
 demonstration of its efficacy, if it clear from compulsory 
 pauperism the whole of that field over which it operates. It 
 is surely not responsible for the excess, or the mismanage- 
 ment of the parishes where it is derided and disowned and 
 should the assessment still maintain its wonted level, or even 
 rise above it, after one-half of Glasgow has ceased to draw 
 any supplies therefrom; this, instead of reflecting upon the 
 new system, will only serve to aggravate the impeachment 
 against the old one. It will just evince the more its powers 
 of mischief, and how mightily creative it is of pauperism 
 and all its attendant evils if, though hemmed within a nar- 
 rower field of occupancy than before, it shall nevertheless 
 have appetite and room both for its former allowances, and 
 for those which its more generous neighbours have forborne. 
 And should the assessment, therefore, continue to be raised 
 as now, from the whole city, while its expenditure, though 
 confined to one fraction of it, be nearly as great and as oppres- 
 sive as before, we trust, that it will be intelligently seen, 
 where it is that the mischief lies; and that the public hostility 
 against the old system will become more resolute and unspar- 
 ing than ever, on the discovery, that not till it is rooted out 
 from all the parishes, will the benefit of the new system ever 
 come to be rightly felt or fully recognized. 
 
 But there is one circumstance which, more than any other, 
 makes us hopeful of a speedy concurrence on the part of the 
 other parishes. It says much for the proposed reformation, 
 that it has so easy, and so practicable an outset. The 
 Reverend Principal himself thinks, that had he the new cases
 
 77 
 
 alone to provide for, he could do it on the strength of his 
 collections, for several years to come. We perfectly agree 
 with him in so thinking; and we only beg him to reflect on 
 the rapid disappearance of the old cases, during the period that 
 he is thus engaged with the new ones. The truth is, that 
 there is not a Kirk-Session in the city which could not, with 
 due management and care, stand out all the new applications, 
 aye, and until the Town Hospital had died a natural death, 
 and the habits and expectations of the people had ceased 
 to be associated with any other public charity, for the relief of 
 indigence, than that which is offered by the parochial system 
 alone. So that the only initial arrangement which needs to 
 be entered upon, with each of the remaining parishes, is to 
 relieve, out of the assessment fund, each of their Sessions 
 from the overplus of poor that are upon them, and perhaps 
 to stretch the relief with some of them so far, as to take off 
 all their existing cases together; and thus leave them a to- 
 tally disencumbered revenue, wherewith to begin a new score, 
 and to embark on a new pauperism, that, minute and man- 
 ageable in its infancy, will never, under right discipline, ga- 
 ther into a magnitude that shall outstrip or overbear them. 
 
 At the commencement of our proceedings in St. John's, we 
 undertook the whole of our Sessional poor, the yearly expense 
 of which amounted, at that time, to 225. This, with the 
 anticipated collection of 400 a-year, left us a surplus of 
 175. But we had not then ascertained by experience, as 
 we now have, the rate of influx for the new cases: and the 
 door of relief from the pressure of a yet dreaded accumulation, 
 by the egress of old cases to the Town Hospital, was now 
 conclusively shut against us. The event, however, far ex- 
 ceeded even our most sanguine anticipations; and, in less 
 than two years, we found ourselves able to extend our origi- 
 nal offer to the Town Hospital. So that, additionally to 
 the relief of sending them no more new cases, we weie 
 able to propose the further relief of taking off, from the 
 fund by assessments, every old case that could be traced
 
 78 
 
 to the parish of St. John's. But though able, for our own 
 parts, we certainly were not willing for any such proposal. 
 We, in the first place, thought it a better destination for our 
 surplus revenue, to hasten therewith, the endowment of our 
 parochial schools. And, in the second place, we thought 
 that the exhibition of any sudden or marvellous achievement 
 would serve to confirm the impression, that was already too 
 much abroad, as if the process that we were engaged in was, 
 on the whole, of such a Quixotic and extraordinary cha- 
 racter as to distance all imitation. We felt that, by this 
 new proposal, we should ingraft and superinduce upon the 
 retracing movement, what was not at all indispensable to its 
 ultimate success; seeing, that by a simple arrest on the in- 
 flux of new cases to the Town Hospital, that institution 
 would experience a sure, though gradual relief from the old 
 ones. We wanted to sustain the character of our enterprise, 
 as being that of a steady and slow-going operation, which 
 might be copied in all the parishes, rather than surround 
 ourselves with the meteoric glare of such a wonder-working 
 apparatus, as would somewhat bear upon it the aspect of 
 jugglery to all common observers. Much rather would we 
 approve ourselves, in this matter, to the most grave and sober- 
 minded of the regular faculty, than send forth, from the stage 
 on which we performed, any such empirical display, as might 
 draw an homage from the popular eye, like unto that which 
 is rendered, by the credulous, to a quack or a mountebank. 
 And so, rather than strike an exterminating blow on the old 
 compulsory pauperism of St. John's, would we have deemed 
 it to be in better taste, and truer accordancy with that wis- 
 dom which is both deeply seated on the invariable principles 
 of human nature, and widely applicable, over the whole extent 
 of it, had we left this pauperism to its own natural decay, and 
 suffered it to live quietly out its appointed generation. 
 
 In the face of all this, however, an impatience was felt for 
 the completed result of a parish wholly emancipated from its 
 compulsory pauperism ; and certainly it was an impatience
 
 79 
 
 which many good and many enlightened men would sympa- 
 thize with. It was, therefore, at length given way to, and 
 the extended offer of relief has, after some difficulty, been 
 acceded to, by the Town Hospital. And we have here, with 
 gratitude, to remark, that this movement, which we thought 
 premature, furnished us with by far our most effective wea- 
 pon of defence, in the premature discussion that we were 
 called to engage in. It was the narrative of this, our full 
 and final accomplishment, that told, and was of greatest 
 weight in the General Assembly. And we cannot but hold 
 it as providential, that a measure, for the establishment of 
 which we had to surrender our own will, and our own way, 
 was the instrument of a unanimous decision, for which that 
 court might not have been otherwise prepared a decision 
 which only needs to be acted upon, in order to break up all 
 the general managements of pauperism in towns, and to sub- 
 stitute the more wholesome administrations of the parochial 
 system in their room. 
 
 And here, would we venture to suggest to our friends in 
 the Canongate, that by the primary arrangement alone, be- 
 tween their Kirk-Session and their Charity Workhouse, did 
 the latter receive its effectual death-blow that simply, by 
 the arrest laid upon the influx of new cases, it will come, in 
 a few years, to its sure annihilation and that, without any 
 increase of assessment, the surplus of the present levy, over the 
 constantly diminishing expense, will, of itself, liquidate, and 
 very speedily too, the whole amount of debt that is upon the 
 institution. At the same time, the desire is most natural to 
 expedite the death of the old system and we can perceive 
 that, under the operation of this desire, the Kirk-Session of 
 the Canongate have extended the additional relief of 115 
 to the Charity Workhouse, within these few months and 
 most surely it is not for us to express any surprise at such a 
 gratuitous effort in another parish, as we have already yielded 
 to in our own. Our only fear is, lest, when thus left 
 without the little capital they had themselves accumulated,
 
 80 
 
 there should be any misgiving felt, when an unlocked for or 
 extraordinary demand comes in their way. With the con- 
 scious possession of a stock, there would, for example, have 
 been less apprehension on the event of a poor lunatic wo- 
 man having been abandoned by her unnatural husband, and 
 the parish being saddled, in consequence, with an expense of 
 twenty pounds a-year. It is most true, however, on the 
 other hand, that the conscious possession of a stock may re- 
 lax the care and vigilance of the parochial administrators 
 and, therefore, do we quit these remarks, in the full confi- 
 dence, that under its present enlightened superintendence, 
 the Canongate of Edinburgh will soon afford a striking prac- 
 tical attestation both to the sufficiency and the wisdom of 
 Scottish pauperism. 
 
 And there is an impulse to a strenuous administration in 
 the Canongate, which is awanting to any single parish in 
 Glasgow. It will there bring a distinct and immediate bene- 
 fit upon the householders. As the old pauperism dies away, 
 the assessment will die away along with it and the relief 
 that is thus effected falls upon the property that is within 
 the parish. It is not so in Glasgow. A parish there, after 
 it has ceased to be altogether a burden on the assessment, 
 still continues to bear its full share of it. If a poor parish, 
 its share of the assessment is, no doubt, small but then its 
 share of pauperism, under the system of general management, 
 is proportionably great and, therefore, by setting up inde- 
 pendently for itself, it will draw a much larger burden from 
 the fund than what would be remitted to it, by its assessment 
 being done away. The parish of St. John's, from its place 
 in the gradation of wealth, may not contribute a twentieth 
 part of the assessment of Glasgow. But then, had it conti- 
 nued to draw out of the assessment it might, at the ordinary 
 rate of management, have burdened the city with the addi- 
 tion of, at least, an eighth pait to the whole expense of its 
 present pauperism. It is a hardship to St. John's, if, after re- 
 lieving Glasgow of so large a fraction of its expenditure, the
 
 81 
 
 small fraction which it contributes to the levy shall not be 
 remitted if it shall still be called upon to sustain a load, 
 while it creates none of it and after having wrought its 
 way to that station of independence which it now occupies, 
 and lifted off, from the general community of the place, the 
 whole of its own pauperism, it shall be summoned to pay for 
 the pauperism of other parishes. We can discover a grow- 
 ing feeling in St. John's, of the assessment which continues to 
 be levied there being an unfair exaction : And, now since the 
 triumph of the parochial system has been completed, have 
 these outbreakings of a sense of injury become more free and 
 more frequent than before. 
 
 \Ve certainly cannot but participate in this feeling. A 
 parish that ceases taking from the assessment fund, should 
 also in equity cease giving to it and more especially, when 
 by ceasing to take, it relieves that fund of a greater sum 
 than it withdraws, by ceasing to give. When the cost of a 
 parish is greater than its contribution, then the town makes 
 a good bargain with that parish by breaking off from all 
 intromissions with it; and, it looks ungenerous as well as 
 unfair, that, after it has eased the community of its own 
 heavy charge, it should still be burdened with any part of 
 the charge of other parishes. This is now the precise con- 
 dition of the parish of St. John's paying its full share of 
 the assessment, yet deriving not from it a single farthing for 
 the behoof of its families so managing its own resources 
 as to draw nothing from the great legal treasury for its own 
 pauperism, yet still drawn upon, as before, for all the waste 
 and mismanagement that may be going on around it help- 
 ing to uphold that revenue from which it reaps no benefit, 
 and over the expenditure of which it has no control thus 
 subsidizing the whole of Glasgow out of its own scanty 
 means; and, all plebeian though it be, by the sweat of its 
 own brow, and the strenuousness of its own efforts, so 
 labouring as to render that support to others, which from 
 others it has now ceased to receive. 
 
 L
 
 We give out our impressions thus strongly, that the claim- 
 ants in St. John's for relief from the assessment, might per- 
 ceive, that the rightfulness of their demand is neither mis- 
 understood nor unfelt by us. Yet would we earnestly admonish 
 them to be patient and to wait, if peradventure relief may 
 come to them, on coming to all, by the adoption of our plan 
 in the other parishes. It were greatly better that, without 
 litigation, it should come in this way and should this 
 hope be tardy of fulfilment, even in the meantime ours is the 
 more honourable position being like to that member of the 
 family who contributes to the expense of the establishment, 
 and yet refuses to lay upon it the burden of his own main- 
 tenance. And besides, redress will be more readily gotten 
 by a sense of justice operating on the discretion of our rulers, 
 than by legal controversy and we have no doubt, that all 
 which is proper and practicable will be done to reduce that 
 glaring inequality, which we have now ventured to expose. 
 
 The difficulty is, that if exemption be granted to one 
 parish on its becoming independent, whose cost has been 
 greater than its contribution, then the same may afterwards 
 be demanded by another parish, whose contribution was at 
 all times greater than its cost. What may be a very gain- 
 ful bargain with St. John's would be a losing bargain with 
 St. George's and should the latter parish withdraw the 
 whole of its pauperism from the Town Hospital, yet its 
 payments to that institution could not, on this account, be 
 dispensed with. It were well, perhaps, to ascertain from 
 the books of the assessors, and of the Town Hospital, how 
 the proportion stands in all the parishes ; and simply to remit 
 the assessment to every parish on the commencement of its 
 independence, whose cost, for a given number of years pre- 
 vious to the outset of its reforming processes, has been greater 
 than its contribution. This were holding out a bounty upon 
 reformation to those parishes where such an encouragement 
 was most needed, and from the success of whose attempts 
 the public at large would reap the greatest deliverance.
 
 83 
 
 We have no doubt, that under the operation of such an 
 enactment, the cause of the parochial system would be 
 mightily speeded in the very poorest of the districts that are 
 within the royalty and that, with the reward before them 
 of a total remission from the burden of assessment, as the 
 instantaneous effect of their pauperism being totally disen- 
 gaged from the assessment fund, there is not a parish in 
 the city, whose proprietors and householders would not 
 furnish the most important facilities to its Kirk-Session, for 
 hastening on its patriotic enterprise to the wished-for ter- 
 mination. 
 
 So soon as the assessment is remitted to the parish of St. 
 John's, we can perceive how the boon will be felt and what a 
 mighty impulse will be thereby given to the whole of our 
 parochial economy. Such a sensible demonstration of its 
 efficacy, would instantly tell on the whole of the influential 
 class that reside or have property within our bounds and 
 many are the shopkeepers, and respectable tradesmen, and 
 owners of tenements, who, scattered throughout the mass of 
 our population, would become the very best auxiliaries that 
 our Session could count upon. One thing we are sure of, 
 that that most valuable of all co-operations, the co-operation 
 of their kindness, each in the little recess of his own neigh- 
 bourhood, would never be a-wanting. On the moment that ex- 
 torted charity ceased, spontaneous charity would break forth at 
 will and a last visit from the tax-gatherers of the great city 
 Hospital, were to us the conclusive signal for the opening up 
 of innumerable flood-gates, to which we might safely con- 
 fide the relief and the sustenance of all the needy, and all 
 the meritorious among our families. It would turn our pa- 
 rish into a great home-stead, within the limits of which idle- 
 ness might find no harvest, yet starvation be a moral impossi- 
 bility while the exhibition of it, as a privileged and exempted 
 territory, would do more than by any other public act of 
 magistracy could be done, to speed the adoption of its separ- 
 ate and independent method in other parishes.
 
 84 
 
 Nor is it to save the purses of the wealthy, but to save 
 the principles of the poor, that we thus urge our own 
 views on the subject of pauperism. -We should like the abo- 
 lition of public charity, not to exonerate the one class, but 
 to exalt the other class; and to place the comfort and well- 
 being of the lower orders on a securer basis. For this pur- 
 pose, we would like the pomp and the publicity of every 
 institution which has ever been reared for the alleviation of 
 general indigence, to be henceforth done away ; because we 
 think that their whole effect has been to congeal the sympa- 
 thies of the giver, and to corrupt the habits of the receiver 
 thereby undermining those primary guards, which Nature her- 
 self hath provided, against the extremes of human wretched- 
 ness. It behooves all who profess such doctrines to vindicate 
 their own consistency; and while firm in resistance to all that 
 would tempt the labourer from the sobriety which he owes 
 to himself, and the duty which he owes to his kinsfolk it is 
 theirs both to strew the private walk of charity with many 
 offerings, and to signalise their hostility to the degradation 
 of the lower orders, by their munificent patronage of all 
 that serves to raise or to enlighten them. It is thus, that 
 they who are foremost in the abolition of pauperism, should 
 be foremost in the great cause of popular education and far 
 their most triumphant defence against the imputations that 
 are cast upon them, because of the hundreds they save 
 by the one, would be their ready and cheerful expenditure 
 of thousands upon the other. Let the expense all be theirs 
 let the gain be that of the coming generation. In the great 
 work of extending both the scholastic and the ecclesiastical 
 system of all our over-peopled parishes, will the enemies of 
 pauperism find an ample field on which to illustrate the force 
 and the purity of those philanthropic feelings by which they 
 are actuated and while sustaining the heat and pressure of 
 the day, it should be to them enough of consolation, if along 
 with a less burdened estate, they shall bequeath a more 
 virtuous posterity to succeeding ages.
 
 85 
 
 We think, that should the parish of St. John's be un- 
 burdened of its assessments for the poor, it ought, on its own 
 resources, to complete its system of parochial education. 
 This will require the erection of another fabric nor are we 
 aware of any quarter from which the means ought more read- 
 ily to be gathered, than from those who have just experienced 
 the deliverance for which we are now pleading. And we 
 know not a more appropriate monument to be placed over the 
 grave of parish pauperism, than a parish school ; nor, one that 
 is better fitted to close impregnably up the gate of the sepul- 
 chre, and keep its noxious inmate from ever bursting forth 
 again on the society that had so celebrated its last obsequies. 
 We wait, till our civic rulers, having found that we should 
 not pay for what we do not use, shall stop that annual levy, 
 which is the only vestige of the old system that remains with 
 us. After which, we look for a most salutary reaction among 
 our own people who, joining with one heart for the better 
 and higher scholarship of their families, need, after the ful- 
 filment of this honourable aim, stand in no fear of the re- 
 surrection of pauperism. 
 
 Our last remark on the business of the Assembly, is the 
 obvious want of all respect and recognition that there seemed 
 to be among them for such a Body as a General Session. 
 The truth is, that it bears no constitutional character .what- 
 ever and as to any right of control over separate Sessions, 
 has no more of it, than would a company of ministers met 
 together at a sacrament, or a presbytery dinner. It impresses 
 us more with the idea of a club, which may have its rules 
 and its funds certainly; and between the members of which 
 there may be a sort of conventional understanding but most 
 assuredly with no power of jurisdiction over any of the regular 
 courts of our establishment, however inferior they may be 
 in the scale of precedency. It is altogether, in short, a 
 blotch or a diseased excrescence on the ecclesiastical system 
 and it is well, that, by the removal of it, our Kirk- Sessions 
 in Glasgow have been restored to their primitive character.
 
 86 
 
 and have the same simple and intelligible place, with the Kirk- 
 Sessions of country parishes having no other relationship to 
 the other corporations of the city, than that which subsists 
 between itself and the Magistrates, regarded as Heritors; 
 and subject to no other control than that of the Presbytery and 
 superior judicatories of our church. It was altogether in this 
 sound constitutional spirit, that the Assembly not only con- 
 firmed that article in our constitution for a chapel of ease, 
 which gave so much offence, but have mightily improved 
 it. We were willing, for peace, to put up with the regula- 
 tion, that the chapel collections should be disposed agreeably 
 to the existing arrangement, between the Magistrates and 
 ten ministers of Glasgow but it was a most important and 
 happy substitution, that the disposal of these collections 
 should be subject to no other arrangement than that which 
 might be resolved upon, between the Magistrates and Kirk- 
 Session of the parish wherein the chapel was situated. The 
 question will be altogether confined to these two parties, and 
 never can be agitated among the ten ministers; and surely it 
 is better for us all, when the chances of, and exposures to 
 controversy, are lessened to the uttermost. For ourselves, 
 it is vastly comfortable and refreshing, that we now have a 
 place of occupancy, in a mechanism which one can compre- 
 hend that, we are now relieved from the perpetual justlings 
 and collisions, which were quite unavoidable among the intri- 
 cacies of the old system that we have at length got out 
 of that dark and tortuous labyrinth, where conveners, 
 and clergy, and elders, and committee-men, were in constant 
 danger of treading on one another that conclusively rid 
 of all this bustle and bewilderment, there is nought be- 
 fore us that is at all above the capacity, or the landward 
 habits of a plain country minister, fresh from the simplicity 
 of his original parish that he has just to meet with his Ses- 
 sion, and to treat with the Magistrates, in like manner as he 
 wont to meet with the plain rustic eldership of his former 
 kirk, and to treat with the lairds and best of all, that now
 
 87 
 
 he has not to be overborne with the weight of those city man- 
 agements, which went to transform him out of all the priestly 
 characteristics of his order but taking what time he may 
 in his closet, and what time he may in the labours of parochial 
 cultivation, he will be sure, on the strength of his sacred 
 duties, and his clerical proprieties alone, to be welcome in 
 every circle of society, and to earn an affection and a courtesy 
 from all ranks of the population.
 
 88 
 
 No. III. 
 
 IT may be thought, that we have carried our explanations 
 on the subject of Scottish pauperism to a degree of minute- 
 ness that is altogether tedious and uncalled for. But it 
 should be noticed, that we have something more to gain than 
 the mere understanding of the reader ; tlhat we are not ad- 
 dressing ourselves to the merely speculative economist, but, 
 that we have to guide, and, if possible, to stimulate the 
 energies of practical men. The reiteration which were tire- 
 some to the former, carries in it, as we have often experi- 
 enced, the very impulse that is necessary to drive in the obsti- 
 nate resistance of the latter, and to set them a-going. 
 Without great plainness, and plying urgency, and patiently 
 returning to the charge, after the labour of many ineffectual 
 demonstrations, nothing will be done. And it is under this 
 impression, that ere we conclude, we would fain have one 
 word more of application, on the way wherein all that is com- 
 pulsory in the pauperism of Scotland, may be broken up and 
 dissipated. 
 
 When the parish stands singly and aloof from all the com- 
 plexities of an intricate and extended combination, as in 
 country or suburb parishes, the arrangement is come to more 
 easily. In some of these cases, the compulsory and gratuitous 
 funds are thrown into one sum, and placed under one adminis- 
 tration and in other cases, they are administered separately. 
 The way in either case, is to open up different accounts for 
 these funds, if not to place them under different adminis- 
 trations. The last way is the best, when the existing ma-
 
 chinery admits of it. But, at all events, let the money that 
 has been levied, be exclusively applied to the paupers upon 
 the roll at the commencement of the proposed reformation; 
 and let all the new applications be met with and managed on 
 the Sessional revenue alone. It may happen that this re- 
 venue is large; in which case, a good many of the already 
 existing paupers may be attached to it from the outset, as in 
 the parishes both of Canongate and St. John's. In other 
 cases the revenue may be so small, that to encourage the 
 operation, it might be wise to relieve it of the existing pau- 
 perism altogether. So that, for the first year or two, the 
 fund by assessment may have fully a greater weight of pau- 
 perism upon it than before. It were as well, indeed, in every 
 instance of a new arrangement, that the Session were left 
 with an overplus on hand of its own proper revenue, above 
 the expenditure that was laid upon it at the first. For the 
 consequent pressure that would thus be felt by the other 
 fund, there would soon be a relief and a compensation in the 
 death of old cases, and the cessation of all influx from the 
 new pauperism. And there is no doubt, that with a suffi- 
 cient complement of elders or deacons and the assignation 
 of a small district of the parish to each of them and a resolv- 
 ed spirit on their part, not against the poor, but against a 
 system which has made the poor more wretched and mis- 
 thriven than before, they will succeed in ridding the parish of 
 a great moral evil, and restoring it to the pure and gratuitous 
 economy of a Scottish parish. 
 
 But when, instead of a parish standing singly and dis- 
 joined from all others, under an independent regimen of its 
 own, it be implicated with two or three more, as in some of 
 our second-rate towns, or, perhaps, with a cluster of from 
 ten to twenty, as now in Edinburgh, and recently in Glas- 
 gow, it requires somewhat more of management to disengage 
 it. If its Kirk-Session be very poor, then we think, that it 
 may be relieved by the assessment fund of all its pauperism 
 together ; and be left freely to try the process de novo, with 
 the whole amount of its proper resources, whereby to meet 
 
 M
 
 90 
 
 all the coming applications. If its Kirk- Session be very 
 rich, then a due amount of the existing pauperism of its own 
 parish may be laid upon it; and should there be an excess of 
 revenue, over even the whole of its pauperism, as now in St. 
 John's, then may this excess be applied, first, to the raising 
 of a good parochial system of education within its own limits, 
 and afterwards, in carrying that system abroad among the 
 other parishes*. In the work of all these initial adjustments 
 with the various parishes, the Charity Workhouse will find 
 at the outset, a slight augmentation of pressure upon its 
 funds. But this will speedily subside; and then, by a rapid 
 disappearance of the old pauperism, an equally rapid liquida- 
 tion of the assessment will be felt every year by the citizens. 
 An increase of collections, if necessary, would be the sure 
 effect of this experience in all the churches. And, at all 
 events, it will be due, not to a want of means, but entirely 
 to a want of management, if, in any one instance, the enter- 
 prise shall fail. Each parish will, in a few years, emerge 
 into independence ; and even in the most populous cities, 
 within the pale of our establishment, the last vestiges of tile 
 corrupt system of England will all have melted away, under the 
 powerful and purifying influences of our own better economy. 
 And we would here suggest to those wealthier Sessions 
 that are able to relieve the Charity Workhouse of some of 
 its pauperism, that they should still suffer it to continue un- 
 der the administration of its Managers, only paying the ex- 
 pense of it, at stated terms, to that institution. It is greatly 
 better, that the elders should not come personally into con- 
 tact with the management of any of the old cases; but that 
 all their intercourse as administrators for the poor, should 
 be with the new pauperism alone. It is thus that the Town 
 Hospital of Glasgow, while it has consented to the reliei 
 
 * In tliis way the cause is most powerfully served in these parishes as edu- 
 cation is, by tar, the strongest moral corrective- against pauperism that can 
 he devised. On the subject of city schools, and the best method of making 
 them to bear on a city population, see a pamphlet entitled " Considerations 
 on the System of Parochial Schools in Scotland, and on the advantage of 
 establishing them in Large Towns."
 
 91 
 
 that was proffered to it by the Kirk-Session of St. John's, 
 has kindly and liberally undertaken to be still the organ of 
 conveyance as before, for the supplies of our old pauperism ; 
 having agreed to present a quarterly account of the expense 
 from which it is, henceforward, delivered but willingly post- 
 poning their deliverance from the trouble, till all the exist- 
 ing cases in their list shall have died away. 
 
 We wholly refuse the charge of an unfeeling hardihood 
 towards the poor, in any of these processes. The system 
 that we want to restore will, in the first place, work a ten- 
 fold compensation for all which might appear to be with- 
 drawn from them, in the renovation of their own habits, and 
 the then augmented resources of their own economy. And, 
 in the second place, while it will be sure to reinstate in 
 wonted force, the duties of children and of kinsfolk, and so 
 cause nature again to stretch forth that helping hand, which 
 law had, by its intermeddling, put back; it will also bring out 
 the liberalities of the affluent in a character of freedom and 
 good will, which they altogether lose on their passage to the 
 population, through such ducts of conveyance as the hands of 
 city assessors and the distributions of a poor's house. Every 
 ministration of relief which shall thus be made to descend 
 upon humble life, will be accompanied with the charm of 
 that living sympathy by which it has been prompted; and 
 the whole effect of this better way to soothe and to satisfy 
 the lower orders of society, he only can tell, who, once in 
 penury himself, can recollect how far the goodness of his 
 friend outweighed, in power of comfort over his spirit, the 
 gift that emanated therefrom. It is the deed of alms-giving 
 which brings the food and the raiment into the habitations of 
 the destitute; but it is the generous impulse that gave it birth 
 which finds its way into their hearts. From the great legal 
 institution the naked provender is carried forth, and not one 
 moral influence of charity goes along with it. It is only in 
 the unseen walk of human kindness, as it plies its secret visi- 
 tations and makes its affectionate inquiries it is only there, 
 where charity brightens into its own genuine aspect, and by
 
 92 
 
 its thousand nameless delicacies, can, along with the benefi- 
 cence which it showers upon humble life, waken the grati- 
 tude and fond regard of all its families. 
 
 This is the way to disarm the city multitude of all that is 
 formidable ; and had it no other recommendation, it is the 
 bland and benignant influence of a parochial economy upon 
 the popular mind, which should quicken the effort of all our 
 philanthropists to extend and to perfect it. Nor do we know 
 of a likelier method by which to hasten it forward, than by 
 the multiplication of chapels of ease, and more especially 
 when a territorial district, tantamount, in fact to a new parish, 
 is attached to each of them. Each parish in Glasgow, aver- 
 aging as it does, towards 8,000 inhabitants, admits of being, 
 at least, bisected in this way; but they are our enormous sub- 
 urb parishes that stand most in need of these institutions. 
 The Barony parish of Glasgow has upwards of 50,000 in- 
 habitants, and the West Kirk parish of Edinburgh has little 
 short of this number thus imperiously calling for a more 
 extended moral apparatus, wherewith to confront both the 
 pauperism and the profligacy of their respective populations. 
 
 There is a very patent and discernible way, by which to 
 make either new churches, or new chapels subservient to 
 the abridgment of pauperism. Their collections will be al- 
 together new ; and therefore, without detracting from the 
 funds that go, at present, to the support of the old pauperism, 
 they may be wholly left in the hands of an agency sanc- 
 tioned and set apart by the Kirk-Session, for the treatment of 
 all the new applications from the districts which are respec- 
 tively assigned to them. Let there be a good complement 
 of elders or deacons provided for each chapel and let these 
 have each his own manageable locality or sub-district as- 
 signed to him and let them all be made to understand, 
 that out of the money gathered at the church-doors, the 
 new pauperism is meanwhile to be met and that it lies 
 with their own good management whether all the demands of 
 this pauperism might not be rightly provided for from the 
 fund which they administer, even till it has reached its maxi-
 
 93 
 
 mum, or till the old cases shall all have died away. Then 
 it is, that their enterprise shall have reached its consumma- 
 tion. The adequacy of chapel offerings to the necessities 
 of the chapel district will be proved experimentally; and it 
 will indeed be a precious service, done by the band of philan- 
 thropists who have been attached to this work, that they have 
 reclaimed their own allotted territory to that gratuitous eco- 
 nomy of old Scottish pauperism, which will ever be found 
 enough for all the demands of all our population. 
 
 It is thus that our city and suburb domains may, piece- 
 meal and successively, be cleared of all their compulsory pau- 
 perism. Were we asked to specify the right population, 
 either for a parish or a chapelry in towns, we should fix on 
 three thousand, as the number that, ecclesiastically, could 
 have the same week-day attentions rendered to them by the 
 minister, as are practicable in the average of our country 
 parishes; a compensation for the larger number being had in 
 the narrower extent of the ground, and the contiguousness of 
 its families. It is comfortable to think, that by thus halv- 
 ing each of the parishes of Glasgow, a tolerable approach 
 would be made to this number for each of its ecclesiastical 
 labourers so that while, by the simple device of erecting 
 a chapel for each of them, the Christian efficiency of our 
 establishment might be doubled, there can be no doubt, that 
 under such an arrangement, the whole of its compulsory pau- 
 perism might easily be made to disappear. There is no such 
 chapel, whose collections might not be made to meet in per- 
 petuity, all the new pauperism that should be admitted from 
 the district which has been annexed to it, even though it were 
 a population of three thousand and upwards. We should 
 imagine that a territory of somewhat this extent might easily 
 be found from some one parish, for the chapels that are now 
 to be raised in Greenock, Aberdeen, and Dundee; and there 
 is no doubt, that when placed in the state of separation and 
 self-dependence that we have now suggested, each would 
 soon clear away from its own district the weight of its pre- 
 sent pauperism.
 
 94 
 
 But, at this rate, there would be small relief to such an 
 unwieldy parish as the West Kirk of Edinburgh ; and it 
 were well, that in the first instance, there should be a much 
 larger allocation of territory for each of its two new chapels. 
 It is true that three thousand people are quite enough for 
 any one of them to do with ecclesiastically. But if, in the 
 mean time, districts of six thousand were assigned to each, 
 the right number would be, at length arrived at, by the sub- 
 dividing that might be made to take place, in the event of 
 future erections. In the mean time, six thousand will not 
 be too many to be charged on each chapel, in as far as it re- 
 gards the management of their new pauperism. It will be 
 recollected that the new pauperism of the whole of St. 
 John's parish has been met and rightly provided for, these 
 three years nearly, on the small offerings of the evening 
 congregation alone ; and, that in that parish there are up- 
 wards of eight thousand inhabitants. It were a most im- 
 portant relief to the Charity Workhouse of the West Kirk 
 parish, could it be relieved, in all time 'coming, through the 
 medium of the two chapels now to, be raised, of new cases, 
 from a population of twelve thousand. That there will be 
 a sufficiency of means with the chapels for the fulfilment of 
 this object, we would not have had the smallest doubt, even 
 though the territorial principle had been acted upon in seat- 
 letting, and each place of worship had been filled from their 
 respective vicinities with plebeian congregations. But as a 
 preference to residenters, is not one of the rules of their 
 constitution, (though we trust that it may soon be adopted 
 as the invariable rule of their practice) the presumption is, 
 that each chapel may have wealthy sitters from all parts of 
 the city. In this case, so far from having any fears of their 
 ability to undertake the new pauperism of 12,000 people, our 
 xnily fear should be, that they may be tempted, at the outset, 
 to a profuse and careless administration, by the overplus of their 
 collections so as to make it advisable that they should fur- 
 ther be charged with a certain amount of their old pau- 
 perism.
 
 95 
 
 The two great benefits to be aimed at by the erection 
 of a new church, or a new chapel, are, first the Christian 
 good that may be rendered to the families of its assigned 
 territory, by the ministrations of the gospel ; and secondly, 
 their economic good, by the deliverance of the whole space 
 they occupy from the evils of a compulsory pauperism. It 
 is the more effectually to secure the first of these benefits, 
 that we contend for the territorial rule of seat-letting, even 
 though that should expose us to a wholly plebeian congrega- 
 tion. And we do not fear, that in our eagerness to accom- 
 plish this object, we put to hazard the second benefit, by the 
 humbler collections of the humbler auditory, for whose pri- 
 mary accommodation it is, that the place of worship has been 
 opened. This very fearlessness marks how it is that we ex- 
 pect the problem of pauperism to be resolved and that 
 our confidence of success docs not lie in the means, but in 
 the management. Pauperism is at best an excrescence on 
 the body politic; and it is best for all the members of that 
 body, when there is but little aliment to uphold it. 
 
 One wholly engrossed with the cure of pauperism, and 
 who further thought that it was by large collections only, 
 that the assessment could be superseded, would never plead 
 so zealously as we have done, for that rule of seat-letting even 
 in suburb and plebeian parishes, which went to exclude the 
 wealthy, by the preference that it rendered to the poor. 
 But we, in the first place, do not confide the success of our 
 endeavours against pauperism to the magnitude of the collec- 
 tion at all and, in the second place, so far from being en- 
 grossed with this as the main object of philanthropy, we hold 
 the conversion of one soul to be of more worth, than the merely 
 temporal good that would accrue to a whole empire, by its deliver- 
 ance from pauperism. It is true, that were the poorest district 
 of a city once reclaimed to congregational habits; its humble 
 sabbath offerings, at the door of that chapel which had been 
 raised for its special and primary behoof, would do more for 
 the pauperism of its now humanized families, than could the 
 ten-fold offerings of a rich auditory, occupying the same cha-
 
 96 
 
 pel, and so leaving its excluded neighbourhood in all the gross- 
 ness and depravity of their unmitigated heathenism. Yet it 
 is not because of this secular good, that we thus plead for a 
 more abundant supply of the ministrations of sacredness. It 
 may be fair to urge it, as forming with many the most effective 
 argument for calling out their influence and their means, in be- 
 half of a cause that has higher bearings than ever they have 
 contemplated, and that yields a fruit of mightier endurance than 
 any which they ever yet have been led to care for. The extinc- 
 tion of pauperism is but one of those collateral blessings that 
 would flow from the Christianity of the people one of those 
 many felicities which it profusely scatters along its path, 
 wherewith to beautify and enrich even the society of this 
 world and after all, but the humble episode of a process 
 far more magnificent. And we repeat, that it is not any 
 happier adjustment among the fleeting interests of this life, 
 which forms the strength of the argument for chapels be- 
 ing multiplied, and cities being more broken down into 
 parishes. This, indeed, is a measure worth all the policy 
 that can be expended on it yet, not because of any econo- 
 mic good that society is to reap from a right treatment of 
 our population, but because of their eternity that has to be 
 won, and because of their spirits that are imperishable. 
 
 There is a delusion that attaches to much of moral and 
 much of political speculation. The purpose of both is to 
 ameliorate the condition of humanity, and to rear the 
 permanent and substantial fabric of a better society than 
 that which now encompasses our globe. It is, indeed, a 
 soothing perspective for the eye of the philanthropist to 
 dwell upon, when he looks onward to fancied scenes of bliss 
 and perfection in the ages that are to come and while 
 he pictures to himself as the fruit of his enlightened labours 
 in the philosophy of public affairs, that there shall then be 
 love in every heart, and plenty in every habitation, it is 
 scarcely to be wondered at, that he should kindle in the 
 thought of all this goodly munificence, as if it bore upon it 
 somewhat of the worth and greatness of immortality. But
 
 97 
 
 apart from religion and how poor is the amount of all 
 that the mere cosmopolite can do for our species ! And even 
 though, without its aid, he should he able to perfect the 
 temporal economy of nations, never can he perpetuate beyond 
 a few flying years, to a single individual of this vast assem- 
 blage, any portion of the bliss or the glory that he thinks to 
 have provided for them. It is death which brings down the 
 worth and computation of his high-blown enterprise, that 
 though established over the whole earth, and weathering tl?e 
 lapse of many centuries, can only gild in brighter and more 
 beauteous characters than before, the fantastic day of each 
 ephemeral generation. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ 
 through which life and immortality are brought to light 
 it is this alone that can furnish the friend of humanity with 
 solid and enduring materials and never can he stand on 
 a vantage ground where the mockeries of the grave do 
 not reach him, till labouring and devising for the Christianity 
 of his fellows, he helps to extend an interest that shall 
 survive the wreck of every death-bed; and which, instead of 
 being swept into annihilation, will be ushered to everlasting 
 day, by that trumpet, at whose sound, our world, with all the 
 pomp and all the promise of its many institutions, shall 
 utterly pass away. 
 
 Printed by W. Collins & Co. Glasgow.
 
 WORKS OF DR. CHALMERS, 
 
 PUBLISHED AND SOLD BY 
 
 CHALMERS AND COLLINS, 
 
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 DR. CHALMERS' 
 CHRISTIAN AND CIVIC ECONOMY 
 
 OF LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 Published Quarterly on the First of January, April, July and October. 
 
 PROSPECTUS OF THE WORK. 
 
 IN the prosecution of his Work on the " Christian and Civic Economy of Large 
 Towns," the Author has two leading objects in view. The first is, to point out the way 
 in which the fearful deficiency, both of common and of Christian Education, among the 
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 petuating their habit of attendance upon the Schools and Churches that may be instituted. 
 
 The chief matters that stand connected with this subject are embraced in the First 
 A r olume, the contents of which are as follow : 
 
 No. I. The Advantage and Possibility of Assimilating a Town to a Country Parish. 
 II. On the Influence of Locality in Towns. 
 
 III. Application of the Principle of Locality to the Work of a Christian Minister. 
 
 IV. The Effect of Locality in adding to the useful Establishments of a Town. 
 V. & VI. On Church Patronage. 
 
 VII. On Church Offices. 
 
 VIII. On Sabbath Schools. 
 
 There is another object distinct from the former, and certainly of subordinate import- 
 ance to it, yet more fitted we believe, to attract general notice, than any argument which 
 can be delivered on the subject of a right ecclesiastical system for our Large Towns. 
 What we advert to, is the Economic condition of their people, with the peculiar kind of 
 influence to which it is exposed, from the failure and fluctuations of trade, and from that 
 habit of careless expenditure, to which there are so many temptations in every crowded 
 society. This will lead directly to the consideration of those artificial expedients of relief, 
 in the shape of Poor's Rates, Assessments, and Public Subscriptions, all of which have 
 aggravated the evils which they were intended to remedy. Blended as this matter is 
 with the question of Pauperism, and the way in which, by Saving Banks, and other In- 
 stitutions for fostering the providential habits of the people, their whole subsistence may 
 safely be devolved on their own capabilities, aided, when occasion requires, by the charity 
 of individuals, it is thought that the whole of the Second Volume will be required for 
 the purpose of doing full justice to so wide and interesting an argument. 
 
 Of this Volume the following Numbers have been published : 
 
 No. IX. On the relation which subsists between the Christian and the Civic Economy 
 
 of Towns. 
 
 X. On the Bearing which a Right Christian Economy has on Pauperism. 
 XI. On the Bearing which a Right Civic Economy has on Pauperism. 
 XII. On the present State and future Prospects of Pauperism in Glasgow. In 
 the Press. 
 
 The progress which the work may subsequently take, cannot yet be announced with 
 precision. But the probability of a Third Volume, on the policy and influence of many 
 of our distinct City Institutions, is contemplated. Among these, Prisons, Penitentiaries, 
 Infirmaries, and Asylums for the various kinds of impotency and disease, hold a fore- 
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 with Quarterly Numbers, instead of being able to accomplish the w r hole by one act of 
 publication. 
 
 The First Volume of the above Work may be had in boards, Price 8s. 6d. 
 or any Numbers to complete the Volume.
 
 WORKS 
 PUBLISHED BY CHALMERS & COLLINS, GLASGOW. 
 
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 Author of Remarks on the Internal Evidence for the Truth of Revealed Religion. 
 
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 THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, 
 
 By THOMAS a KEMPIS. 
 Translated from the Latin, by JOHN PAYNE. 
 
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 By THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. 
 
 Minister of St. John's Church, Glasgow. 
 
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 PARISH OF ST. JOHN'S, GLASGOW. 
 
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 STATEMENT 
 
 IN REGARD TO THE 
 
 PAUPERISM OF GLASGOW, 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 EXPERIENCE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 LAST EIGHT YEARS. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D, 
 
 MINISTER OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, GLASGOW. 
 
 GLASGOW: 
 
 PRINTED FOR CHALMERS AND COLLINSj 
 
 WATJGH AND INNES, EDINBURGH J 
 
 R. M. TIMS, DUBLIN; 
 AND G. AND W. B. WHITTAKER, LONDON* 
 
 1823.
 
 Printed by W. Collins & Co. 
 Glasgow.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS Pamphlet was brought to its present state 
 some weeks ago, when its further progress wa,s 
 arrested by a pretty severe illness. This will ex- 
 plain the abruptness of its termination. 
 
 I meant to have subjoined some additional re- 
 commendations of the parochial system in large 
 towns ; more especially from its bearings both on 
 the economic well-being, and on the Christian 
 education of the working classes. But my atten- 
 tion is now called, for a time, by other duties, from 
 the whole of this interesting argument. 
 
 It may very naturally be asked, why I should 
 publish a work ere I have extended it so far as I 
 originally designed. To this question several 
 replies may be made. First, there was a pretty 
 general imagination that I had relinquished my 
 charge in Glasgow, because of the misgiving of 
 my schemes for the extinction of pauperism, whilst, 
 in fact, throughout the various stages of this opera- 
 tion, we have felt all along the most overflowing 
 prosperity. Secondly, a no less general imagina- 
 tion is, that though the plan may have succeeded 
 with us, it will fail in the hands of another, and is
 
 not imitable in other parishes. It is of importance 
 to the cause of truth that this error also should be 
 rectified. And, lastly, though I had no other 
 reason for the step, it were enough that I made 
 these few sheets the vehicle of the communications 
 which I have so recently obtained from my Dea- 
 cons, on the state and management of their respec- 
 tive districts and of which I honestly think that 
 they are more fitted to impress a right conviction 
 on the subject of pauperism than all that I have 
 ever written. These precious memorials will be 
 found in a lengthened Note towards the end of 
 the Pamphlet. 
 
 I have only to add, that there are certain nu- 
 merical affirmations connected with the general 
 statistics of the city, which were submitted to Mr. 
 Cleland on their way to the press.
 
 STATEMENT 
 
 REGARD TO THE 
 
 PAUPERISM OF GLASGOW. 
 
 THE population of St. John's, though not the 
 greatest, is above the average population of the 
 Parishes in Glasgow. By a survey made between 
 the Whitsundays of 1818 and 1819, under my 
 own superintendence, its whole number of inha- 
 bitants was 10,304. Part of it was afterwards 
 transferred to the newly formed Parish of St. 
 James', which reduced its population to 8,294. 
 At the beginning of 1820, about a year after my 
 own survey, there was another made, under the 
 authority of the Magistrates, for the whole city, 
 and by which it appears that the population had 
 increased to 8,366. This tallies with my own 
 observation of the new buildings that had been 
 built, and additional families that have come into 
 the parish. It is, therefore, the more remarkable, 
 that, by the Government Census in 1821, the po- 
 pulation should have fallen back to 7965. And 
 certain it is, that, by the emigrations of the inter-
 
 vening period, which was a period of great dis- 
 tress in Glasgow, many of the tenements were left 
 empty. There was a general diminution of inha- 
 bitants from this cause over the whole of Glasgow ; 
 the population of the ten city parishes having in 
 1820 been 73,796, and in 1821, only 72,7&5. 
 Still, under all these fluctuations, the population 
 of St. John's maintained its superiority over the 
 average of the other parishes. It has besides, a 
 very great extent of unoccupied ground, on which 
 there have lately been many new erections, both 
 of public works and of dwelling places so that its 
 population increases rapidly. 
 
 But, while the population of this parish is above 
 the average of Glasgow, its wealth is very greatly 
 beneath the average. With the exception of about 
 twenty families, it may be regarded as altogether 
 a plebeian district; and more especially abounding 
 in that class of operatives who are most affected 
 by the reverses and difficulties to which every 
 manufacturing place is liable. And beside the 
 weavers, there is a very large body of labourers, 
 whose employment fluctuates with the season, and 
 who are often forced to suspend work for many 
 days at a time. It is difficult to institute a pre- 
 cise comparison as to wealth between this and any 
 other of the poorer parishes in Glasgow. But 
 there are two criteria that must afford a tolerably 
 near approximation to the truth. 
 
 The first is the number of household servants
 
 in each parish relative to its whole population. 
 From the valuable works of Mr. Cleland* it ap- 
 pears, that the proportion of servants is least in 
 St. John's, being only 1 to SSfWk of the popula- 
 
 * We would strongly recommend to Mr. Cleland, that, in any of his 
 future surveys of Glasgow, he should present distinct parochial lists of 
 all the other occupations, as well as of the household servants. He has 
 indeed furnished us with a general table of the occupations for the whole 
 city. But it were interesting to know what the accurate proportions are, 
 in which those of the operative ranks are distributed in each particular parish 
 when, we are satisfied, that it will be found that the natural poverty of 
 a district and its artificial pauperism bear no relation to each other. 
 
 It gives us pleasure to find that the labours of this most industrious and 
 devoted statist are now recognised by those who are best qualified to appre- 
 ciate their importance. In the last publication of a Government census, 
 we meet with the following well-merited testimony to the worth and im- 
 portance of his works the more flattering, hi that it is far the fullest acknow- 
 ledgment which has been bestowed upon any returns from any part of the 
 empire. " It would be unjust not to mention in this place, that Mr. Cle- 
 land has transmitted printed documents containing very numerous and very 
 useful statistical details concerning the city and suburbs of Glasgow ; and 
 that the example has produced imitation in some other of the principal 
 towns in Scotland, though not to the same extent of minute investigation by 
 which Mr. Cleland's labours are distinguished." 
 
 It gives us still more pleasure to find that these valuable digests are on 
 the eve of being translated into French and that some of the most eminent 
 disciples of political science on the Continent have expressed the high sense 
 which they have of their importance as furnishing indeed the only solid 
 materials on which the true philosophy of economics can be reared. Mr. 
 Say, well known as an economist in this country, and over all Europe? 
 witnesses of one of Mr. Cleland's publications, " that the multitude of 
 documents which it contains, and the minute details with which they are 
 accompanied, is truly astonishing that by such exertions as those of Sir 
 John Sinclair and Mr. Cleland, Scotland is now the country of the world 
 that is best known, and will serve as a model of all others in regard to 
 statistics and that he will certainly make use of the precious documents 
 which the work of the latter gentleman furnishes."
 
 8 
 
 tion. In some of the parishes, it is so great as 
 1 to 6ro 7 o 7 o of the population. The next lowest in 
 the scale is Blackfriars. St. John's, however, is 
 absolutely the lowest. And I am informed by 
 Mr. Cleland, that he includes shop-boys and others 
 who run the errands or wait on the retail of that 
 little merchandise, which is carried on to a very 
 great extent among the ground-storys of the 
 Gallowgate. This reduces the household servants 
 to a still smaller number ; and, indeed, there are 
 very few of our families that have one. 
 
 The second criterion is very properly not ac- 
 cessible to public observation. Nor could I have 
 obtained access to it, had it not been known that 
 my single object was to determine the relative 
 wealth of St. John's parish, taken in the gross, to 
 that of the other parishes of Glasgow. This can 
 be very satisfactorily done by an examination of 
 the assessment books. In Glasgow the inhabitants 
 are assessed for the support of the poor, not ac- 
 cording to the valued rent of their houses, but 
 according to their estimated property and by a 
 somewhat laborious process, the items of any pa- 
 rish can be extracted from the general mass, and 
 when'added together, give the whole amount that 
 is charged upon that parish. I extracted the sums 
 only, and have lost all remembrance of the names 
 to which they were annexed. The result was 
 most gratifying. The whole assessment for the 
 poor of Glasgow last year was ^9,213 4>s. 6d.
 
 9 
 
 and of this sum the parish of St. John's contri- 
 buted about al40, or about T& of the whole. 
 This second criterion points to about the same 
 conclusion with the first for as this parish con- 
 tains within it, relatively, the least number of 
 household servants, so it pays both absolutely and 
 relatively the least to the assessment. 
 
 It was of this poorest, then, of our city parishes, 
 that I felt the confidence of being at length able 
 to meet and to manage its pauperism, without 
 drawing any supply from the fund raised by as- 
 sessment. I did not know, at the commencement 
 of our undertaking, that it was the poorest. But 
 I was at least sure, that it fell greatly beneath the 
 average of all the parishes in wealth and that its 
 pauperism, under the ordinary treatment, should 
 have cost more than a tenth of the whole expense 
 for the poor in Glasgow, or, at the rate of expen- 
 diture for some years, upwards of ^1400 an- 
 nually. For the achievement of this object, all 
 that I required was the free command and use 
 of the weekly collection received at my church 
 door, amounting at that time to j400 a year. 
 And with this sum I could have undertaken any 
 other of the Glasgow parishes, and been just as 
 confident of a favourable result as I was with the 
 parish of St. John's. 
 
 The process has been so often explained, that, 
 at present, I shall give a very brief description of 
 it. I undertook, from the outset, the expense of 
 
 B
 
 10 
 
 all my then sessional poor, amounting to 
 a year ; but as my yearly collection was a400, 
 I withdrew by this arrangement YJ5 from the 
 general support of the poor in Glasgow. The 
 only return which I could then venture to hold 
 out for this sacrifice, was, that I should send no 
 new poor, either casual or permanent, to the Town 
 Hospital, whence the fund by assessment was dis- 
 tributed among all the poor of the city. It is 
 evident, that under this arrangement, that insti- 
 tution would, by the operation of death, be gra- 
 dually lightened of the pauperism that they had 
 received in former years from that district of the 
 city which now formed the parish of St. John's, 
 and would be at length relieved from it alto- 
 gether. 
 
 The attentive reader will at once perceive, that 
 the success of this undertaking all hinges on the 
 management of the new cases or on the way in 
 which the new applicants for parochial relief were 
 met by the dispensers of the parochial charity. 
 The old pauperism, then on the Town Hospital, 
 behoved to die away. Even the then existing 
 pauperism of %%5 a year, that was upheld by the 
 collection, must ultimately, and at no great dis- 
 tance of time, disappear and the essential ques- 
 tion, that could only be determined by experience, 
 was, by what amount of new pauperism will the 
 old be replaced ? 
 
 By a very numerous class, this was held to be a
 
 11 
 
 visionary scheme; and visionary, on the ground 
 that no collection could possibly stand out against 
 the demands of the poor, in a populous, and, at the 
 same time, plebeian city parish. We believe, 
 that of those who opposed it most keenly, and 
 who anticipated its failure most sanguinely, no one 
 ever dreamed of a failure from any other cause 
 than a deficiency in our pecuniary means. It was 
 never once imagined, that we should be embar- 
 rassed by an excess j or, that instead of having to 
 give in, because of a short-coming which had to be 
 made good, as in other parishes, from the fund by 
 assessment, we should have to look about in quest 
 of a safe and right absorbent, for our yearly sur- 
 plus. 
 
 Another class, not so numerous as the former, 
 thought that our success was possible; but possible 
 only on the strength of a collection which, even 
 at the outset, was unusually great, and of which 
 they perhaps thought, that from the liberality of 
 a large and an attached congregation, it could be 
 augmented indefinitely. The one class deemed it 
 a chimerical enterprise in any hands. The other 
 class held it possible by us, but not imitable by 
 others. It is hoped, that a plain statement of the 
 fact may help to clear away both of these wrong 
 imaginations, which were very prevalent at the 
 outset of our undertaking, and which, even yet, 
 are very far from being dissipated. 
 
 I had two congregations, a day and an evening
 
 12 
 
 one ; the first of these wealthy, the second poor. 
 So long as the evening service lasted, which it did 
 from September, 1819, to June, 1823, there did 
 not one farthing of the day collection go to the 
 support of new cases. This day collection, the 
 only one chargeable with a magnitude that dis- 
 tanced all imitation, was employed in keeping up, 
 and occasionally extending the allowances of those 
 sessional poor, whom we found already on the 
 roll, at the outset of our proceedings; and what 
 remained, after the fulfilment of this purpose, has 
 been chiefly expended in the endowment of parish 
 schools. All the new applications, for three years 
 and nine months, have been met by the evening 
 collection ; and with a sum not exceeding e80 
 a-year, have we been able to provide for all the 
 newly admitted pauperism, both casual and regu- 
 lar. " 
 
 It is true, that in the winter of 1819-20, extra- 
 ordinary measures were resorted to, for alleviating 
 the distresses of that period. In particular, there 
 was a subscription for the city at large, and a 
 public distribution of soup, by the Town Hospi- 
 tal, for all the other parishes of Glasgow but St. 
 John's. Whatever opinion may be entertained 
 respecting the wisdom, or the efficacy of these 
 measures, it was obviously expedient, that our 
 parish should stand on the same level, in respect 
 of this apparent advantage, with the other parishes. 
 A visible difference, in this matter, was certainly
 
 13 
 
 not desirable at the outset of our undertaking; 
 and, in the then violent and distempered state of 
 the public feeling, would not have been safe. Our 
 people therefore shared in the subscription ; and 
 we had also our miniature kitchen, with its dis- 
 tributions of soup, among those poor of the pa- 
 rochial families who required it. I felt it grievous 
 thus to subject any of my people to the humiliat- 
 ing exposure of such an application : so, that in- 
 stead of being mortified, I was greatly comforted 
 and restored, by the almost universal contempt in 
 which this said kitchen was held by them. Their 
 conduct, on that occasion, was an admirable com- 
 ment on the memorable saying of one of my female 
 parishioners, who is now in her grave a saying 
 worthy of the land that gave her birth, and which 
 I should like to circulate, and be impressed on all 
 our population. An allowance from a public 
 charity was offered to her, and her reply was, 
 " that she would not have the name of it, for all 
 the worth of it." 
 
 The kitchen cost us twenty pounds and sixpence, 
 and all our other expenses connected with that dis- 
 tressing period, did not exceed a hundred pounds. 
 
 As to our regular and ordinary proceedings, it 
 should be remarked, that in one particular, the 
 expenditure of our parish must vary in the style of 
 it, from that of the other Glasgow parishes, which 
 are connected with the Town Hospital. It is 
 upon this institution mainly, that are laid the in-
 
 14 
 
 cidental or occasional expenses, which are incurred 
 by those who pass in England under the denomi- 
 nation of casual poor. We, of course, have to 
 meet the demands of these, as well as of the new 
 applicants whom it is necessary to admit upon the 
 roll, as the subjects of a regular allowance. But 
 the expense arising from this quarter has, of late, 
 been rapidly diminishing. It was greatest at first, 
 partly from the hardships of the times, and partly 
 too, perhaps, from inexperience in the treatment 
 of those applications which wont to be managed 
 by the Town Hospital. From the account sub- 
 mitted to me by the Treasurer of our evening 
 fund, it appears that the whole sum charged upon 
 him, from September 30th, 1822, to August 1st, 
 1823, being a period often months, for occasional 
 expenses, was \4f 3s. 
 
 But the most interesting question relates to the 
 number of those who have been admitted upon 
 our fund, as regular or permanent paupers. The 
 following is an account of them, during the period, 
 from October 1st, 1819, to July 1st, 1823, being 
 a period of three years and nine months. 
 
 The number of paupers who have been admitted 
 on the ground of general indigence is thirteen. 
 Their monthly expense is j2 13s. 4d. and their 
 yearly is a32. 
 
 The number admitted on the ground of extra- 
 ordinary and hopeless disease is, two ; one of them 
 being a Lunatic, and the other Deaf and Dumb.
 
 15 
 
 Their monthly expense is \ 4s. 8d. and their 
 yearly, 14< 16s. 
 
 The number admitted on the ground of that 
 necessity which springs from crime is five ; there 
 having been two illegitimate children, and three 
 families of runaway husbands admitted upon the 
 fund. Their monthly expense is \ 12s. 6d. 
 and their yearly is \$ 10s. 
 
 The whole number of regular paupers who have 
 been admitted on the parochial funds of St. John's, 
 for three years and nine months, is twenty, at a 
 monthly expense of 5 10s. 6d. and a yearly ex- 
 pense of 66 6s. during which period there has 
 not one been sent to the Town Hospital, or made 
 chargeable, in any way, on the fund by assess- 
 ment.* 
 
 We have separated the paupers into classes, 
 for we think that the question, whether any legal 
 provision for indigence is required by the natural 
 state and necessities of any population, should be 
 decided by the first of these classes alone, and not 
 by any, or both of the succeeding ones. We think, 
 that institutions for Disease might be supported 
 to the uttermost extent of the demand for them ; 
 and even though legalized and upheld by assess- 
 
 * It is right to mention here, that our sick have occasional attendance 
 and medicine, from the District Surgeons, belonging to the Town Hospital. 
 The town is divided into four departments, and a Surgeon attached to each 
 of them. The parish of St. John's forms part of two of these departments.
 
 16 
 
 ment, as the county Asylums for Lunacy in Eng- 
 land, we can see none of the indefinite mischief 
 and corruption in such a practice, that there un- 
 doubtedly is in our present generalized pauperism. 
 We further hold, in regard to the third class, that 
 there ought to be no public or ordained aliment, 
 tending directly to the multiplication of crimes; 
 and so, the question with us, whether there should 
 be such an economy as that of our existing pau- 
 perism, resolves itself into the question, whether, 
 apart from the disease, which ought to be pro- 
 vided for, and from the immorality, which ought 
 not to be provided for, there be really any thing 
 in the circumstances of society that necessarily 
 creates such an amount of indigence, as to require 
 any other securities for its relief, than the unforced 
 sympathies of our nature. 
 
 Our own previous convictions upon this subject 
 have been strengthened into a full and settled as- 
 surance, by the experience which we have now 
 recorded. That, in a plebeian and manufacturing 
 city parish, with upwards of 8000 inhabitants, there 
 should have been admitted only twenty paupers of 
 all classes, in the space of three years and nine 
 months; and still more, that of the first class, or 
 the class of general indigence, the number ad- 
 mitted should only be thirteen, and the yearly 
 expense of them 32, is to us an abundantly de- 
 cisive proof of a legal or compulsory provision, in 
 any circumstances, being wholly uncalled for.
 
 17 
 
 There have two deaths occurred among these 
 newly admitted cases. They are now beginning 
 to decline at the one end, while they are slowly 
 augmenting at the other; and we have the confi- 
 dence, that by persevering in our present manage- 
 ment, their number will not be sensibly greater 
 than it is now. Meanwhile, the original pauperism 
 is dying rapidly away ; and with a right and care- 
 ful administration, we certainly are not very far 
 from our maximum of new cases. But even though 
 that maximum should at length be double of our 
 present number, still there would be the exhibition 
 of a parish, with the extent of population that we 
 have now specified, and having the whole of its 
 regular pauperism upheld for an expenditure of 
 little more than a hundred pounds in the year. 
 
 But without waiting for such a result, and even 
 while a very large remainder of the old pauperism, 
 that was the fruit of the former system, is still 
 upon us, and not yet cleared away, yet with this 
 disadvantage, the exhibition of our present state 
 is sufficiently impressive of the truth, that there is 
 really no inherent or essential necessity for a com- 
 pulsory poor-rate. It will be recollected, that our 
 undertaking commenced on the 1st of October, 
 1819, and that, at that time, there was a sessional 
 pauperism already formed of %%5 a-year, which 
 we took upon the fund raised by our day collec- 
 tion. The number of sessional poor was then 117, 
 of whom, about a year afterwards, nineteen were
 
 18 
 
 transferred to St. James', at the formation of that 
 parish. The original number then, of sessional 
 poor belonging to our parish, as it now stands, 
 may be taken at ninety-eight, of whom, by March, 
 1823, twenty-eight had died, and thirteen had 
 been displaced from the roll, in consequence of a 
 scrutiny. This brought down our number of old 
 poor to fifty-seven, to which, if the twenty that 
 have been taken on are added, the number of ses- 
 sional paupers, on the whole, has fallen from 
 ninety-eight to seventy-seven. 
 
 This result hath much exceeded our first anti- 
 cipations. It would have been more than enough, 
 if we had kept our list of poor from increasing, 
 excluded as we now were, from the old privilege 
 of relieving ourselves to any extent, by sending 
 both new applicants, and paupers already on our 
 list, to the Town Hospital. The door of that in- 
 stitution was now shut against us; and we had, 
 with our collection alone, to meet every case that 
 offered itself from the population. In these cir- 
 cumstances, we did lay our account with an in- 
 crease both in the number and expense of our 
 poor ; and the surplus of \75 a-year, kept in our 
 hands by the new arrangement, was for the ex- 
 press purpose of meeting this increase. It turned 
 out, therefore, a most agreeable result, when we 
 found that this surplus was not called for. The 
 more that our hopes were overpassed, the more 
 have our principles been strengthened.
 
 19 
 
 In consequence of the complex system from 
 which we had to be extricated, the diagram of our 
 operations is itself a little complicated ; and they 
 who have only the power or the patience to look 
 at one part of it, have been heard to say, Where 
 lies the mighty achievement of reducing the paro- 
 chial poor from ninety-eight to seventy-seven? 
 But this is not the achievement. Though there 
 had been no reduction at all, though our present 
 number had still been ninety-eight, and there was 
 no prospect of bringing it any lower, there would 
 still remain that peculiarity which is the only one 
 that we deem to be of any importance. We have, 
 during the whole period of these doings, sent no 
 new cases to the Town Hospital. We now draw 
 nothing from the fund by assessment, and main- 
 tain the whole poor of the most plebeian parish in 
 the city, not by means of a great collection, but 
 by means of such a fraction of it as would con- 
 stitute a very ordinary collection, and as might 
 easily be realized in any of the parishes. Were 
 they, in like manner, to strike off from the Town 
 Hospital, each, with such a number of sessional 
 poor as it was fully able for at the outset, the valu- 
 able service which they could render to the pub- 
 lic, would not lie in reducing their own lists of 
 pauperism it would lie simply in their transmit- 
 ting no case to the fund by assessment. Even 
 though the whole sessional pauperism of Glasgow 
 were, under such an arrangement, to remain sta-
 
 20 
 
 tionary, there is still a most obvious answer to the 
 question about the good that should be done by 
 it. For, under such an arrangement, the Hospi- 
 tal would, in a few years, die a natural death 
 the fund by assessment would be relieved of all 
 its charges ; and a Scottish pauperism, in the pure 
 and original style of it, would wholly supersede 
 that hurtful economy, which hath entailed the 
 greatest of all its domestic evils on the people of 
 England. 
 
 The whole yearly expense of our original ses- 
 sional poor, and newly admitted cases, is about 
 
 But our actual expense varies from this by the 
 operation of two causes. The first is, that the 
 poor of all the parishes in Glasgow are still inter- 
 changeable. They have no law of residence for 
 their mutual protection from each other's paupers. 
 And, accordingly, the prediction of our adversa- 
 ries was, that if we succeeded at all, it would be 
 by the efflux of our half-starved and half-provided 
 poor into the other parishes. But it has turned 
 out quite differently. At the beginning of March, 
 1823, fifteen of our poor had been removed to 
 other parishes, and twenty-nine of their poor had 
 been received by us from other parishes so that, 
 our imports exceeded our exports, at that term, by 
 fourteen, whose expense, at the average of 40s. 
 a-year, comes to 28 over and above the natural 
 cost of our parochial system of management.
 
 21 
 
 It is not this expense, however, which forms 
 our heaviest loss, from the balance being so much 
 against us. A greater and more permanent bur- 
 den comes upon us from the different ages at which 
 our poor go out to other parishes, and at which 
 we admit their poor in return. Only one of our 
 newly formed cases has left us so that, all the 
 rest who have taken leave, had at least a seniority 
 upon them as far back as September, 1819. Where- 
 as, our imported poor came to us in all the possi- 
 ble degrees of seniority as paupers. The fifteen 
 who have gone, had, averagely speaking, a shorter 
 period to remain in the world, than the twenty- 
 nine who have come in their places. This, while 
 it lasts, will always expose us to a much slower 
 process of relief, than we would otherwise have 
 had by the operation of death. The truth is, that 
 a law of residence protecting every parish of Glas- 
 gow from all the rest, would have restricted our 
 expenditure to our own original and newly formed 
 poor the former of whom must soon, in the 
 course of nature, have waxed old, and disappear- 
 ed and the latter, at our exceeding slow rate of 
 admission, must always constitute a very small and 
 manageable family. 
 
 But though we complain of this unfavourable 
 balance, as a very heavy disadvantage to our sys- 
 tem, yet we are almost glad to suffer it, because 
 of the triumphant refutation which it holds out 
 to an attempted calumny against us, that we are
 
 22 
 
 harsh to the poor a refutation the more decisive, 
 that it is a practical one, and that it is given by 
 the poor themselves. Besides, though this excess 
 of imports has turned out a burden upon our 
 system, such is the inherent vigour and efficacy 
 of the system itself, that we can stand our ground 
 against it. 
 
 A second cause which has affected our expen- 
 diture, and made it, like the former, exceed still 
 more the natural cost of the system, is, that we 
 have gone beyond our original offer to the Town 
 Hospital. By our first arrangement, all the poor 
 that had been already admitted from the ground 
 of St. John's parish, upon the funds of that insti- 
 tution, were to have remained upon it till death ; 
 and it was only in this way that we could venture 
 to promise a total relief to the assessment from all 
 charges on the account of our poor. We felt that 
 it would have been adventuring too much at the 
 first, to have offered a present relief to the Town 
 Hospital ; and we could, therefore, only at the 
 time, hold out the prospect of an eventual relief. 
 But we found the prosperity of our new system 
 to go so far beyond our anticipations, that up- 
 wards of a year ago, we extended our original of- 
 fer, and requested the Town Hospital to make 
 out a list of all the cases that were actually upon 
 their fund, and which they could trace to have 
 been admitted by them from that territorial dis- 
 trict of the city which forms the present parish of
 
 23 
 
 St. John's. It appeared, from their communica- 
 tions, that in September 1819, the whole number 
 of such who could be ascertained, amounted to 
 forty-nine. In March 1823, they had subsided, by 
 the operation of death, to thirty-four, most of 
 whom are now in extreme old age ; and from 
 whose expense, therefore, there is the prospect 
 of being speedily relieved. Even their present 
 cost is moderate and manageable, being only 
 about s90 a-year. 
 
 By assembling together, then, these three dis- 
 tinct items of our disbursement, we attain the sum 
 total of our present and actual expenditure. 
 
 The Town Hospital poor cost us 90 
 
 The original sessional poor of 1819, 
 
 inclusive of the imports, 152 
 
 And the new poor of three years 
 and a-half from the commence- 
 ment, during which time we 
 have wholly intercepted the flow 
 of pauperism into the Town Hos- 
 pital, from more than one tenth 
 of the poorest population in the 
 city, 66 
 
 Making a total yearly expense of 308 
 
 The actual expense, then, is very manageable, 
 even after the total relief of the assessment has
 
 24 
 
 been accomplished, after that we have ceased to 
 draw from the compulsory fund for any part of 
 our pauperism, whether it be original or newly 
 formed. And, when we join to this consideration 
 the prospect that lies before us, the slow rate at 
 which the new pauperism may be admitted, and 
 the fast rate at which, in the course of nature, the 
 old will certainly disappear, we cannot doubt, 
 that with a simple perseverance in the wonted 
 style of management, we have reached our con- 
 clusive emancipation from compulsory pauperism. 
 
 We hold ourselves now prepared for the ques- 
 tion, whether the process which we have attempt- 
 ed to narrate as clearly and explicitly as we can, 
 be really imitable in other parishes ? 
 
 The two distinct considerations that enter into 
 this question, are the means and the management; 
 the means by which the expenditure is defrayed, 
 and the management by which that expenditure 
 may be kept down to a state of moderation, that 
 is altogether indefinite. 
 
 As to the means for meeting the expenditure, 
 it should be observed, that we have exhibited our 
 own expenditure in its three distinct branches 
 and that, partly for the purpose of demonstrating 
 with what facility the parochial system may be 
 introduced, and be prosperously carried forward, 
 even in our parishes of most slender means and 
 most indigent population. 
 
 Our whole regular and annual expenditure,
 
 25 
 
 then, it has been seen, amounts to ^308, the first 
 part of which, or about j90 a-year, is incurred 
 by the charge of those remaining poor who were 
 upon the funds of the Town Hospital, at the com- 
 mencement of our undertaking. Now, no other 
 parish is called upon to charge itself with this ex- 
 pense at all. It was an expense that did not enter 
 into any original plan of ours, and so far, there- 
 fore, from being held to operate against the paro- 
 chial system, is truly, in our case, the fruit of its 
 very great and unexpected prosperity. Into the 
 question of imitability by other parishes, it can, 
 with no propriety, be at all admitted. There is 
 no reason why they should hold out any present 
 relief to the Town Hospital. They do enough, if 
 they send no new cases, and thus afford a sure 
 eventual relief, which will, at length, by the op- 
 eration of death, become complete and conclu- 
 sive. 
 
 As to the second item, it will be observed that, 
 in our case, it is greater by s28 a-year, than it 
 naturally ought to be from the excess of our im- 
 ported pauperism. Now, in any argument about 
 the power of imitation by other parishes, this also 
 ought to be deducted. For so soon as it comes 
 to be a question about all the parishes, this ex- 
 pense cannot light on any one of them but by the 
 relief of some of the others. If it operate in one 
 quarter against the system, it will just operate as 
 much in favour of the system somewhere else. 
 
 D
 
 And besides, should the plan be adopted gener- 
 ally, this could be provided for by a general ar- 
 rangement or understanding, whereby each might 
 be as effectually protected from the pauperism of 
 all the rest, as by the law of parochial settlement 
 in Scotland. This law might even be obtained 
 for the parishes of Glasgow. 
 
 But, lastly, we are quite sensible, that in several 
 of the parishes a still greater degree of indulgence 
 would be necessary, ere they could be put into the 
 condition of working back their way to a Scot- 
 tish economy of pauperism. The parish of St. 
 John's obtained a very fair outset by the simple 
 arrangement of being left to its own collection, 
 which, at the time, was -400 a-year, and to its own 
 sessional poor, whose expense, at the time was 
 %%5 a-year. The surplus of IJ5 was then 
 deemed necessary for the contingencies of a yet 
 untried speculation; and it is well, that for the 
 encouragement of similar attempts in other places, 
 the point has not only been carried, but greatly 
 over-carried. Nevertheless, for some such attempts 
 in Glasgow, another arrangement is indispensa- 
 ble. The truth is, that in a good many of the 
 parishes, the collection, instead of exceeding the 
 cost of their sessional poor, falls greatly short of 
 it. Still, however, this does not cause, even in 
 their instance, the experiment to be impossible 
 it only makes it necessary, that with them there 
 should be a different sort of initial adjustment
 
 27 
 
 from that which was granted to us. For ought 
 we know, the expense of the sessional poor in 
 some other parish, may be towards a400 a-year, 
 while their collection may not much exceed 100 
 a-year. That such a parish might start fair, we, 
 would not object to the whole of its sessional poor 
 being devolved on the fund by assessment, even 
 as a great part of them is already so devolved. 
 After this was done, the Kirk-Session of that pa- 
 rish would be in fair circumstances for the trial. 
 It would at the outset have no poor at all and 
 though it had little more than a hundred a-year of 
 collection, yet, restricted as its expenditure would 
 then be to its new cases only, it would, with our 
 most simple and practicable management, weather 
 for years the coming applications. It would have 
 to do with nought but our third branch of expen- 
 diture, that in three years and a-half has only at- 
 tained to QQ a-year. And during this period, 
 there has disappeared between one-third and one- 
 half of our old pauperism, that is now going off 
 at a rate of extinction which accelerates every 
 month, and that, in a little time longer, must van- 
 ish altogether. As to the old pauperism, there 
 should be the same proportional rate of extinc- 
 tion in all the parishes and as to the expense 
 of the new cases, it ought not to be greater in 
 any of the parishes. Nay, it could, and it ought 
 to be made less. Had it not been for the pauper- 
 ism that springs direct from immorality, and which
 
 28 
 
 ought to be abolished, our yearly expense for new 
 cases would only have been a47 a-year. And had 
 it not been for the pauperism that springs from 
 the disease which ought to be provided for by the 
 philanthropic institutions of our land, this expense 
 would have been farther reduced to e32 a-year. 
 And when with means so slender, a compulsory 
 pauperism can be wholly superseded, if there be 
 spirit and patriotism in our land, shall that labour 
 of management be withheld, which might avert 
 the footsteps of this baleful visitant from our 
 borders ? 
 
 This brings us to the second great considera- 
 tion which enters into the question, whether the 
 process be imitable in other parishes. In as far as 
 the means are concerned, it appears to be abun- 
 dantly imitable. And it now only remains to un- 
 fold the perfect facility of the management. 
 
 This second topic we have all along held to be 
 the most triumphant part of our case, though it 
 be the very point on which we have met with the 
 most obstinate incredulity from others, who re- 
 peatedly ask, what the mighty and marvellous 
 secret of this management is, or wherein doth 
 the incomprehensible charm of its efficacy lie ? 
 Not we are sure in the harsh and repulsive style of 
 it. There have been outcries and exaggerations 
 to our prejudice and where was there ever an 
 administration of public charity that gave satisfac- 
 tion to all ? But in spite of this, the system is
 
 29 
 
 popular. We find it so to our cost. We long for 
 a law of residence, that might protect us from the 
 ingress which the poor have made upon us from 
 the other parishes of Glasgow. The exchange is 
 against us, and this we insist upon as a decisive re- 
 futation to the calumny, that the poor are either 
 neglected or maltreated by us. 
 
 The whole mystery and power of our manage- 
 ment, are resolvable into this. Most of us are 
 convinced, that public charity is a very great evil. 
 Most of us believe it to be a good thing, that we 
 are limited to a small yearly sum for carrying on 
 its distributions, and that we have no temptation 
 to laxity or profuseness in the open access which 
 we before had to the fund by assessment. Most 
 of us think, that we do a service to the popula- 
 tion, by dispensing, as carefully as possible, the 
 small revenue wherewith we are intrusted ; and 
 these considerations all told with greater practical 
 force upon the deacons who had the treatment of 
 the new applicants committed to them, that they 
 were restricted to the very humble collection 
 made up chiefly of halfpennies from the parochial 
 congregation. I do not hesitate to say, that my 
 reason for vesting in the deacons the charge of 
 the small evening collection alone was, that I felt 
 as if their free access to the large day collection 
 would have insensibly brought on the same relax- 
 ation in their management, which access to the 
 Town Hospital did in the management of our el-
 
 30 
 
 tiers under the former system. I thought that 
 the work would be the better done, the smaller 
 the provision was that I assigned for the doing of 
 it for I never once conceived that the success of 
 it depended on the magnitude of our provision, 
 but solely on the truth and efficacy of our princi- 
 ples. These principles the majority of my dea- 
 cons have in common with myself; and they, ac- 
 cordingly thought, that in warding off the paro- 
 chial charity, as much as in them lay, from the 
 families under their care, they were warding off 
 from them a very great mischief. And their sys- 
 tem of treatment has not, generally speaking, been 
 a system of neglect, but a system of firm and pa- 
 tient, yet withal, kind investigation the object 
 of which has been, not to facilitate the access of 
 applicants to the parochial charity, but, if possi- 
 ble, to divert it not to help them on, but rather 
 to help them off and for this purpose, to try ev- 
 ery previous expedient of relief j and to make that 
 humiliating expedient of a supply from the poor's 
 fund, the very last which ought to be resorted to. 
 In the prosecution of this truly benevolent work, 
 many doubtless have been thrown back upon their 
 own resources ; some have drawn more largely 
 than they otherwise would have done, from the 
 kindness of relatives and neighbours; and a few 
 more have had the benefit of certain easy services 
 and, perhaps, liberalities, from the affluent, that 
 they might not else have experienced. But the
 
 31 
 
 success, upon the whole, has been marvellous, and 
 far beyond even my own sanguine anticipations ; 
 most delightful to my feelings certainly j and, at 
 the same time, most demonstrative to my under- 
 standing, that the dispensations of an artificial 
 pauperism are wholly uncalled for. 
 
 But it is not enough to evince the success of this 
 management. A most important point is left un- 
 told, if we keep back its perfect facility to the 
 gentlemen concerned in it. On this subject I 
 hold myself exceedingly fortunate in being able 
 to present their own written testimonies. I would 
 urge the perusal of the subjoined note on the mid- 
 dling and higher classes of Glasgow and I shall 
 indeed rejoice, if it be at all instrumental in open- 
 ing their eyes to the truth, and, at length, convin- 
 cing them by how very small a sacrifice of time 
 and labour, they might render a most important 
 service to that community of which they are the 
 members.* 
 
 * About two months ago, the following circular was sent round among 
 the Deacons of St. John's : 
 
 Glasgow, August, llth, 1823. 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 You will oblige me much by your earliest possible re- 
 ply to the following Queries : 
 
 1. Of what Proportion is it in St. John's Parish that you are Deacon? 
 
 2. What is its population, as nearly as you can infer, from your latest 
 survey ? 
 
 3. How many Paupers belong to it that are upon the Deacon's Fund ? 
 
 4. How many applications may you have for Parochial Relief, monthly 
 or quarterly, as near as you can remember ?
 
 32 
 
 This is the rationale of the process. A deacon 
 when first appointed to his district, may find it 
 
 5. What time may the business of attending to these applications, and 
 the necessary inquiries that you had to make in consequence of them, have 
 cost you upon the whole ? 
 
 6. Are the applications more or less frequent since you entered upon 
 your office ? 
 
 7. Could you state how much time you are required to sacrifice, per 
 week, or per month, in making the requisite investigations that you are ac- 
 tually called to ? 
 
 8. Do you think, that a man in ordinary business would find the task of 
 meeting the pauperism of such a district as yours, so laborious as to put 
 him to any sensible inconvenience? 
 
 9. Will you have the goodness to state any circumstances connected 
 with your management, that you think might elucidate the nature of the 
 duties or attentions that you have had to discharge ? 
 
 I am, Dear Sir, 
 
 Your's most gratefully, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 To this we subjoin the following large extracts from their replies, and 
 make no apology to the reader for presenting him with a set of testimonies 
 giyen by men, whose office and opportunities stamp a purely experimental 
 character on all that proceeds from them. 
 
 I. " The latest survey was taken about a month ago, and from it I observe, 
 that this proportion contains 335 inhabitants." 
 
 " There is not at present a single pauper in this proportion upon the 
 Deacon's Fund ; nor has there occurred either an occasional or permanent 
 case, requiring assistance from this fund, since I received the charge of it 
 in the month of May, 1822." 
 
 " The number of applications for relief in this proportion has been very 
 few during the last twelve months, not amounting, to the best of my re- 
 collection, to more than seven, or about an average, one every two 
 months." 
 
 " Upon a review of these cases, I compute that I may have bestowed 
 upon them about sixteen hours in whole, or about a quarter per week, at 
 the utmost" 
 
 " All those applications for relief to which I have alluded, occurred
 
 very troublesome at the first, and perhaps alarm- 
 ingly so. There is among a part of the people a 
 
 during the first six months after accepting office ; which leaves nine months 
 during which I have not had a single application for parish relief." 
 
 " Before I could be prevailed upon to take charge of this proportion, J 
 imagined that, in consequence of my professional avocations, it would be 
 quite impossible for me to accomplish such an object ; but I was very 
 much astonished to find, after a few months trial, how simple a matter it 
 was, and how easily managed ; indeed so light and pleasant did the duty 
 seem, that I thought, if all the other proportions were equally manageable, 
 I could take upon me to manage the whole parish, and attend to my busi- 
 ness besides." 
 
 " I am of opinion that the first thing necessary to the proper discharge of 
 the office which I hold, is to get immediately acquainted with every house 
 and family in the proportion ; in order to check any imposition which may 
 otherwise be practised, and also to facilitate the investigation of every case 
 which may occur." 
 
 " Of those cases which I have above alluded to, three were of runaway 
 husbands. The first was left with two children, both under three years of 
 age, the youngest at the breast. The second case was leftwith/owr daugh- 
 ters, under ten years of age, and the youngest at the breast. The third was 
 left about three years before she applied to me, with two children under ten 
 years of age, and an adopted child, for the support of which she had nothing, 
 the father and mother having died some time before." 
 
 " All these cases appear at first sight formidable, and seemingly fit for 
 the exercise of unbounded charity, both public and private ; but with the 
 exception of the second case, (which by the bye, was one of a very interest- 
 ing nature) none of them received, nor did they require the hand of ill- 
 timed charity to assist them. It would occupy too much of your valuable 
 time, however, to enter upon the particulars of any of the cases, or explain 
 how they were treated ; but let it suffice to add, that had liberal means been 
 afforded in those cases to supply their apparent wants, their husbands 
 would never have been found out, and they and their children would have 
 been at this moment in more abject poverty than at their first application." 
 
 " I am sorry that I should have taken up so much of your time in read- 
 ing over this long answer to your important queries ; but I thought it in- 
 cumbent on me to say so much, in defence of a system, the advantages re- 
 sulting from which, both to the moral and religious character of a people, I 
 have had now so ample an opportunity of judging." 
 

 
 very natural expectation from him, and urgency 
 upon him at the outset of his ministrations and 
 
 The testimony here respecting the runaway husbands, is peculiarly im- 
 portant, and marks the close connection that obtains between the abolition 
 of pauperism, and the virtue of families. 
 
 2. " Population 320." 
 
 " No paupers on the Deacon's Fund." 
 
 " The applications, including those for temporary aid, will scarcely amomrt 
 to one in four months." 
 
 " About two hours in three months, required for the whole business of 
 attending to the various applications." 
 
 " The applications are less frequent now than when I entered upon my 
 office ; the first two years being years of peculiar distress." 
 
 " I do not think, that the task of managing the pauperism of my dis- 
 trict, would put a man, in ordinary business, to any sensible inconvenience." 
 
 " To the right and efficient discharge of my office as deacon, I deem it 
 necessary to be well acquainted with all the families of my proportion, that 
 I may be enabled to distinguish betwixt those who deserve parochial aid, 
 and those who do not, and with this knowledge I am enabled to mingle my 
 sympathies with the industrious and well deserving, and to offer the check 
 of my disapproval to any thing improper. The advice and assistance of 
 friendship, in cases of family trial or difficulty, I have known to have been 
 well received, and sometimes of great importance to poor families." 
 
 The district to which the above testimony relates, is one that contains 
 many poor families, including, as it does, the east side of Saracen's Lane. 
 
 3. " Population 466." 
 
 " Not one pauper at present." 
 
 " Have one application every five months nearly, and have had none for 
 six months and a half past." 
 
 " If the question as to the time necessary for doing the work of a deacon, 
 refer merely to the time required to investigate the cases, T would say an 
 hour in five months ; but if to attendance at the Examination of Schools, 
 making up of list of population, attendance at the church for the evening 
 collection, going to the several houses about the church seats, &c. then the 
 time must be very considerably greater; probably, from the calculation made 
 in a general way from memory, about one hour and a quarter per month.
 
 35 
 
 it is in the power of a very few to keep him in 
 considerable perplexity and occupation for some 
 
 There would be no sensible inconvenience incurred by any man from being 
 a deacon, if his duties are solely confined to the pauperism." 
 
 ** Although I have acted as a deacon for about twenty-seven months, yet 
 the cases have been so very few, that my experience has been very limited, 
 and consequently I am not able, I think, to suggest any thing which is like- 
 ly to be useful. I may, however, just remark, that I think the two most 
 requisite qualities in a deacon are, kindness and firmness kindness, that the 
 people may be perfectly persuaded he is endeavouring to do every thing for 
 their good -firmness, that he may be able to resist pathetic but ill-grounded 
 applications for relief. If he also possess some knowledge of the habits 
 and character of the poor, he will be more likely to be able to be of ser- 
 vice to them, and will run less risk of being imposed upon." 
 
 This last testimony, besides its general importance, is very valuable, in 
 that it adverts to the distinction between the duties which attach to the 
 management of the pauperism, and other duties which have been acciden- 
 tally attached to the office of deacon in the parish of St. John's. Hovr 
 it should dissipate all the exaggerating fancies that obtain upon this subject, 
 when it appears, that in their fullest enumeration, they do not require in 
 the above instance, more than an hour and a quarter per mouth. 
 
 4. " My district contains, according to a late survey, ninety-six families, 
 and a population of 448." 
 
 " The only case I have on the Deacon's Fund, is that of a foundling 
 child, which was exposed in the district, nearly three years ago, then not 
 above a few weeks old." 
 
 " I can only state having had one other application for relief, namely, 
 from an old man and his wife, who had not completed their residence in the 
 city." 
 
 " I am safe in stating the time taken up in visiting and attending to the 
 foundling child, at not more than one hour in the three months. The other 
 case may have occupied, in disposing of it, from one to two hours alto- 
 gether." 
 
 " In a district such as mine, certainly a person in ordinary business could 
 not find himself put to inconvenience in regard to the time taken up with 
 the actual cases that may occur; and were his attentions undivided by other 
 philanthropic objects, he might find abundance of leisure for entering on
 
 36 
 
 time. But let him meet with strict investigation 
 one and all of the applications that are made, and 
 
 the various direct and indirect modes of checking the growth of pauper- 
 ism." 
 
 " In this district, there are only about forty families, who may be ranked 
 among the working classes, and with these I have had almost no trouble. 
 My experience, therefore, does not carry me so far as to give the result of 
 any particular system of treating applications for parochial assistance. The 
 case mentioned of the old man and his wife, was disposed of by giving 
 them half-a-crown, and calling upon the session of their former parish, by 
 letter, in future to attend to the application." 
 
 " In order to maintain or produce a right feeling in a district, I conceive 
 it necessary, that the deacon should make himself acquainted with all its 
 families, endeavouring especially to obtain an accurate knowledge of the 
 circumstances of those who seem likely to become applicants ; and having 
 arrived at this knowledge, he has reached the most advantageous ground 
 for his subsequent operations. Does he meet with a genuine case of dis- 
 tress ? he may invite the sympathy and private charity of the neighbour- 
 hood towards it, and thereby provide for the sufferers in a far more ample 
 manner than by a parish contribution. A case in my district, of a poor 
 woman long under a lingering illness, and which terminated in her death, 
 might be adduced to show how much even of comfort sometimes arises out 
 of private charity : This person was unable, for a considerable time, to 
 maintain herself by her own earnings, and yet no desire was manifested for 
 parish aid j the neighbours, and those who had heard of her situation, came 
 forward in her behalf, so that she appeared to stand in need of nothing that 
 was necessary." 
 
 " But should the idle or worthless threaten to become clamorous, the 
 deacon will be peculiarly benefited by his previous acquaintance with 
 their dispositions and habits, and he may, even by some little act of kind- 
 ness or temporary relief, be the means of stirring up exertions which will 
 produce much more than the parish could allow a little forbearance, and 
 a few trifling marks of attention, have a wonderful effect in calming down 
 the most insolent, and of changing their tone by degrees into an opposite 
 strain. You may recollect, when I visited the district along with you, to 
 give intimation of an address in the church, we met from one man the 
 most repulsive reception -. afterwards, by way of experiment, I several 
 times visited the family, got the length of being tolerably well received,
 
 37 
 
 this at last will act upon them by a preventive 
 influence and they simply cease to apply. If it 
 
 and lately having, by accident, met the man, (for he has been some months 
 out of the district) he stopped and spoke most cordially; said he was ' now 
 doing fine,' and that his children were at school." 
 
 " Besides these, which may be termed the ordinary means of checking 
 pauperism, there are others which operate powerfully in an indirect way ; 
 such as, endeavouring to persuade the people to take advantage of the 
 Savings Bank ; circulating among them religious and philanthropic intelli- 
 gence ; having occasional meetings with them for reading such sort of intelli- 
 gence, where the higher and lower classes of the same neighbourhood, in 
 a manner come in contact with one another, as well as with the district 
 agency." 
 
 " I am indeed sorry to say, that owing to various reasons, this district of 
 your parish has been little cultivated agreeably to the above principles, and 
 for this I ought to apologize. I felt loath to resign altogether my situation 
 in your excellent court of deacons ; otherwise I should have confined my 
 attentions to another quarter of the city, which abounds with profligacy and 
 ignorance the district where my Sabbath School is planted." 
 
 5. " In reply to your queries, I beg to state, that I have charge of the poor 
 of a proportion in St John's parish, whose population amounts to 314, 
 according to a very recent survey." 
 
 " There is only one regular pauper, an orphan boy, and two who get 
 occasional assistance." 
 
 " I should imagine the applications for even occasional aid, do not exceed 
 one monthly." 
 
 " I have spent a good deal of time in the proportion, but think an hour 
 every week would be sufficient to investigate into the state of the poor. " 
 
 " Applications for relief are less frequent, because work has latterly been 
 much more abundant." 
 
 " From what I know of the mode of conducting business in Glasgow, 
 I think any man might, without sensible inconvenience, if he have the in- 
 clination, attend to the pauperism of such a proportion as mine, provided 
 his dwelling house be not very remote from the proportion of which he has 
 charge." 
 
 " It appears to me, if a deacon simply confine liis charge of a district to
 
 be his object to guide them as much as he may 
 to their own resources, all who are conscious of 
 
 granting an allowance to those who have a legal claim to relief, his labour 
 will be very small indeed ; but if he take an interest in procuring work for 
 those who find a difficulty in getting it if he endeavour to get the parents 
 to send their children to school if he give occasional assistance to those 
 who require it from sickness he will find a good deal of employment, 
 and require to exercise some discretion not to do harm where he wishes to 
 confer a benefit." 
 
 " The most unpleasant thing to be met with, as far as I have seen, are 
 people who profess to be religious, but who, either from want of principle 
 or industry, become a burden, either as direct paupers, or, what is worse, 
 borrowers of money, which they can never repay." 
 
 " P.S. You are aware the population of this proportion consists of very 
 poor people; there is only one family above the rank of operatives." 
 
 The district to which the above testimony relates is about the poorest in 
 Glasgow. I offer the following very important notice in regard to this 
 district, from a former deacon who had the charge of it, but was obliged to 
 quit it upon leaving town: " Though foreign to our subject, I may state 
 that I have received 2 2s. out of the proportion, to assist an outfit of 
 emigrants to Quebec ; and 5 or .6 from among the very poorest of them 
 for Bible and Missionary Societies. These sums tend to prove that any 
 of our proportions might be supported from its own resources." 
 
 6. " In answer to your queries of llth August, I have to state that the 
 population, as nearly as I can infer from the present year's survey, is 394 
 persons." 
 
 " No paupers at present." 
 
 " There are three or four applications per quarter. Few of these appli- 
 cations come before the Court of Deacons, in consequence of my providing 
 work for those who are able." 
 
 " The time necessary is so trifling as is not worthy of being noticed. 
 Not twenty hours per annum." 
 
 " The applications considerably less than at first ; say one to four or 
 five." 
 
 " In reply to your 8th query, I have to say, none whatever." 
 
 " The duties are simple, few in number, and easily overtaken. Good
 
 39 
 
 such resources will shun the detection and the 
 disgrace attending an unworthy application. At 
 
 will and affectionate interest in the affairs of the poor, with minute and 
 persevering inquiry in every case, to prevent imposition, will enable the 
 deacon almost to eradicate pauperism from his district." 
 
 The above district I may state, as being a very noticeable feature in Glas- 
 gow, includes the whole of Barrack Street. 
 
 7. " This proportion consists of 69 families, or 275 adults and children." 
 " There are no paupers receiving permanent aid." 
 
 " The applications for parochial relief quarterly, may average about two." , 
 " The time required in attending to the applications, &c. may have oc- 
 cupied about an hour and a half quarterly." 
 
 " The applications are less frequent since I entered upon office." 
 " I think that a man, in ordinary business, could, without any sensible 
 inconvenience to himself, meet the task of attending to the pauperism of 
 such a district as mine." 
 
 " There are no circumstances which I consider peculiar in the manage - 
 ment of my proportion, or worthy of notice in this statement." 
 
 8. " I beg to submit to you the under-noted answers to your queries of the 
 llth instant, in so far as T have had experience. 
 
 " T have charge of a proportion, the population of which, according to 
 last survey, is 32<k" 
 
 " At present there is no pauper on the fund from this proportion." 
 
 " During last year I have had two cases on the fund, and one application 
 for relief. One of the two is now dead, the other has removed to another 
 proportion of the parish ; and the application for relief was a labourer, for 
 whom work was procured." 
 
 " In consequence of the small number of applications, the time required 
 for inquiry has been very trifling." 
 
 " The applications are less frequent." 
 
 " I consider a person would sustain no sensible inconvenience, from 
 attending to the inquiry necessary for investigating the applications from 
 this proportion." 
 
 9. " T beg leave to subjoin my answers to your queries of the 1 1th August. 
 " I am deacon of a proportion of St. John's parish, where there are 102 
 
 families, 467 persons."
 
 40 
 
 the same time, his own sentiment as to the evil 
 and the disgrace of public charity, insensibly 
 
 " I have one pauper only." 
 
 " I have had not exceeding one application quarterly, on an average of 
 the last two years ; and spent perhaps an hour on each application. The 
 applications are much less frequent than at the outset." 
 
 " It would, most certainly, not in the smallest degree be inconvenient for 
 a man in business to fulfil the duties of a Deacon. When no less than 
 three proportions were under my charge, and the applications numerous in 
 proportion to what they are now, then they might have been inconvenient 
 to a man much engrossed in business, but I could not even then give the 
 necessary duties the appellation of laborious. 
 
 " I cannot offer any thing to elucidate the nature of the duties attached 
 to the office of Deacon, they are of so simple a nature ; I may, however, 
 say, that my practical experience has proved, to my entire satisfaction, that 
 by strict investigation of the applicant's situation, and the treating of the 
 case according to its circumstances, is all that is awanting to diminish the 
 number of applications." 
 
 The important peculiarity of this testimony lies in the deposition that is 
 given with regard to the necessary time and trouble that are supposed to 
 attend the investigations of our pauperism. For want of agents, there was 
 a very large department of the parish given to the gentleman who has 
 favoured me with the last communication, and which has since been divided 
 into three districts or proportions, one of which he now retains and it is 
 to this that the preceding narration refers. At the time that he had the 
 management of all the three districts, Glasgow was in circumstances of 
 extraordinary and unprecedented distress. Yet even then, he affirms, 
 " that he could not give the necessary duties the appellation of laborious." 
 I must say, that I have often felt a very great degree of comfort in this 
 experience, for it has proved how invulnerable the system is in this respect, 
 that it could stand the desertion of a great part of its agency. It cannot, 
 with this view, be too much impressed on the deacons, that though one 
 or more should find it necessary to relinquish their duties, yet, without any 
 sensible addition to their burdens, the proportion that has been thus re- 
 signed might for a time be undertaken till a successor is found. And we 
 know of nothing that is better fitted to overcome the antipathies or the 
 scruples of those who are applied to for this object, than the host of testi- 
 monies which we are enabled, by the deacons themselves, to give in behalf 
 of the perfect facility wherewith all the necessary duties can be discharged.
 
 41 
 
 spreads itself among the population ; and the more 
 surely, if there be perfect frankness in his inter- 
 
 10. " I am deacon of a proportion where, by the last survey, the popu- 
 lation consists of sixty families, and 285 individuals.'' 
 
 " There are no paupers at present upon the deacons' fund." 
 
 " I have been deacon for two years, and, during that period, have had 
 only three applications." 
 
 " As I live close to the proportion of which I am deacon, I have ready 
 access to information respecting it : I may state half an hour each time to 
 have been devoted to make the necessary inquiries." 
 
 " The whole business' of the office of deacon does not occupy me above 
 an hour and a half in the month." 
 
 " I am of opinion, that however closely engaged in business a person may 
 be, the duties attending the office of deacon can put him to no sensible in- 
 convenience. " 
 
 " The business of deacon being merely to investigate the applications for 
 relief, to ascertain that the applicants are proper objects for it, and to make 
 the payments, when they are admitted on the roll, it must be obvious that 
 the duties are so simple and so easily performed, that I am able to state little 
 in elucidation of them. I may state, however, with respect to my propor- 
 tion, that except eight or nine families in middling circumstances, the pro- 
 portion consists of poor people." 
 
 It deserves to be remarked here, that though the people are poor, and 
 the deacon is at hand, yet that his vicinity does not expose him to any 
 weight, or overwhelming urgency of applications. This holds true also of 
 the case of No. 9. proving, that for the right management of pauperism, it 
 is not at all necessary to flee the applications, but resolutely, and, we may 
 add, withal, kindly and humanely to canvass them. 
 
 11. "In compliance with your request, I send you the following answers 
 to the Queries contained in your circular of llth August." 
 
 " I am deacon of a proportion whose population, from last survey, is 2Si." 
 
 " There are no paupers, on either the deacon's fund, or on the session, 
 within the proportion." 
 
 " N. B. I think it proper to add, that though this is the case, the pro- 
 portion is one of the poorest in all St. John's parish, only three families 
 of the population being above the rank of labourers or journeymen me- 
 chanics." 
 
 F
 
 42 
 
 course, and perfect friendship in his regards to- 
 wards them. It is thus, that in ordinary times, he 
 
 " The only time I Lave been called upon to spend in the more immediate 
 duties of a deacon, was that in which I was engaged, in consequence of a 
 family, the parents of which were put into Bridewell for swindling. They 
 left two children, and the arrangements, in getting the children provided 
 for during the parents' confinement, and in getting the parents again to take 
 charge of the children, after their liberation, might occupy me, upon the 
 whole, perhaps two days. I have had no other applications." 
 
 " The time I have devoted to the general duties of my office has certainly 
 not been such as to be any serious inconvenience to any person, as it has 
 been principally occupied in getting acquainted with the people, and could, 
 therefore, be made to suit my own convenience." 
 
 " From my experience in this proportion, and also, in that part of the Salt- 
 market over which I have acted as Sabbath School Teacher, I am of opi- 
 nion, that the great point for a deacon to attend to, in warding off pau- 
 perism, is in his giving a ready attention to the real wants and distresses of 
 the people in procuring them work when in want of it in furnishing 
 medical aid in trouble and in showing the utmost readiness to aid and al- 
 leviate any unavoidable evils, such as insanity, dumbness, blindness, &c. 
 and, at the same time, in giving the most decided opposition to all claims 
 that are the effect, or visible produce of vice, idleness, intemperance, or 
 improvidence." 
 
 The deacon who has favoured me with the above deposition is also a local 
 Sabbath School Teacher, in a part of the city now out of my parish ; the dis- 
 trict which belongs to him, in this latter capacity, comprising two closses 
 in the Saltmarket. I have great value for the assurance, that he has often 
 made to me verbally, that he is persuaded how, within the limits of this 
 little territory, there is enough both of ability and good-will to provide for 
 all the indigence that is to be found; though it really belongs to one of the 
 most indigent quarters in the whole city. 
 
 12. " In reply to your Queries, I beg leave to make the following state- 
 ments." 
 
 " The proportion which I visit, as deacon in St. John's parish, is one 
 whose population, per census of last year, 1822, was above 430 souls." 
 
 " There are, at present, five regular paupers on the deacons' fund in my
 
 43 
 
 may conduct them, in a very few weeks, to a 
 habit of most mild and manageable quiescence a 
 
 proportion ; one of these came into it, about two months ago, from another 
 proportion." 
 
 " I have never kept an account of the number of applications for relief 
 from the funds of St. John's parish, of those who are inadmissible on ac- 
 count of want of right, but may safely state the number to be at least two 
 in each month." 
 
 " This proportion being in the immediate vicinity of my house, one hour 
 and a half is about the average time, per month, for making the necessary 
 inquiries relative to the situation of these applicants." 
 
 " In the year 1821 the number of paupers who received relief might 
 average as 2 permanently. In the year 1822, the average was about three. 
 At present the number is five, besides a fresh application, at present under 
 consideration by the court of deacons." 
 
 " From the proportion being in my immediate neighbourhood, I find it 
 no hardship to attend to the necessary business of this district, because I 
 can make the time convenient for myself. Were it at a distance, on ac- 
 count of the many engagements which I necessarily hare, in the manage- 
 ment of a tolerably extensive concern, I should probably have to drop the 
 charge of the district." 
 
 13. " Population 350." 
 
 " Two paupers." 
 
 " During last year I may have had irregular applications for aid, at the 
 average of one every three months." 
 
 " From half an hour to an hour each application." 
 
 " When compared with the first year, 1820, that I had charge of this dis- 
 trict, the applications are greatly reduced; indeed more than one half." 
 
 " Each investigation may occupy from half an hour to an hour ; but the 
 time spent generally in making inquiry into the different cases, may not 
 have been more than an hour, at an average, every three months." 
 
 " I consider that a man, in ordinary business, would not find it a difficult 
 task in meeting the pauperism of this district ; nor would the attention it 
 requires, put him to any sensible inconvenience." 
 
 " In the outset of my taking charge of this proportion, January, 1820, I 
 was very doubtful of the success of the present system; at least, I had great 
 fears that it would require much more attention, as well as expense, to
 
 44 
 
 habit from which, if they are not disturbed by new 
 methods of administration, by changes of system, 
 
 to meet the different cases, than I was led to understand would be neces- 
 sary. The stagnation of trade, at that time, was very great, and work diffi- 
 cult to be procured; and it certainly required some additional trouble and 
 attention, for the first while at least, to meet all the applicants who then 
 sought temporary aid. Those, however, that were out of employment 
 when work was obtained, showed a willingness to apply to it, rather than 
 take relief from the parish." 
 
 " The first thing I adopted was, to take a list of the population of the 
 whole district, each family by itself; stating the number of individuals, pro- 
 fession, and probable earnings, and, in addition, noted whatever remarks 
 that occurred of the apparent circumstances of the family. This I renewed 
 annually, and from these statements, when applications are made, I have 
 recourse to this check upon the applicants themselves, and which, with an 
 immediate inquiry into the case, from the testimony of the neighbours, and 
 any other information otherwise that may be obtained, I judge of the situa- 
 tion of any particular individual or family." 
 
 " I am convinced, that the immediate readiness of the deacons, at all 
 times, to procure employment for such as may find any difficulty, serves as 
 a check against the lazy and indolent, from applying for aid ; and the strict 
 scrutiny adopted in all cases, of whatever nature, operates as a preventative, 
 in many instances, against individuals, or their friends for them, from beg- 
 ging relief from the parish funds." 
 
 " The experience of nearly four years of the charge of the poorest propor- 
 tion of the parish, has fully convinced me of the entire practicability of the 
 system now adopted for the management of the poor of St. John's : and I 
 have just to repeat, that I am certain that I should find it no task whatever 
 to meet the pauperism of double the number contained in this district; nor 
 would the attention that might be required, put me to any sensible incon- 
 venience whatever." 
 
 14. " I beg to note below, replies to queries contained in your card of the 
 llth. I am deacon of a proportion whose population is 417, from the last 
 survey." 
 
 " No paupers belong to it that are upon the deacons' fund." 
 " I do not remember having had more than one application these three 
 months."
 
 45 
 
 and reports of great things to be done, and great 
 things intended for them, they will persevere in 
 for ever. 
 
 " The time required in attending to the business of these applications, 
 and making the necessary inquiries, is about an hour each." 
 
 " The applications are less frequent since I entered upon my office." 
 
 " In making the requisite investigations that I am actually called to, I 
 do not require to sacrifice more than an hour and a-half quarterly." 
 
 " A man, in ordinary business, would not find the task of meeting the 
 pauperism of such a district as I have so laborious as to put him to anv 
 sensible inconvenience." 
 
 15. " In answer to the queries addressed to me as one of the deacons of 
 St John's parish, I beg to state, that I have the charge of a proportion 
 whose population, by the last survey, was 240." 
 
 " There are no paupers in it on the Deacons' Fund." 
 " For the last two years, I think I can confidently say, that in whole I 
 have not had above six applications for parochial aid. I suppose the aver- 
 age, since October, 1819, maybe taken at six annually." 
 
 " So far as I can recollect, it has cost me, on an average, about two 
 hours monthly." 
 
 " At first I had a great many calls upon me, but for the last two years 
 they have diminished greatly." 
 
 " I would consider an hour and a half monthly as sufficient to make all 
 the requisite inquiries into cases that are now likely to apply." 
 
 " To speak from experience, I would say, that no man, unless overbur- 
 dened with business, would find himself put to any inconvenience by taking 
 charge of such a district as mine." 
 
 " With regard to the general management of the district, 1 have nothing 
 particular to state ; I may, however, mention, that since October, 1819, 
 it has cost the fund fully 16, about 13 of which was expended in the 
 first two years of my connection with the parish. This sum was mostly 
 given to needy families who had no legal claim upon us, and arose from the 
 depressed state of our mercantile affairs. The amount paid to cases who 
 had a legal claim upon us, in nearly three years, is about 6 10s." 
 
 " I have the firmest belief that the same system which has so success- 
 fully been carried on in St. John's parish, may be extended to all the other
 
 46 
 
 The following statement I hold to be peculiarly 
 important, as evincing the comparative rates of in- 
 
 parishes in Glasgow ; and although at the outset they will have difficulties 
 to surmount, yet a similar result may be expected, and not only fewer pau- 
 pers will be found, but fewer idlers, and more comfort among the families. 
 I hope the fabric you have raised will be perpetuated, for the sake of the 
 happiness of the working classes of this city." 
 
 J6. " The following are my replies: That I belong to a proportion of 
 St. John's parish whose population, so near as I can infer from my latest 
 survey, is 506." 
 
 " That there is one pauper (Irish) belonging to it upon the Deacons' 
 Fund." 
 
 " That the applications for parochial relief have been equal to one every 
 six months." 
 
 " That the time the business of attending to the applications, and mak- 
 ing the necessary inquiries in consequence of them, has, from the nature of 
 the cases, been quite trifling about one hour for each." 
 
 " That the applications were considerably more numerous during the 
 first year I entered upon the office than they have been since." 
 
 " That the task of meeting the pauperism of such a proportion would 
 not put a man in ordinary business to any sensible inconvenience." 
 
 " I think the population of my district are particularly desirous of re- 
 ceiving frequent visits ; and that it would be very important to have the 
 agency belonging to it so situated as to enable them to gratify their desire 
 in this respect" 
 
 17. "I am deacon of a proportion containing 447 persons by this years 
 survey." 
 
 " Only one regular pauper." 
 
 " For the last year I think they will not average more than one applica- 
 tion per month, and some of them had no claim upon St John's funds ; 
 others were repeated by the same persons, for I have never had more than 
 one regular pauper since the beginning of the parish." 
 
 " Not more than one hour per month." 
 
 " The applications are much less frequent, and have been very few indeed 
 for the last year." 
 
 " In peculiar and urgent cases, a temporary inconvenience may be felt by
 
 47 
 
 flux, under the present and former systems of 
 pauperism. The parish of St. John's was formed 
 
 a deacon ; but in the general I do not hesitate to reply, that the task is by 
 no means laborious, and to a man in ordinary business may be performed 
 with little or no inconvenience." 
 
 " At the commencement of St. John's parish, I resided in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of my proportion, the population of which then was from 
 1100 to 1200 persons. Among a number of them I found a keen appetite 
 for parochial aid, and an impression that it was to be more easily acquired 
 by the new arrangements in St. John's parish. By the making of a survey 
 of the whole proportion, my living almost among them, and frequent con- 
 versation with them, I not only acquired a tolerable knowledge of the cha- 
 racters and dispositions of the people, but I think removed, in some degree 
 the notions they had conceived ; for during the months T had the charge of 
 from 11 to 1200, not one regular pauper was taken on." 
 
 " I was relieved of about one half of this number about the beginning of 
 winter, which set in along with a great commercial stagnation, which cast 
 many out of employment for a time, and lowered the wages of all the 
 weavers (of which class my district was chiefly composed); I did all I could 
 in the way of procuring work for the unemployed, and was getting on toler- 
 ably well, till a general public subscription was made, and soup kitchens 
 erected. This again (like the commencement of the parish) excited a cer- 
 tain class in my district to have at the subscription, and a deputation waited 
 upon me for this purpose. I reasoned the matter with them, and the con- 
 sequence was, that not more than one person residing in the district received 
 aid from it, and that aid very trifling; and although I had a large parcel of 
 tickets for obtaining soup, I never needed to distribute more than one or 
 two of them, if so many. And from the circumstance of my living so near 
 my district, and being often among them, there scarcely could be one extra 
 case of distress out of my knowledge." 
 
 " In all my experience, as regards pauperism, I have had very very few 
 applications from the regularly sober and industrious, but most of them by 
 those of a very opposite character. To the first class a little attention and 
 kindness will make the case easily managed ; but with the latter class, it 
 requires caution in taking in their reports, till a proper investigation is 
 made, and a firmness in acting agreeable to the circumstances ; and although 
 the case may appear urgent and distressing at first view, a temporary aid 
 often gets them through. Upon the whole, I am convinced that a parti-
 
 48 
 
 out of parts taken from three parishes ; one part 
 from the Tron church parish, of which I myself 
 
 cular knowledge of the characters and dispositions of the individuals of a 
 proportion, and acting with kindness and attention to the sober and indus- 
 trious poor, and with civility and firmness to those of the opposite character, 
 is all that is necessary to reduce pauperism." 
 
 The author of this very important testimony had, at the outset of our 
 proceedings, the charge of Nos. 15, 16, and 17, from our want of agents. 
 There is a peculiar worth in his experience regarding the effect of the 
 general subscription. The truth is, that we had proceeded in our operations 
 for a few months, and every thing went on most prosperously and smoothly 
 till this great and ostensible effort was made for the whole of Glasgow. 
 It induced a very natural restlessness among our own population and then 
 it was that we all felt the commencement of our difficulties. It may be 
 thought invidious to signalize any one of my friends, when I feel so much 
 my obligations to all. But I may at least be permitted to say of the gen- 
 tleman connected with the very large and populous department, on the bor- 
 der of which his house was situated, that throughout the whole dreary sea- 
 son of Glasgow's greatest commercial distress, he had certainly, of all his 
 coadjutors, the greatest pressure to sustain. 
 
 18. " In reply to the queries contained in your circular, I have to state, 
 that my proportion in St. John's parish contains a population, by the last 
 survey of June, 1823, of 300." 
 
 " There is only one case of pauperism connected with the proportion at 
 present it is of three years and a half standing." 
 
 " 1 have had only four regular cases altogether. The whole population 
 of my district are operatives, or labourers, many of them Irish. In No- 
 vember 1819, wfien I was appointed deacon, the greater part of them were 
 in absolute starvation from want of work. I had consequently many appli- 
 cations for about five months, which were greatly increased by the distri- 
 bution at Hutcheson's Hospital. During that period, I supplied with va- 
 rious relief about one-third of the families under my charge, not one of 
 which would have been called forth in ordinary times." 
 
 " As I was an entire stranger to the duties of my office, as well as the 
 people committed to my charge, it required a great sacrifice of my time at 
 first, often three or four hours in a day ; but that pressure has long passed 
 away, and I now reap the benefit of it in a pretty thorough knowledge of 
 almost every family in the district."
 
 49 
 
 was minister for nearly four years, previous to my 
 becoming minister of St. John's another from the 
 
 " I have brought no case under investigation for ten months. I had in- 
 deed two applications within that time, but after a little conversation, they 
 both voluntarily withdrew." 
 
 " Taking the survey, may occupy three or four hours per annum. The 
 deacons' meetings and investigations connected therewith, two to three 
 hours a month, but I have had no call on my time from the pauperism of my 
 own district, for many months, except signing a few papers exempting from 
 the Cottage Tax." 
 
 " With a little experience, I see nothing to prevent a person in ordinary 
 business, to manage such a district as mine without inconvenience." 
 
 " T consider it most important for a deacon to be intimately acquainted 
 with every family under his charge, and there is no way he can acquire that 
 knowledge so well, as by frequent visitation ; besides the very frequency of 
 his visits gives him a stronger interest in their well-doing, not to mention the 
 reciprocal feeling it creates towards himself, while he is furnished with a store 
 of useful information for every emergency." 
 
 " I have not been able to persevere in visiting regularly, but it is not from 
 the fear that my presence would increase the applications for parish aid. I 
 think, were we required to give our pastor monthly a written report, it 
 might be of great benefit to ourselves. It ought to be a deacon's aim to 
 behave with as much kindness as possible, to listen patiently to every appli- 
 cation, do his utmost to procure work when it was wanted, and, what is 
 perhaps more difficult, to resist, with sturdy firmness, every improper claim, 
 in spite of abuse, or popular clamour." 
 
 I have here to express my acknowledgments for the information that I 
 have received from such monthly reports of their districts, as the gentlemen 
 connected with them were pleased to furnish, and, more particularly, to the 
 author of the last communication. The truth is, that this practice languish- 
 ed, but from what cause? purely from the want of materials. The people 
 when conducted to a natural state, at length, offer nothing to call forth the 
 observation of those, whose ostensible office it is to manage the affairs of their 
 pauperism. " They sheathe the sword for lack of argument. '' Their at- 
 tentions are finally superseded a circumstance which might, at length, 
 attach an insipidity, and even an unimportance to then- office, but which, in 
 itself, affords the strongest verification of the truth of our principles. 
 
 G
 
 50 
 
 Outer Kirk parish and a third, but very small 
 part, from the Inner High. The number admitted 
 
 19. "In reply to yours of the llth, I subjoin answers to the Queries you 
 put." 
 
 " My proportion has in it 282 persons, and only one pauper on the Dea- 
 cons' Fund." 
 
 " The applications are one quarterly; not more." 
 " The time requisite for investigation is one hour in a quarter." 
 " The rate of application is much the same; perhaps less frequent" 
 " There is not the least inconvenience to a man of business, in his being 
 a deacon. If he could spare even as much as ten or fifteen minutes in a week, 
 it would fully suffice for my proportion, judging by the past." 
 
 " The nature of the duties of a deacon, so far as I have had experience, 
 appears to be, simply to procure work for those who cannot get employ- 
 ment, and investigating the rights to relief of those who are in destitute cir- 
 cumstances." 
 
 " The answers to the above queries do not include the time taken up in 
 attending the monthly meetings of the court ; neither the time employed in 
 taking the annual survey. The latter can easily be accomplished in an after- 
 
 20. " Agreeably to your request, I beg leave to send the following an- 
 swers to your Queries." 
 
 " I am deacon of a proportion, whose population, in June, when I took 
 my last survey, amounted to 427." 
 
 " There are no paapers on the Deacons' Fund, in my proportion, except 
 an exposed child, which was lately laid down at the door of a house in my 
 proportion." 
 
 " I have had no applications for parochial relief, but I have occasionally 
 had applications from poor people, to assist them in procuring work ; and 
 even under any incidental distress, or any occasional deficiency of work, any 
 trifling or temporary aid has rarely been solicited." 
 
 " As the applications which have been made to me were generally for 
 work, and never for parochial relief, I did not consider it necessary to occu- 
 py any portion of my time in making inquiries into their circumstances, so 
 that, calling on, or writing a note to an acquaintance to procure them work, 
 was all the service they generally required." 
 
 "The applications have latterly been less frequent."
 
 51 
 
 on the sessional rolls from these three parts, that 
 form the whole present ground of St. John's parish, 
 
 " As I have not had occasion to make any investigation, I have not been 
 called to make any sacrifice of time farther than I have already stated." 
 
 " I have, as yet, found no inconvenience from attending to the poor in 
 my proportion ; and I am of opinion, that no one in ordinary business 
 would find the management of pauperism, in such a proportion, any sensible 
 inconvenience." 
 
 " Although I am known to all the people in my proportion, having, be- 
 sides partial visitations, twice visited every family residing in it, yet as I have 
 been so little required to attend to the necessities of the poor, I have acquired 
 little experience which I can offer for the information of others; and the 
 only information I can give is, that I have experimentally found, I had al- 
 most nothing to do ; and this want of business renders me almost unable to 
 state any circumstances, connected with my management, which can eluci- 
 date the nature of the duties or attentions which a deacon has to discharge 
 to his people." 
 
 " The only pauperism which exists in my proportion connected with the 
 Deacons' Fund, is an exposed child, and on this I may state, from my own 
 little experience, which accords with what I have frequently heard from 
 those who have had longer experience, that the greatest portion of pauper- 
 ism originates in immorality, exposed children, husbands who desert their 
 wives and families, or idle and profligate parents, who prosecute no regular 
 employment for the maintenance of their families, and who form the most 
 frequent, and the most difficult cases of distress." 
 
 The gentleman connected with the above district underrates very much 
 the worth of his own testimony, if he hold it to be unimportant from the 
 paucity of his facts and informations. This very paucity is, in itself, most 
 valuable to be known; and I am not aware of a more precious experience 
 than that which has been- so abundantly furnished by himself and others, 
 even that, in some of our most plebeian districts, there has been little or 
 nothing to do. 
 
 21. " In answer to yours of the llth instant, I beg leave to state, that I 
 am deacon of a proportion in St. John's parish which contains 100 families, 
 consisting of 412 individuals, all of the working class, and most of them 
 weavers." 
 
 ' There is only one pauper upon the Deacons' Fund in it, who receives
 
 52 
 
 between the months of October, 1815, and April, 
 1819, being a period of three years and a half, 
 
 2s. 6d. per month, and is most thankful for it. He is betwixt sixty and 
 seventy years of age a Roman Catholic." 
 
 " The number of applications for relief I may have in a month or a quar- 
 ter, I am quite at a loss to state ; but taking the average of the last three 
 years, I think they cannot exceed one in a quarter." 
 
 " I cannot, with any certainty, state the time these applications may 
 have taken to attend to them, but should suppose, that an hour of inquiry 
 to each would be the extent of it." 
 
 " The applications are much less frequent since I became acquainted in 
 the district." 
 
 " I am most decidedly of opinion, that the superintendence of a district, 
 such as the one I am appointed to, can be no inconvenience to any man, in 
 any business." 
 
 " I have always, when I had it in my power, given work to the poor 
 in place of aliment, with which, in general, they were well pleased. I 
 have, in two instances, where a husband left his wife and family, refused 
 them any aid, and the consequence was, that the husband, in the one in- 
 stance, came back to his family ; and in the other, that the family found 
 out the husband. Had the court of deacons interfered in this case, and 
 .given support to the family, apparently destitute of a husband and father, we 
 should never have seen or heard any thing of the husband; but the refusal 
 of all aid from the court of deacons, was the only cause, I am fully per- 
 suaded, of bringing the family together." 
 
 I do entreat the best attention of my readers to the last part of this com- 
 munication, and that they will compare it with a similar testimony in No. 
 1. The most burdened proportion of our parish arises from a case of luna- 
 cy, that ought most liberally to be provided for, and cases of runaway hus- 
 bands, which I humbly apprehend ought not, in a public and ostensible way, 
 to be provided for at all. I most assuredly would not say so, did I believe 
 that the starvation of a deserted family was to be the consequence. This, 
 in the first place, will never happen while, in the second place, the witli- 
 drawment of the parochial guarantee would make such unnatural conduct 
 far less frequent. 
 
 22. " In reply to the queries contained in your circular of the llth ult. 
 I beg to state, that I am deacon of a proportion of St. John's parish,
 
 53 
 
 was at least 62 whereas the number admitted by 
 ourselves from October, 1819, to April, 1823, 
 
 which contains a population of about 500. There are two who receive re- 
 gular aliment from the Deacons' Fund. I have given no temporary aid 
 during the last six months, and as far as I can remember, I have had no 
 applications for any during the last twelve months. I have had about six 
 applications altogether, one of which was for pecuniary aid, and the others 
 for work. Since the commencement of our operations in St. John's pa- 
 rish, the time occupied by me in attending to, and investigating the applica- 
 tions, may be about 21 hours, two-thirds of which were spent during the 
 first twelve months ; in the course of the second year, the other eight hours 
 were requisite, and latterly the business has become quite a sinecure, as 
 far as labour is concerned. In attending to cases in my own district, and 
 investigating along with other deacons, in this I may have spent about six 
 hours in the last twelve months, and as I consider this about the average 
 time necessary to the other deacons, it is my opinion, that a man in ordi- 
 nary business would be put to no sensible inconvenience in attending to the 
 pauperism of any of our districts." 
 
 " I have succeeded in procuring work for a number of them, who are 
 very grateful for it, and one, who had applied for money, but for whom I 
 got winding, remarked to me sometime thereafter, that I had done them 
 a greater benefit than if I had granted their first request." 
 
 I have other three districts in my parish, one of which is exempted al- 
 most from the possibility of its having paupers : and the other two of which 
 are at present without deacons, and have been placed under the temporary 
 charge of those to whom they do not properly belong. I sincerely hope 
 from the expose which has now been given of the perfect facility, and, I may 
 add, pleasure, attendant on the occupation, that they will not long remain 
 vacant. The gentlemen will at length find, that the pauperism is a mere 
 bagatelle but still for the sake of that refining and tranquillizing effect which 
 the mere friendly attentions of the upper classes have on the working clas- 
 ses of society, I should like to see a representative of our system in every 
 proportion of the parish. He may so manage, as at length to have nought 
 whatever to do with the distribution of public alms but he may stimulate 
 the cause of education he may give direction to the habits of economy 
 he may do a thousand nameless offices of kindness he may evince good 
 will in a variety of ways he may, even without any expenditure of money,
 
 54 
 
 which is also a period of three years and a half, 
 was only 20. But it must be further taken to 
 account, that during the former period, there were 
 not only 62 admitted upon sessional rolls, but a 
 certain number of the more aggravated cases be- 
 hoved to pass directly into the Town Hospital, 
 without taking the intermediate road of the Kirk- 
 Sessions at all. Of the twenty that we have ad- 
 mitted upon our roll, eight were of that aggravated 
 description that never would have been encoun- 
 tered by the Kirk-Session under the old regimen, 
 but would have been passed directly to the Town 
 Hospital. There were only twelve, then, of these 
 tw r enty that would have appeared on our list, had 
 there been an open avenue to the Town Hospital, 
 as there was during the whole period of the ad- 
 mission of these sixty-two. Or, in other words, 
 the numbers 62 and 12 represent the proportion 
 between the rates of admission under the old and 
 
 diffuse a moral atmosphere, that will soften and humanize even the most 
 hard-favoured of his people. (See No. 4.) And as the fruit of those very 
 light and simple attentions which are here recorded, he will, at length, feel 
 that he has chalked out for himself a village in the heart of the city wilder- 
 ness, whose inhabitants compose a very grateful and manageable family. 
 
 I only subjoin one word more to a record that might safely be left to its 
 own impression on the heart and understanding of the reader. Will they 
 who have charged us with theory, persist in the charge ? Let them only 
 specify then, what the experience is that would satisfy them. If they do 
 the one, and are unable to do the other, then the controversy hath changed its 
 character, and instead of a struggle with the incredulity of human reason, 
 it becomes a mere struggle with the obstinacy of human wilfulness.
 
 55 
 
 new systems, and the ingress of paupers is five 
 times less than it wont to be.* 
 
 We have great pleasure in recording this fact, 
 not only as it evinces most strikingly the effect of 
 the parochial system, in stimulating the manage- 
 ment, but as it serves to demonstrate the spirit 
 wherewith we regard the management that obtains 
 both in the Town Hospital and the other parishes 
 of Glasgow. We are aware of a certain soreness 
 of feeling on the part of some gentlemen con- 
 nected with these managements as if we had 
 charged them with laxity and carelessness in the 
 administration of a public trust and we are sure 
 that this impression, on their part, must have 
 
 * By the examination of sessional books, we ascertain how many are the 
 cases which each elder admits for the first time upon his roll. These, 
 however, consist not merely of those who are absolutely new paupers, but 
 paupers who have entered his district, either from the other parishes, or 
 even from other districts of the same parish. On the present ground of 
 St John's parish, the number of such enrolments, between October, 1815, 
 and April, 1819, was considerably upwards of 90. By our allowance for 
 the internal movements from one part of this ground to another, which is 
 necessarily conjectural, we reduced the number to 90 precisely. If, in this 
 allowance, there have been any inaccuracy in our favour, we are pretty 
 confident that it is more than balanced by our further allowance for the 
 imports from without, between October, 1815, and April, 1819. We make 
 them equal to 28, which is the number of imported cases to the same ground 
 between October, 1819, and April, 1823. Now, we have every reason to 
 think, that the importation was stimulated both by the hopes and by the 
 f experience of the new system and the fact that it was double of our ex- 
 portation, we hold to be decisive on this point When 28 is taken from 90, 
 it leaves 62 for the number of new cases of pauperism on the present ter- 
 ritory of St. John's, under the old regimen, in three years and a half.
 
 56 
 
 strengthened that hostility wherewith the parochial 
 system has had to grapple for every inch of its pro- 
 gress. With us, it was never felt to be any other 
 than an abstract municipal question and, when we 
 affirmed that the affairs of pauperism were better 
 conducted under a separate parochial administra- 
 tion of the voluntary fund, and worse conducted 
 under the general city administration of a compul- 
 sory one it did not once enter our thoughts, that 
 we were either advancing a compliment in behalf 
 of those individuals who were concerned in the for- 
 mer administration, or preferring a charge against 
 the individuals concerned in the latter. Now that 
 the discovery has been made, (and it was only 
 made a few months ago,) that, under the old sys- 
 tem, we ourselves* did admit pauperism at a rate 
 five times greater than we do under the present 
 system it will not be imagined that we would 
 have openly proclaimed this, had we thought that 
 we were thereby exposing our own discredit to 
 the world. The truth is, that when one finds an 
 indefinite command of the means for public cha- 
 rity, he almost, insensibly to himself, is thrown off 
 his guard, and becomes more easy and inadver- 
 tent than he otherwise would in the dispensation 
 
 * That part of the old Tron parish which remains attached to St. John's, 
 forms about one-half of it and I can see no sensible difference, in point of 
 laxity or rigour, between the old administration of this portion, and that of 
 the other two that were devolved upon us from other parishes.
 
 57 
 
 of it. Even his good feelings, when not accom- 
 panied by reflection, will help to mislead him in 
 this particular. And thus it is, that men of the 
 utmost honour and humanity, all over England, as 
 well as among ourselves, have been far less alert 
 in their management than they should have been, 
 with a limited revenue that constrained them to a 
 limited expenditure. The whole question is alto- 
 gether a public, and in no shape a personal one. 
 We take no praise to ourselves for any of our do- 
 ings under the present regimen neither do we 
 take any blame to ourselves for any of our mis- 
 doings under the former regimen. The compari- 
 son now given, says every thing for the one system 
 and against the other system but it says nothing 
 for or .against the administrators of either. The 
 comparison we hold to be curious, and, at the same 
 time, important, as exhibiting the powerful stimu- 
 lus that a mere change in the economy of pau- 
 perism will give to its management. This in truth 
 is the great secret of the whole operation. The 
 deacon or elder takes much more trouble with each 
 individual case than he did before yet his trouble 
 is greatly lessened upon the whole, because in con- 
 sequence of his now stricter investigation, he has 
 greatly fewer applicants than he had before. By 
 the labour of a very few weeks he may purchase to 
 himself the ease of a whole incumbency and the 
 delightful results, throughout all the parish, are a 
 greatly reduced expenditure, a diminished and still 
 rapidly diminishing pauperism, an agency that feel 
 
 H
 
 58 
 
 their offices to be so many sinecures, and notwith- 
 standing all the clamour and calumny of our oppo- 
 nents, a far more tranquil and satisfied population. 
 We are not making a palinode to the gentle- 
 men of the Town Hospital, but merely uttering 
 a reiteration, when we pronounce them the use- 
 ful, and efficient, and highly respectable admi- 
 nistrators of a system that is miserably wrong. 
 We are sure that they are doing their work a great 
 deal better than our deacons could do ; and if, at 
 this moment, the gentlemen of the agency of St. 
 John's, our own particular friends, were to become 
 the office-bearers of a compulsory pauperism, we 
 should have no more faith in a good or prosperous 
 result, from their services, than we have in a bet- 
 ter state of things for England, till the people 
 there have abandoned all their modifications of the 
 evil, and have struck a blow at the root of the evil 
 itself. We are not qualified to say, how the gen- 
 tlemen of the Town Hospital, those praiseworthy 
 and gratuitous servants of the public, could, while 
 the system continues, do better than they are do- 
 ing; nor are we able to offer any advice for the 
 improving of a system, of which we think, as 
 Charles Fox thought of the Slave Trade, that it 
 ought not to be regulated, but destroyed. We 
 feel confident, that were our elders and deacons to 
 take the place of the directors in the Town Hos- 
 pital, there would, in the long run, be no benefit 
 rendered to the city; and, on the other hand, we 
 are equally confident, that would any of the direc-
 
 59 
 
 tors honour our parish by accepting of its offices, 
 they would soon imbibe the spirit of our system, 
 and very soon be satisfied of its power. A trial is 
 better than an argument. We have often failed 
 to convince the partizans of the old system by our 
 reasonings; but we have succeeded, in more in- 
 stances than one, by making deacons of them. 
 
 The utterance sounds harshly which implies, 
 that the administrators of our city pauperism ought 
 not to be intrusted with the disposal of that large 
 and indefinite revenue which is raised by assess- 
 ment. The correct mode of putting it is, that 
 such a revenue ought not to be raised. We did 
 not intrust the deacons of St. John's with the large 
 day collection. We did not even intrust the el- 
 ders of St. John's with it either ; and we therefore 
 provided an absorbent for its great and accumu- 
 lating surplus.* But who ever dreamed of any 
 thing so utterly puerile as a feeling of personal of- 
 fence, because of a supposed personal charge? 
 The truth is, that wherever there is a large dispos- 
 able fund for the expenses of pauperism, a certain 
 
 * We have expended, altogether, .744 5s. Id. of this surplus on the en- 
 dowment of our Parish Schools ; of this sum 500 was vested with the city 
 corporation, for a permanent salary of 25 a-year, to the English School in 
 M'Farlane Street. The rest was expended on the current salaries of the 
 four teachers. Our ordinary day collection, under the management of the 
 elders, has varied between four and five hundred pounds in the year, or a 
 little upwards ; and the surplus now in the hands of the Kirk Session is 
 .190. There has another of our schools been permanently endowed by a 
 revenue derived from another source. The remaining two, attached to the 
 chapel district, are still unendowed ; but it is hoped, that this object will be 
 attained from other sources than either the church or chapel collection.
 
 60 
 
 relaxation will gently and imperceptibly insinuate 
 itself into the management. It was to secure an 
 alert administration at the outset, that the deacons 
 were restricted to their very humble revenue. It 
 Was to maintain this alertness, that we felt anxious 
 lest the capital of our session should attain to a 
 hurtful excess. And we feel confident, that there 
 is not a Kirk-Session of our city, which, if disse- 
 vered from the Town Hospital, and cordially re- 
 solved on the side of its own independence, could 
 not, in virtue of the same alertness, meet its new 
 pauperism, and with the utmost facility too, even 
 upon its present resources, however scanty. 
 
 The first part of what follows relates to the sepa- 
 rate management of St. John's, arid is more espe- 
 cially addressed to the present and future conduc- 
 tors of that management. The second part relates 
 to the means of its extinction, and is submitted, 
 with much deference and regard, both to the city 
 rulers, and to the clergy and elders of the other 
 parishes. 
 
 I. And, first, there can be nought more complete 
 than the demonstration which you have made of 
 the efficacy of the parochial system in large towns. 
 That you should, with so little trouble to your- 
 selves, and, on the whole, with so much satisfaction 
 to the parish, have only admitted twenty new cases 
 upon the roll of pauperism, in three years and nine 
 months ; and that, during that period, the old pau- 
 perism should have melted so fast away, as to leave 
 the whole expenditure for the poor of a plebeian
 
 61 
 
 city population, of more than eight thousand souls, 
 at .280 * a-year, this, of itself, and in the midst 
 of perilous and disastrous times, is a practical ex- 
 hibition, which they who have designed the whole 
 enterprise, as a rash and theoretical innovation, 
 will find, we imagine, very difficult to dispose of. 
 To us the exhibition is made still more impres- 
 sive, when we look at the state of the matter, ac- 
 cording to the respective proportions or districts 
 into which the parish is divided. Out of the 
 twenty-five districts, there are twelve where there 
 has not a single pauper been formed since Septem- 
 ber, 1819 ; and some of these among decidedly 
 the poorest vicinities in Glasgow. In some of 
 these too, I may be permitted to remark, that the 
 gentlemen who have honoured me by their co- 
 operation, are not in circumstances to intercept 
 the applications for public and parochial aid by 
 any private charities of their own. There may be 
 such liberalities occasionally going amongst us ; 
 but most assuredly, these do not form our main 
 protection. I have seldom indeed, applied for 
 this object, to any of my wealthy friends in the 
 congregation : I do not recollect a dozen instances 
 in four years. If there has been any jugglery in 
 our undertaking, let my friends, whom I now 
 leave, and many of whom I have grieved by my 
 departure, let them step forward, and unmask it 
 
 * The whole present annual expenditure is .308; but of this .28 is for 
 the excess of our imports.
 
 62 
 
 to the derision of the public. If there has been 
 any conspiracy, for the purpose of deluding the 
 imagination of the citizens into the belief of an 
 erroneous, though favourite theory, let the con- 
 spirators, now that their chief hath abandoned 
 them, reveal the secret. The mechanism now lies 
 open to the public gaze ; and if they can detect 
 aught of legerdemain in its performance, they 
 have now the ample opportunity. I found the 
 delusion strengthening every year, that our suc- 
 cess was due, not at all to the system, but to some 
 marvellous or magical power in the operator who 
 conducted it. The best service, in these circum- 
 stances, that can be rendered to the truth is, for 
 the operator to resign it into other hands ; and now 
 that the enterprise has been delivered of that false 
 and bewildering glare which his presence had 
 thrown around it, he has not another wish regarding 
 it, than simply, that its enemies shall forbear their 
 violence, and that its friends shall not abandon it. 
 There is one circumstance worthy of being ad- 
 verted to, and that must be quite palpable to you 
 all. A very slight difference in the strictness of 
 the administration, is quite sufficient of itself to 
 create a difference in the amount of pauperism be- 
 tween one district and another. Let any one dea- 
 con but relax his management, however slightly, 
 and he may by that, admit some pauperism which 
 another would have shifted, or otheiwise disposed 
 of. Let a very few, then, abandon themselves to 
 the habit of easy, unquestioning compliance with
 
 63 
 
 any application ; and he may very soon form more 
 pauperism among a few hundreds of the popula- 
 tion, than would have been formed, under a uni- 
 versally careful superintendence, in a parish of as 
 many thousands. Every such deacon has a power- 
 ful auxiliary on the side of pauperism, in the sor- 
 did appetencies of our nature j and, therefore, it 
 is, that a very few could overrun their districts 
 with poor, and bring a session to the limit of its 
 resources in a single twelvemonth. It is thus, that 
 it would be the easiest thing in the world for a 
 lukewarm or hostile successor to overthrow the 
 experiment but the intelligent reader will at once 
 perceive, that its failure in his hands would prove 
 nothing, while its success in the hands of another, 
 and particularly under the circumstances that have 
 just now been unfolded, proves both certainly and 
 universally, that the supplies of an artificial pau- 
 perism, are not indispensable to the well-being of 
 any population. 
 
 But, still, this shows the importance that you 
 remain united in principle and I trust, that un- 
 der a successor, who will countenance your pure 
 and philanthropic undertaking, you will never 
 meet with any thing to damp or to dispirit you. 
 You will, surely, not for the few hours of labour 
 and attention that your office requires, lay it down; 
 and that, too, at a time when your perseverance 
 in the good work is of greater importance than 
 ever to the cause of truth. So long as I presided 
 over it, there was a delusion which no success
 
 could dissipate, and which every month of my 
 continuance, made more inveterate than before. 
 It is unpleasant for me to allude so pointedly to 
 myself; but there are occasions on which the deli- 
 cacies of nature ought to be suspended. There 
 were a bustle, and a din, and a publicity, atten- 
 dant on my various proceedings, that threw a dis- 
 guise over their real character and tendency. 
 The success, in particular, of my scheme for the 
 management of pauperism, has all along been 
 most grievously misunderstood, and regarded 
 more in the light of a Catterfelto exhibition, than 
 as the result of those sure and steadfast principles, 
 which operate at all times, and throughout the 
 whole extent of our nature. Hitherto there are 
 many who have only gaped at it with a sort of blind 
 and stupid wonderment. They may now, perhaps, 
 give themselves leisure to gaze upon it intelli- 
 gently. You, my friends, know, that the virtue 
 which has been ascribed to me in this matter, is 
 an utter misconception and that in any higglings 
 which may have taken place between you and the 
 parochial applicants, there was no mystical charm 
 whatever in my name, or in my presence. Only, 
 let me be succeeded by a friendly and an approv- 
 ing clergyman ; and you are all confident, that it 
 wholly depends upon yourselves, whether the same 
 exhibition shall be perpetuated or not. I may 
 have called you together ; but you, gentlemen, 
 have done the work ; and your simply abiding 
 therein for a few years longer, will be a mightier
 
 65 
 
 service to the cause, than you have yet rendered 
 to it by the whole amount of your labours. You 
 entered upon the office in the face of many haz- 
 ards and uncertainties. You will not surely aban- 
 don it now, that you have put the bugbear to 
 flight, and have turned the office into a sinecure. 
 It is for you, and for you only, to work that convic- 
 tion which I have failed to awaken to shed a calm 
 and enduring light over that question on which 
 the public are still so obstinately incredulous to 
 let them know, that what they have mistaken for 
 a blazing meteor, is nought but every-day truth ; 
 and that what they have hitherto regarded as a 
 sanguine experiment in the hands of a daring ad- 
 venturer, might be turned, at any time, into solid 
 experience, even by the most sedate and sober- 
 minded of our citizens. 
 
 I can depone to the effect of both systems on 
 the comfort of the clergyman, having just had 
 four years experience of the one, and as many of 
 the other. The deacons have already attested the 
 perfect facility of their part in the concern, and 
 I follow up their witness by attesting the equal 
 facility of mine. It is just another delusion, that 
 the plan makes it a laborious parish to any who 
 shall succeed me. It was indeed a labour to 
 combat the opposition that arose against the es- 
 tablishment of the plan but in the operation of 
 the plan itself, there is no labour. Instead of this, 
 there is a thorough exemption to the clergyman, 
 from the whole care of his parish pauperism and
 
 66 
 
 he is enabled to give the whole of his time to such 
 literary and spiritual labours as are strictly ecclesi- 
 astical. All that the system brings upon him is 
 one meeting with his deacons in the month ; or, 
 should the system be adopted without deacons, 
 and by elders alone, the only effect of it is to make 
 that regular meeting of his Session, which he must 
 have at any rate, a far blander, and quieter, and 
 more manageable meeting than it was before. It, 
 in fact, assimilates his condition to that of a country 
 clergyman ; and he has all the tranquillity of a home 
 walk, instead of that appalling complexity, and con- 
 troversy, and manifold interruption, which seem to 
 be inseparable from an extended management. 
 
 I must not disguise my conviction here, that 
 apart from the support of education and of insti- 
 tutions for disease, public charity, in any form, 
 is an evil and that the Scottish method is only to 
 be tolerated, because of its insignificance, and the 
 rooted establishment which it hath gotten in all 
 our parishes. But, though I would tolerate it in 
 practice, I cannot defend it in principle and I 
 speak according to my firm and experimental im- 
 pressions, when I say, that a parish might be 
 maintained in far greater comfort, and in a more 
 soundly economic condition, without it altogether. 
 The blind, and the dumb, and the deranged, may, 
 without mischief, be wholly provided for and 
 philanthropy would soon reach the limit of that 
 exertion, which might be required for the full and 
 permanent relief of all whom Nature had so sig-
 
 67 
 
 nalized. And then, after these, we believe, that 
 had it not been for the guarantees of a Kirk-Ses- 
 sion, we should have had fewer, or no runaway hus- 
 bands, perhaps even no exposed infants ; and, 
 certainly, been altogether saved from that awkward 
 and pernicious necessity which is sometimes laid 
 on the parochial court, when, by its very allowance 
 for illegitimate children, it seemeth, at least, td 
 accredit the grossest immorality. Take away these 
 sources of pauperism, and our expenditure for 
 the new cases would be reduced to 32 a-year 
 and I repeat, that in the absence of this dispensa- 
 tion, not one individual would have suffered, and 
 many been far more liberally dealt with. We 
 have one pauper that I recollect, who was ad- 
 mitted to a larger allowance than usual, on the 
 ground of her eminent Christian worth but this 
 worth was previously recognized by all her ac- 
 quaintances, and there was a consequent influx 
 of kindness, which, I hope, has not been arrested 
 by our interference. There was another who 
 came upon our roll, because of her long continued 
 sickness. We could not, and more especially as 
 she had recently come amongst us, give her more 
 liberal treatment than she would experience in 
 the other parishes of Glasgow and we are glad 
 to learn, that the spontaneous generosity of one 
 private individual in her neighbourhood, far out- 
 stript the more showy, but less substantial mini- 
 strations of the public body. The truth is, that 
 the rery knowledge of her state in the vicinity,
 
 68 
 
 soon surrounded her dwelling with a wholesome 
 operation of aid and sympathy. I never found 
 it otherwise. I would have no fear of a parish 
 any where in Scotland, though all claims, and all 
 collections were done away. But I have great 
 fear, of there being much untold and unrelieved 
 suffering in every parish, where the public charity 
 hath attained a magnitude that overbears the cha- 
 rity of nature where it hath turned the one party 
 into fierce and determined litigants, and put the 
 other on a stout and stern defensive against their 
 applications where the imagination of a right, 
 that most unseemly and heterogeneous element, 
 which ought never to have been admitted into the 
 business of human sympathy, hath set both grati- 
 tude and good-will at abeyance ; we greatly fear, 
 that in these circumstances, there is many a deso- 
 late and declining family, who sink under the ri- 
 gours of an artificial system, which they are too 
 delicate to brave who, perhaps, of gentler mood, 
 cannot brook the humiliations of a public scrutiny, 
 and cannot fight their way through all those rude 
 and repulsive obstacles by which the avenues of 
 legal charity are guarded. They are unnoticed 
 by neighbours, because a refuge is open to them, 
 which they have not the hardihood to enter. The 
 feeling of private charity is suspended, and there is 
 a frown in public charity that scareth them away. 
 
 To realize the best condition of a parish, we 
 do not hold it necessary, however, that the collec- 
 tion shall be done away but we do hold it most
 
 69 
 
 desirable, that it be stript altogether of its legal 
 character; and that the Kirk-Session have the 
 gratuitous and uncontrolled administration of it. 
 Thus delivered, we think that it may be the in- 
 strument of many and great services to philanthro- 
 py, though never brought to bear on the relief of 
 mere indigence at all. For this last object, a very 
 slight impulse given to the habits of the poor, and 
 the hearts of their wealthier neighbours, would do 
 more than any public offering whatever and we 
 appeal to any deacon who hath had intimate ex- 
 perience among his families, whether benevolence 
 Would not go forth upon its work with tenfold alac- 
 rity, when once the popular imagination of a legal 
 right on the one hand, and a certain depres- 
 sing sense of legal obligation on the other, were 
 wholly done away. There is nothing else want- 
 ing, in fact, even in the very poorest departments 
 of our land, to make it a gracious and a practica- 
 ble task for an individual to undertake any hun- 
 dred contiguous families; and to earn, by his cheap 
 and easy attentions, a heartfelt gratitude from 
 them all. Our deacons have done marvellously ; 
 but they would have done better still, had it not 
 been for the hopes and the claims which attach 
 to the official situation that they hold had they 
 stood related to the people in the simple capa- 
 city of their well-wishers and friends had the 
 jealousy and the heart-burnings which legality 
 never fails to engender, been detached from the 
 whole of their intercourse with them, so as to
 
 70 
 
 give to each little forthgoing of aid and of service 
 the character of spontaneous kindness, and re- 
 store to humanity its own proper guise. 
 
 II. I hope, that, by this time, every objection to 
 the imitableness of the parochial system by others, 
 has been conclusively set at rest. It is not by 
 my great day collection, but my small evening 
 one, that the only essential operation of the pro- 
 cess hath been done and done, too, at an expense 
 of management so very trifling, as to be most easi- 
 ly borne, even by the most busy and occupied of 
 the citizens. 
 
 There are now two parishes, where the plan hath 
 been completely acted on for a considerable time, 
 and with most unlooked-for success; and there are 
 three where it hath been partially acted upon. It 
 is, perhaps, very natural in these circumstances^ 
 for city rulers, whose habitual superintendence is 
 a general one, and over the city as a whole, to 
 seek for the effect of this change on the sum total 
 of the expenditure for the pauperism of Glasgow; 
 and if they find, that this expenditure still grows 
 upon their hands, to ask, what benefit hath ac- 
 crued to us from the new system? But, though 
 this may be natural, never was any thing more 
 thoroughly erroneous. It is hard, indeed, to make 
 the new system responsible, not for the expendi- 
 ture in those parishes where it is established, but 
 in those also where it is shut out and resisted. If 
 two English counties adopted our retracing pro- 
 cess, and succeeded therein, would it be any dis-
 
 71 
 
 paragement upon its efficacy, that still there was 
 an increase of national pauperism in the country 
 at large ? The only quarter where to look for the 
 efficacy of the new system, is to the parishes where 
 it has been set up, and has for some time been in 
 actual operation. If, in one of these parishes, 
 there be no compulsory pauperism at all in conse- 
 quence, and in another of them it be rapidly dy- 
 ing off, and no new accessions are making to it, this 
 is the only proper test, and it is a conclusive one. 
 The general increase of pauperism, notwithstand- 
 ing, is, in fact, the strongest demonstration that 
 can be given, not of the impotency of the new 
 system, under which it is melting away, but of 
 the mischievous power and virulence of the old, 
 under which it is making head against all the 
 correctives that are applied to it, and notwith- 
 standing all the encroachments that are making 
 upon its territory. From the tables of Mr. Cle- 
 land, it appears, that the poor rate of Glasgow in 
 1803, was .3,940, and that in 1820, it was so 
 much as .13,120. At this rate, it would require 
 the most complete and decisive success of at least 
 six of the Glasgow parishes out of the ten, ere the 
 progress of this sore mischief was arrested. When 
 one or two parishes strike off' from the Town Hospi- 
 tal, they may retard the increase of pauperism, 
 but it does not follow, that they should prevent 
 the increase. Nevertheless, it is most true, that 
 by each parish adopting it successively, the whole 
 would, at length, disappear ; and that, too, by a
 
 72 
 
 smooth and gradual process, which carried none 
 of the hazards of a violent and sudden innovation 
 along with it. 
 
 It were, therefore, well, that our city rulers gave 
 every encouragement to each Kirk-Session, that 
 felt disposed for the separate and independent 
 management of their own affairs and meanwhile, 
 not to be impatient for a general result, or look 
 for any striking or palpable effect, except in the 
 parishes themselves, taken singly. And the only 
 encouragement which even the poorest of the 
 parishes would require, is a good initial arrange- 
 ment for their existing paupers, and an unfettered 
 control over their own means in the treatment of 
 their future paupers. It were one of the worst 
 ways of helping them, to decree, in their behalf, 
 any part of the sums collected in the wealthier 
 parishes. This would at once relax that stimulus 
 wherein the whole virtue, in fact, of the process 
 lies; and which never can be secured but by each 
 parish being left to its own means, and its own 
 management. There is nought of which the pub- 
 lic are more incredulous, and yet nought more ex- 
 perimentally true, than that it is not money which 
 is wanted, but such an impulse given to the so- 
 brieties of humble life, and the sympathies of na- 
 ture, as under a simple economy of pauperism, 
 would greatly more than supply its place. 
 
 But such an arrangement for equalizing the col- 
 lections between poorer and wealthier parishes, 
 would not only destroy the stimulus to good man-
 
 73 
 
 agement in the poorer it would also most grie- 
 vously paralyze the management of the wealthier. 
 It was for this reason that I resisted so strenuously 
 every attempt on the surplus of my own collection. 
 I believe that, had these attempts succeeded, there 
 would, in the first instance, have been a much 
 smaller collection ; and, in the second instance, I 
 fear, a much less strict and attentive administra- 
 tion. It is not in human nature, that men should 
 be so intent on the prosperity of any operation, 
 when all the fruits of that prosperity are to be 
 seized upon by others, and alienated from the good 
 of their own particular vineyard. It was, there- 
 fore, a question of serious concern, how my own 
 surplus, that had accumulated to a good many 
 hundred pounds, should be disposed of. It was 
 of importance that it should be absorbed, for had 
 it continued applicable to the expenses of pau- 
 perism alone, it would most surely have relaxed 
 the management; but, then, it was of equal im- 
 portance that it should be absorbed in a way that 
 would gratify and interest my parochial adminis- 
 trators, who, one and all of them, had the good of 
 the parish at heart. And therefore I have applied 
 it to the endowment of parish schools. And so it 
 should be suffered to all who are in any way embar- 
 rassed with their surplusses, those most decisive tro- 
 phies to the efficiency of the parochial system in 
 Glasgow. The poorer parishes, after having obtain- 
 ed a good initial arrangement, might, with all safety, 
 
 be left to themselves. And the richer, after hav- 
 
 K
 
 74 
 
 ing provided a good apparatus of parochial school- 
 ing for their own population, should be permitted, 
 through the medium of their collections, to extend 
 the same benefit to other parishes, or even to the 
 suburb wastes by which our city is surrounded.* 
 
 The proposition that our surplus should go to the 
 Town Hospital, for the relief of the general ex- 
 penditure of the city, is altogether monstrous. 
 When one reflects, indeed, that all the collections 
 of the city churches taken together amount to a- 
 bout a,000 in the year, and that the annual assess- 
 ment has been known to exceed \ 3,000, this 
 whole attempt upon the sessional surplusses is some- 
 thing very like straining at a gnat and swallowing 
 a camel. But never was there so thorough an ex- 
 emplification of the cross-purpose never were 
 human understandings so totally at antipodes with 
 each other, as when it was proposed to lead the 
 camel forth, that it may feed and fatten on the 
 healthful sproutings of that system which was es- 
 
 * For the purpose of giving complete legal security to the parochial sys- 
 tem in Glasgow, the following are the heads of the bill that should be at- 
 tempted in Parliament. 
 
 First, when the Kirk-Session of any parish, by a certain specified major- 
 ity, which ought to be a large one, undertakes to provide for all their exist- 
 ing sessional poor, and to meet all their own new cases of pauperism, with- 
 out having recourse on the fund by assessment, they should be left to the 
 uncontrolled disposal of their own collections. 
 
 Secondly, when a Kirk-Session, the expense of whose present sessional 
 poor overpasses their present collection, undertakes, on being relieved of the 
 excess, to provide for the same objects in the same way, they, in like man- 
 ner, should be left to the uncontrolled disposal of their own collections. 
 
 Thirdly, the general law of residence in Scotland should be made appli- 
 cable for the mutual protection of the parishes within the Royalty, from 
 each other's poor.
 
 75 
 
 pecially set up with the design to starve it at length 
 into utter extermination. Had this idea been en- 
 tertained by more than a very few of our influen- 
 tial men, I should have been filled with despair; 
 but I confidently leave the whole question in the 
 hands of those from whom I have ever experienced 
 the most friendly countenance and support and 
 I cannot doubt that, with the Magistrates and 
 Town Council of Glasgow, the experiment is safe. 
 There is just one delusion more which might 
 bewilder the views of the public on this question ; 
 and I speak the more earnestly upon it, that I 
 have witnessed the mischievous influence of it in 
 many parts of England. It is possible, at any time, 
 to put forth an arm of vigour, and to make very 
 great retrenchments on the existing pauperism, 
 and without changing at all the old system, to 
 administer it so strictly for a season as to reduce 
 very much the expenditure and then appeal to 
 this reduction as an argument that the system is in 
 itself a very good one, and that no other reforma- 
 tion is called for than merely on the administration 
 of it. But this impulse will not continue and the 
 pauperism will soon make head again and when- 
 ever there is the unlimited command over a fund 
 for its expense, it will be found most surely, in 
 
 And, lastly, for the encouragement of the poorer parishes, those whose 
 expense to the fund by assessment, for the seven years previous to their 
 adoption of the provisions of the act, has exceeded their contribution by the 
 levy to this fund, during the same period, shall be wholly exonerated from 
 the assessment, so soon as either their Hospital paupers have all died away, 
 or they have otherwise relieved that institution of all further charge on 
 account of them.
 
 76 
 
 the long-run, to contain within itself the seeds and 
 principles of its own most mischievous acceleration. 
 It is not so with the modest and gratuitous eco- 
 nomy of a Scottish parish, because there the admi- 
 nistrators are at all times necessarily strict, and 
 the popular habit is that of a quiescence corres- 
 ponding therewith. How soon the people even of 
 a city parish may be conducted to this habit back 
 again and how soon, in consequence, a Kirk-Ses- 
 sion may be relieved from all that pressure of appli- 
 cation which is inseparable from compulsory pau- 
 perism, has, I trust, been made most abundantly 
 manifest by the truly important testimonies which 
 I have received from the deacons of St. John's. 
 
 I conclude with one word to the clergymen of 
 the city. There is nought more fitted to deter 
 imitation than the idea of a complex and unman- 
 ageable machinery ; and I accordingly believe, 
 that one of the elements which enters into the dis- 
 inclination of my colleagues for the parochial sys- 
 tem is, the idea that an order of deacons is indis- 
 pensable. Now, however valuable the services of 
 my deacons may have been, and however much I 
 desire the continuance of these services, yet it were 
 against experimental truth to affirm, that by elders 
 alone the retracing process could not be accom- 
 plished. The Outer Kirk parish had a far more 
 unfavourable commencement than we had, and 
 yet their Kirk-Session has succeeded hitherto with- 
 out deacons. And so might any other Kirk-Ses- 
 sion in the city, on the condition, however, of their 
 being heartily resolved upon the enterprise, and
 
 77 
 
 nearly unanimous in its favour. A very few dis- 
 sentients could easily blast the undertaking could 
 overrun, if they chose, their districts with pau- 
 perism could, with so powerful an auxiliary on 
 their side as the natural sloth and appetency of 
 man, bring on such a host of applications to the 
 parochial board, as might alarm all the members 
 of it into a sense of their utter insufficiency to 
 meet them; and then appeal to the premature 
 failure, as an evidence against the new system, 
 which they detest, and for the old, of which they 
 are the devoted worshippers. I shall therefore 
 be sorry if the matter be pushed and precipitated 
 beyond the real progress of conviction ; and however 
 slow that progress was, I would much rather see it 
 patiently waited for than prematurely outrun. 
 
 Before I have done, I shall again offer it as my 
 decisive testimony, in behalf of this parochial sys- 
 tem, that it is not only one of great efficacy, but 
 of great comfort; and that within the parish of 
 St. John's, much peace, as well as much prosperity 
 has attended the operation of it. I shall ever 
 think with gratitude and good will of the accep- 
 tance which it had among the families ; and, in- 
 deed, of all the unmerited cordiality that I have 
 gotten from their hands. The only drawback 
 from that full enjoyment which I else might have 
 had in it, is the perpetual controversy that was 
 ever and anon springing up in some new quarter, 
 so as to surround the enterprise with a menace and 
 a hostility from without, that was at least very dis- 
 quieting. The parochial system secured for me a
 
 78 
 
 homewalk that was altogether delightful ; but it 
 would have required the combative temper of an 
 Ishmaelite, to have had any comfort in the foreign 
 warfare that had to be waged for the defence of it. 
 Yet this warfare, I fondly hope, is temporary ; confi- 
 dent as I am, that in proportion as the parochial sys- 
 tem is more tried and more understood, there will 
 come to be a more friendly coalescence in its fa- 
 vour, on the part of all the public men of Glasgow. 
 There is much of a common feeling, and common 
 principle that ought to harmonise us many re- 
 conciling principles, on which I despair not, at 
 length, of a full reciprocity of sentiment. I fully 
 share with them in their antipathy to all wanton 
 and senseless innovation. I share with them in 
 their reverence for antiquity; and our only differ- 
 ence is, that while some plead for the way and 
 custom of their fathers, I should like to fetch my 
 authority from a remoter age, and quote the still 
 deeper and more revered antiquity of our grand- 
 fathers. It is not any new system which I advo- 
 cate, but the system of the founders of the Scot- 
 tish Kirk, as it still subsists throughout the vast 
 majority of our land, and as it stood unviolated for 
 more than a century, over nearly the whole extent 
 of it, till marred by the contagion of England. 
 
 FINIS.
 
 WORKS OF DR. CHALMERS, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY CHALMERS AND COLLINS, GLASGOW. 
 
 The CHRISTIAN and CIVIC ECONOMY of LARGE, 
 TOWNS. Published Quarterly, Price Is. each Number. 
 
 VOLUME FIRST, containing Nos. I. to VIII. Price 8s. 6d. bds. This 
 Volume contains a Series of Essays on the best means of Providing for 
 the Common and the Christian Education of the People. 
 
 VOLUME SECOND, containing Nos. IX. to XVI. Price 8s. 6d. bds. This 
 Volume contains a Series of Essays on the Causes and Cure of 
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 (anas TO BE
 
 ON THE 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY MEANS 
 
 F : ?. THE 
 
 ABOLITION OF PAUPERISM 
 
 BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF THE FIFTEENTH NTMBEB 
 
 OF THE CHRISTIAN AND CIVIC ECONOMY OF 
 
 LARGE TOWSS. 
 
 3V 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. 
 
 . nouMDRcr or TBE taovxurTT or K. A: 
 
 GLASGO 
 PRINTED FOR CHALMERS AXD COLLINS; 
 
 WTLLIAJC WHYTI & CO. A>~D WILLIAM OLIPHAST, KDOCMJ1 
 
 B. M. TIMS, DUXLIX; 
 G- 4 r. . WHITTAKKm. 
 
 t8M
 
 Printed by \V. Collins & Co. 
 Glasgow.
 
 ON THE 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY MEANS 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 ABOLITION OF PAUPERISM 
 
 IN 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 A GENTLEMAN who is bestowing much of his atten- 
 tion on the poor laws, when informed of the speed 
 and facility wherewith all compulsory pauperism 
 had been extinguished in a particular parish, re- 
 plied, that although it might be easy to effect the 
 deliverance of one parish, it was not so easy to 
 legislate for the deliverance of all England. But 
 if an easy and applicable method can be devised 
 for one parish, what is it that the legislature has 
 properly to do for the accomplishment of the gene- 
 ral object? Simply to remove the legal obstruc- 
 tions that may now stand in the way of the method 
 in question. Simply to authorise each parish that 
 so wills to avail itself of this method. And should 
 many parishes, or should all of them at length go 
 forth upon the enterprise, and succeed in itj then 
 the extinction of this sore evil over the country at 
 large, instead of being referred to the impetus of 
 the single blow, struck against it by the arm of
 
 Parliament should be referred to a cause far more 
 commensurate with the vastness of the achievement, 
 even to the power of those multiplied energies set 
 to work, throughout the land, each of which, how- 
 ever, had only its own separate and limited object 
 to overtake, and each of which acted independently 
 of all the rest. 
 
 However obvious this may be, we have often con- 
 sidered, that the overlooking of it is one main cause 
 of the despair and helplessness which are felt by 
 many of our legislators on the subject of this great 
 national distemper. There are many of them who 
 would feel no difficulty, but for certain legal ob- 
 stacles in their way, in working off this nuisance 
 each from his own little neighbourhood; and who 
 moreover are confident, that after this was done, 
 there would, over the whole space which had thus 
 been cleared away, be diffused more of comfort 
 among the families, and a higher tone of character 
 than before. Each of these individuals feels that, 
 if free from one restraint, he could clear the mis- 
 chief from his own territory, and thus contribute 
 his own quota to the deliverance of the empire. 
 But he who has a place and an authority in the 
 councils of the empire, is apt to take a wide and 
 extended survey of the whole of it and by a sort 
 of fancied ubiquity, to bring himself into contact 
 with all the struggles and difficulties of all the pa- 
 rishes in the nation in which case he begins to 
 feel as though the weight and the labour of what 
 is indeed an intolerable burden, were accumulated
 
 upon his own person and, instead of regarding 
 pauperism as that which can only be put to death 
 by inches, and with the help of many separate 
 hands, he sees it calling him forth, as it were, to 
 single combat a hydra of dread and direful en- 
 counter, at the sight of whom every heart fails, and 
 every arm is paralyzed. 
 
 And akin to this delusion, is the conception 
 which not unfrequently prevails, that the only way 
 of proceeding against pauperism is by imperative 
 enactments, which must be instantly, and simul- 
 taneously followed up by a change of system and 
 administration all over the country. If this notion 
 were just, it is obvious that a disturbing force 
 would be immediately brought to bear upon each 
 and all of the parishes, that all would be roused 
 to a strong, because a practical interest in the 
 measure and that, out of a conflict of sentiment 
 thus wide and violent, might spring a spirit of re- 
 sistance greatly too fierce for the safety of the na- 
 tion. Such a process would supply ample mate- 
 rials in the hands of the master demagogues of the 
 day, for the destruction of all that is truly valu- 
 able in the institutions of the country. Hence it 
 arises that an attempt on the poor laws, is dreaded 
 by many as the sure precursor of a revolution 
 nor is it seen in what way this question can be 
 prosecuted with the same wisdom, and calmness, 
 and with the same happy results, which have fol- 
 lowed the prosecution of other public objects, or 
 have carried the country through a long era of 
 peaceful and progressive improvement.
 
 We should, on this account, hold it to be high- 
 ly advisable, that any enactment which might be 
 made on the subject of pauperism, should not be 
 imperative but permissive an enactment not which 
 puts forth a law, but which holds out a leave; and 
 a leave to be granted "only to such a concurrent 
 application from the householders as to create, of 
 itself, a guarantee, that however t)dious a general 
 movement against pauperism might be in the coun- 
 try at large, yet that in the parish so applying, the 
 measure would be abundantly popular. 
 
 The intended process may be in some measure 
 illustrated by the way in which the commons of 
 England have been appropriated. Certain acts 
 have been passed, of which the object is not to re- 
 quire parishes to divide and enclose their commons, 
 but by which they are empowered each to petition 
 for a local act, or a separate enclosure bill author- 
 izing the division of their own commons. In the 
 general acts, the principles are laid down and de- 
 fined, on which the local acts are to be granted. 
 The consent of the parties interested, to the bill 
 thus sought to be passed into a law, is signified by 
 the subscription of their names to it. And, though 
 there is no fixed rule in this respect, yet it may be 
 proper to state, that the consent of four-fifths of 
 of the proprietors in number and value, is expected 
 by parliament. 
 
 Thus parliament has not made it imperative on 
 parishes, to turn their commons into private pro- 
 perty. But they have struck out a path by which
 
 this transition may be effected, and have left it to 
 the parishes to make the movement if they will. 
 Had so mad an expedient been adopted as that of 
 attempting to force parishes into the measure by 
 positive enactments, it must have been followed by 
 the reaction of clamour and discontent all over the 
 country no government can be expected to brave 
 so formidable an encounter ; especially for the sake 
 of a reform, when it is principally intended for the 
 benefit of those local districts where it is carried 
 into effect. It was far wiser to break down the 
 mass into fragments; to do the business piece- 
 meal, and to make the improvement of this branch 
 of our domestic economy a successive, instead of a 
 simultaneous process. The experiment has now 
 been in progress for years, and in consequence of 
 it, a great national improvement is going surely 
 and quietly forward. Parliament has done its part 
 by opening a practicable door and it wisely leaves 
 the country to do theirs; and that, not by any 
 general movement, but by the separate movements 
 of separate parishes. It is true that we have occa- 
 sionally heard of a little parochial effervescence. 
 But it is not such as to fill or to agitate the public 
 mind, or to bring into slightest hazard the tran- 
 quillity of the state. A parish in the depths of 
 Cornwall or Yorkshire, will be alive, of course, to 
 the consequences of its own local arrangements; 
 but these consequences are wholly unfelt by the 
 public at large; and it is well that what might 
 have been fuel for the disturbing force of a nation,
 
 8 
 
 is thus restrained from touching more than those 
 petty springs of passion and interest which lie hid 
 in the bosom of each particular hamlet. The vio- 
 lence is thus dissipated and disposed of, which 
 might else have gathered into one wasting volcano. 
 The march of events has been, upon the whole, as 
 peaceful as it is beneficent and a measure which, 
 under one form, might have called forth a great 
 popular insurrection, has, under another, been car- 
 ried forward with sure and silent footsteps over 
 the kingdom. It has indeed, for a time at least, 
 depressed the value of agricultural produce, and, 
 in this way, lessened the income of the landlord, 
 who, perhaps, counted on being the chief gainer 
 by it. But it has also, for the same time, cheap- 
 ened the necessaries of life, and so added to the 
 comfort of the labourer, who perhaps imagined 
 himself to be the chief sufferer by it. Meanwhile, 
 it is clearing its way through all the near-sighted 
 and nugatory apprehensions of the various classes 
 of society and whatever be the temporary evils 
 charged upon it, its ultimate effect must be to add 
 to the abundance and prosperity of the country. 
 
 Now, such as this we conceive should be the 
 order of the attack upon pauperism.* It is thus 
 
 * It might serve to reconcile us the more to the process which is now 
 recommended, that it is in the very order by which previous reforms on 
 the poor laws have been attempted by Parliament, and acquiesced in by the 
 country at large. By the Select Vestry Act, or the act of 59 Geo. III. c. 12. 
 it is declared, " that it shall be lawful for the inhabitants of any parish, in 
 Vestry assembled, and they are hereby empowered to establish a select VPS-
 
 that this moral waste also, now a defenceless prey 
 to the inroads of vice and idleness, should be gra- 
 dually reclaimed, and placed within the secure 
 limits by which all property should be guarded. 
 We know it indeed to be a prevalent impression, 
 that such a process is calculated to convert the 
 lower orders into orphans and outcasts; and how- 
 ever erroneous the conception, it is an impression 
 that ought to be most tenderly and respectfully 
 dealt with. The benevolence of Englishmen must 
 be satisfied; and it says much for that noble peo- 
 ple, that burdened as they are, and important as 
 the deliverance from the present system of pauper- 
 ism would be, yet, before the boon will be accep- 
 ted, the apprehension must be removed that the 
 poor will suffer. This surely is not a feeling which 
 ought to be rudely handled; and, therefore it is, 
 that throughout the whole business of reform, there 
 
 try for the overseers of the poor of such parish." And so of the Act 22 
 Geo. III. c. 83. commonly called Gilbert's act, which does not pass into ef- 
 fect in any parisli, till called for by two thirds in number and value of the 
 .owners or occupiers according to their poor rate. Thus, under the autho- 
 rity of a general act previously passed, and by which leave is given to parishes 
 on the consent of a certain number of qualified owners or occupiers to 
 adopt certain arrangements, under which the affairs of the poor may be 
 forthwith administered parishes come forward, and on presenting the con- 
 currence that is required, these arrangements are carried into effect. It is 
 thus that Gilbert's Act has made a certain progress throughout England, 
 and Sturgess Bourne's Act is still in progress. The Appendix to the Re- 
 port of July last, from the Select Committee on Poor Rate Returns, con- 
 tains many testimonies in its favour, from the parishes that had adopted it. 
 This, of course, will extend the range of its operations still more widely ; 
 and thus it is that facts are multiplied, and experiment passes into expe- 
 rience. 
 
 B
 
 10 
 
 should not merely be the utmost tenderness to the 
 lower orders, but the utmost respect for the hu- 
 manity of those who so generously sympathize in 
 their interests and distresses. 
 
 There are three distinct objects that should be 
 comprehended in the provisions of any General 
 Act, on the subject of pauperism, each of which 
 may be regarded separately. The first relates to 
 the degree of concurrence to be required of any 
 parish, before that parish shall be empowered to 
 make a radical change in the management of its 
 poor. The second relates to the nature of the 
 change to be made. And the third, respects the 
 way in which the Parliament and people of Eng- 
 land are to be satisfied, both at the outset, and 
 through all the subsequent stages of this new expe- 
 riment, that its effects are so beneficial, and more 
 particularly to the poor themselves, as to be alto- 
 gether worthy of a humane and civilized nation. 
 
 I. Before allowance can be granted for the en- 
 closure of a parish common, parliament expects 
 the consent of four-fifths of the proprietors, in 
 number and value. To obtain leave for the new- 
 modelling of the pauperism of any particular pa- 
 rish, we should not object to the consent of even a 
 larger proportion than this of all the parisli house- 
 holders who are not paupers themselves, being 
 required by Parliament.* It is obvious, that the 
 
 * Gilbert's Act requires the consent to it of two-thirds in number and 
 value of those who pay poor rate. Sturgess Bourne's Act requires a ma-
 
 11 
 
 larger the consent required by the general act, the 
 fewer will be the parishes who are likely to avail 
 
 jority of the inhabitants assembled in vestry; or, in other words, a majority 
 of those who are present, and pay the rate it being provided by 58 G. III. 
 c. 69. " That no person who shall have refused or neglected to pay any 
 rate for the relief of the poor, which shall be due from, and shall be demanded 
 of him, shall be entitled to vote or to be present in any vestry of the parish 
 for which such rate shall have been made, until he shall have paid the 
 same." 
 
 We think that a larger concurrence than this should be required, before 
 a parish shall have leave to adopt a change of system still more radical and 
 entire than that which is allowed by the acts either of Gilbert or of Sturgess 
 Bourne. A very large proportion indeed of all the householders who are 
 not paupers, should signify their previous consent to it and the following 
 are my reasons for believing that even though their unanimity on the point 
 were held by the first general act to be indispensable, still there are some 
 parishes that will be found to satisfy a condition which, wherever it can be 
 realised, will leave no doubt as to the popularity of the measure. 
 
 The two opposite interests which are felt on the subject of the Poor 
 Laws, are the first by those who pay the rate, and the second by those 
 who receive it. Now, practically, these two classes do not share between 
 them the whole population of owners or occupiers. There is, in many 
 places, a very large intermediate class, who neither give nor receive ; but 
 who so far from being neutral upon this question, will, of course, have a 
 leaning towards that compulsory provision, from which most of them per- 
 haps look for some eventual benefit at one time or another to themselves. 
 Even apart from this expectation, their natural and generous inclination will 
 be towards the system as it is ; so that in all places where this intermediate 
 class is a very numerous one, a very large concurrence of householders who 
 are not paupers, is not to be expected. 
 
 But it is to be remarked, that strictly and legally there is no exemption 
 from the rate, even for paupers themselves. The law is, that the rate shall 
 be made on every inhabitant who is an occupier either of houses or lands 
 and so may it be carried down to the very margin of pauperism, nay, even 
 be brought within it, in either of which cases there could be no neutral or 
 intermediate class whatever. These exemptions from the rate are altoge- 
 ther at the discretion of those who make it, and accordingly the practice 
 varies exceedingly in different parishes, and different parts of the country. 
 From out of twenty thousand assessments in Liverpool, for example, there
 
 12 
 
 themselves of its provisions; and it is perhaps de- 
 sirable that, in the first instance, this number 
 
 are ordinarily about 13000 struck off; whereas, in Bury, in the same county, 
 they stop the rate out of the pay of the pauper; and at Pilkington, the 
 poor rate is levied on those whom even the overseers relieve at the same 
 instant. In Manchester, the intermediate class forms nearly three-fourths 
 of the whole population there being 12,000 exempted, of about sixteen 
 thousand who are liable by law. I am informed from Stockport, " that none 
 are exempted from paying of rates, not even the paupers themselves." The 
 overseers are there made chargeable for all the assessments, while at Sal- 
 ford about 1,500 may pay the full rate, and about a thousand a portion of 
 it through the landlord, a considerable number being still left, who neither 
 pay nor receive. At Birmingham, there were at one time about fifteen 
 thousand out of nineteen thousand, who did not pay; though the interme- 
 diate class there also is constantly diminishing. It were quite endless to 
 enumerate all the arbitrary differences that take place in various parishes 
 and townships. But certain it is, that the tendency all over the land is to 
 carry the levy downward as far as it is practicable and we should say, 
 that the neutral class is perhaps narrowing into a more limited space and 
 smaller number every year. 
 
 There is one clause, however, in the Select Vestry Act, by which this 
 tendency has been counteracted. It is that by which a power is granted to 
 rate the owners of certain houses, instead of the occupiers. Such houses 
 as are let at a rate not exceeding 20, nor less than .6 by the year. We 
 believe, that virtually this carries in it no relief to the occupier ; for had the 
 levy been exacted from him, he would have had his compensation for it in 
 the diminution of his rent. We have no doubt, that the landlord is indem- 
 nified by a higher rent, for all that he must now pay to the poor rate ; but 
 the occupier is ostensibly freed from the burden of the rate and thus may 
 there always be kept in the intermediate class the tenants of such houses, 
 as are occupied by industrious tradesmen, and well-conditioned mechanics 
 or labourers, and, in a word, all those who, taken together, form the better 
 and more influential part of our working population. 
 
 We, therefore, on the whole regret this clause. There is substantially no 
 relief yielded by it to the tenants ; but it has withdrawn them from that 
 ostensible place, in which, if they had been permitted to remain, they would 
 have felt the hostility of a personal interest to the poor rate, and so have 
 given additional force and power to that direction which even the popular 
 mind of the country was beginning to take against it.
 
 13 
 
 should be small. It is obvious, moreover, that as it 
 is more difficult to obtain the requisite proportion 
 of householders in a large and populous town, than 
 in a small and manageable country parish ; the 
 movements made under the general act, will be 
 made first in the agricultural districts of England. 
 At the outset, therefore, the more unwieldy pa- 
 rishes will have no interest in this transition from 
 a legal to a free system of charity, unless as spec- 
 tators of what is going on, looking intently on the 
 whole course of those adventurers who have slipt 
 cable before them, and perhaps waiting their arri- 
 
 Still, however, it is a matter of discretion to charge the rate either on the 
 owners or the occupiers. Indeed it is more to facilitate the levy by laying 
 it upon the one class, than to grant even the semblance of relief to the other, 
 that this enactment is proceeded upon. On the whole, there is a far greater 
 proportion of the community enlisted against poor rate, than used to be at 
 former periods; and not a few are the parishes, therefore, where a nearly 
 universal concurrence might be obtained for a radical change of system, on 
 the part of all those householders who are not paupers themselves. 
 
 Before closing this note, it may be right to advert to the very great ex- 
 pense of a local act, obtained for a parish under the authority, and according 
 to the provisions of a previous general act. It would not be necessary, for 
 the purpose of giving effect to the new legislative measures upon pauperism, 
 that a parish should be at this trouble, or incur this expense. A simple 
 certification to the justices assembled in quarter sessions, of any parish, hav- 
 ing approven of the provisions of the general act, and being desirous to adopt 
 them, might, from that time, entitle them to proceed upon it. This is 
 precisely the process, when a parish comes under the benefit of Gilbert's 
 Act. By the 33 Geo. III. c. 35. 1. " Whenever two-third parts in num- 
 ber and value, as required by the said act, of such qualified persons only as 
 actually attended, or may hereafter actually attend at such public meeting, 
 held in pursuance of the directions of the said act, have there signified or 
 may hereafter there signify, their approbation of the provisions in the said 
 act contained, and their desire to adopt them, such approbation and desire 
 so signified, or to be hereafter so signified as aforesaid, have been and shall 
 be a sufficient compliance with the said act."
 
 14 
 
 val at a safe and prosperous landing-place, ere they 
 themselves acquire the courage to follow in the 
 same track. It is because we should like the whole 
 process to be conducted, surely and experimen- 
 tally, that we should wish, especially the first 
 general act, to require a concurrence so large in 
 each parish, as that the number of parishes which 
 it may actually put into action, shall be very small. 
 It were well that this act should be loaded, in the 
 first instance, with a condition that is not easily 
 satisfied; and thus the trials will be restricted, in 
 the first instance, to a few of the easiest and most 
 promising of the parishes. We are far from wish- 
 ing the whole of England to be committed to the 
 risk of an untried hypothesis. But we want Eng- 
 land to put herself to school. We think that she 
 needs, as to this point, to go to school ; and when 
 looking attentively to those trial parishes to which 
 we have referred, she will, in fact, be learning the 
 first lessons, and acquiring the sound rudiments of 
 a sound education. Those parishes will be to her 
 a sort of alphabet, by means of which she may ven- 
 ture upon achievements still more arduous ; and at 
 length be enabled to accomplish those more com- 
 plex and difficult results, which are now removed, 
 beyond the reach of her hopes, and almost of her 
 perceptions.* 
 
 * It gave me great pleasure to receive a letter from an English clergy- 
 man of talent and energy, and who has paid great attention to the manage- 
 ment of the poor, in which the very idea that we have attempted to develop,
 
 15 
 
 There are many advantages, in a large concur- 
 rence of householders being required before a pa- 
 rish shall have liberty to enter on the new system 
 of pauperism, a few of which we shall announce, 
 without venturing to expatiate on them. 
 
 First, by this means the operation of the pro- 
 posed act is directed to those parishes where the 
 experiment is most popular; and excluded from 
 those where its obnoxiousness to the community at 
 large would be an almost invincible impediment to 
 its success. And it is evident, that the larger the 
 requisite concurrence, the more effectually will this 
 object be secured. 
 
 But, secondly, a large concurrence in favour of 
 the new method is our best security for a resolute 
 and powerful agency to carry it into effect. We 
 should not despair of a most efficient vestry in any 
 parish for conducting the business of its gratuitous 
 charity, in which there had been a nearly unani- 
 mous consent to the abolition of its compulsory 
 charity. There is little fear with regard to any 
 parish which has thus stood out from the rest, and 
 made a spectacle of itself, that it will not acquit it- 
 self well in the end, and demonstrate to its neigh- 
 is briefly but distinctly brought forward. " If power," he writes, " by a 
 general bill, was given to vestries to make experiments and adopt measures 
 suitable to themselves, some materials might be furnished for a universal 
 principle. I know a case or two, where the whole property of a parish is in 
 the hands of one person, and that a person who saw and determined to meet 
 the growing evil ; and the poor rate has been reduced to a mere nothing, 
 and that instantly. There is a case you may see of Mr. Estcourt, in the 
 Report for Bettering the Condition of the Poor."
 
 16 
 
 hours, that without a poor rate, or without any 
 painful sacrifice, even in the way of gratuitous as- 
 sistance, it can boast of a happier and a better 
 population than any of those by which it is sur- 
 rounded. We prophesy a success to their under- 
 taking that will be marvellous even to themselves; 
 and that they will soon find, that little is wanting 
 except an energetic outset, to ensure a transition, 
 which shall be both to the people's contentment 
 and their own repose. But there is obviously a 
 better chance of this energetic outset where there 
 has been a very extended concurrence and also 
 a surer warrant of success, where there is a wider 
 responsibility. It is for this reason, that we would 
 not have parishes selected for the experiment, by 
 parliamentary commissioners, or by any constitu- 
 ted body whatever. On the contrary, we wish pa- 
 rishes to offer themselves; and the bare fact of 
 their so doing, with that full complement of names 
 and signatures which such a general act would re- 
 quire, is, of itself, the best evidence of their fit- 
 ness for the experiment. 
 
 And, thirdly, it is obvious, that although the 
 provision of a nearly unanimous concurrence on 
 the part of householders, must, at the commence- 
 ment of this process, restrict the trial to a smalt 
 number of parishes, this circumstance does not 
 eventually exclude the whole country from the 
 proposed reformation. On the contrary, it pre- 
 pares the way for it. The fact is, that should only 
 so few as twenty parishes come forward, under
 
 17 
 
 the first general act, and should their experiment 
 prosper, it will do more to assure the hearts and 
 the hopes of the people of England than a thousand 
 dissertations on the subject. Such a result will be 
 like the securing one post in advance of the ori- 
 ginal position. The next movement will be bolder. 
 A second general act may be passed, whose condi- 
 tions may be easier to satisfy, and under which as 
 many hundreds may come forward, as before there 
 were tens of parishes. The success of the first set 
 of parishes will both embolden Parliament to widen 
 the door of admission for succeeding parishes, and 
 encourage these parishes to follow in the track of 
 their precursors. The simple expedient of reduc- 
 ing the extent of the concurrence would effectually 
 answer both these purposes. If upon the terms of 
 an application from seven-eighths of the house- 
 holders, as many as twenty parishes ventured on a 
 yet untried project, and succeeded ; we may be 
 sure, that upon the terms of a similar application 
 from four-fifths of the householders, two hundred 
 parishes would soon feel encouraged to imitate 
 them. It is thus that by a series of general acts, 
 as by a series of stepping-stones, England may 
 emerge from the difficulties of her present pauper- 
 ism. The first footstep she will take is on a firm 
 basis, and through the whole of her course she 
 moves by a way strictly experimental. Through- 
 out every inch of such a progress, she is guided by 
 the light of observation ; and thus, in this interest- 
 ing walk, first over her provinces, then over her 
 great cities, till, at length, she reaches in triumph 
 
 c
 
 18 
 
 her mighty metropolis she is led on from one 
 achievement to another, by the way she best loves, 
 because the way most congenial with the sober and 
 practical spirit of the national character. 
 
 II. In regard to the nature of the proposed 
 change, it is our wish to leave untouched the con- 
 dition and the rights of all those who, at the time 
 of its being adopted, could be properly considered 
 as permanent paupers. In as far as they are con- 
 cerned, there should be no extinction of any claims 
 which would not have been rejected under the old 
 system. It is, of course, fair, under every .system, 
 to scrutinize to the uttermost, the means and re- 
 sources of all applicants ; and upon the discovery 
 of their adequacy to their own support, to strike 
 their names from the roll. This is what always 
 takes place under the present system, and should, 
 therefore, take place under the new. We are 
 willing, moreover, that before any application, by 
 those who were paupers under the old system, is 
 discarded, there should be, as now, a right of ap- 
 peal to the magistrates, a right which they should 
 only forfeit by their having ceased, for any time, to 
 be paupers, since the commencement of the new 
 system. All persons, in short, who are actually 
 paupers in any parish, at the time of its enter- 
 ing upon the new system, should, while pau- 
 pers, have the same rights and securities which 
 they now enjoy; and the change of treatment, 
 whatever it may be, should apply exclusively to 
 those who seek parochial relief, either for the first 
 time, or seek for it anew, after they have been
 
 19 
 
 made to do without it for a period. In this clause, 
 a special reference is had, not merely to those who 
 once, perhaps, were regular paupers, and who, af- 
 terwards, on account of the improvement of their 
 means, or a better acquaintance with them, were 
 excluded from the lists ; but also, to those who al- 
 ternate upon the parish from summer to winter, 
 and to those, also, who, being neither inmates of 
 the workhouse, nor regular weekly pensioners on 
 the out-door list, pass under the denomination of 
 casual, or occasional poor.* 
 
 * We are aware that this might expose a trial parish to considerable 
 trouble at the outset, for, in many instances, the casual poor form a very 
 great proportion of the whole population ; and, in some instances, there is a 
 prodigious alternation of the pauperism from summer to winter. This might 
 be remedied by the suggestion of an English clergyman, who proposed, that 
 all who had been relieved by the poor rate, in or before the year preceding 
 the time when the parish began to act upon the new system, should be 
 treated as old paupers; and that those alone should be treated as new ap- 
 plicants who had never, prior to that, been in contact with the poor rate. 
 This would certainly lighten, at the outset, the work of the parochial ad- 
 ministrators, while it would only retard the ultimate accomplishment of an 
 entire deliverance from the burdens of the old pauperism. For my own 
 part, I do not think that, in the first instance at least, any such nice defini- 
 tion of the old cases is at all necessary. The trial parishes would be only 
 those which were not encumbered with any appalling difficulties at the 
 commencement of their undertaking; and before the imitation parishes 
 come forward, the legislature would have felt its way to all those nicer ad- 
 justments that might be deemed expedient If a parish feel so oppressed 
 either with its casual poor, or with the fluctuations which they undergo from 
 summer to winter, so that it could not adventure upon them with a gratui- 
 tous fund, it were better that it should wait the experience of such parishes 
 as have greater facilities for trying the new system ; and we feel confident 
 that this experience will be altogether encouraging. There are a thousand 
 fears and difficulties as to the poor, which vanish before the touch of personal 
 intercourse ; and, more especially, when that right has ceased on which the 
 people are accustomed to depend, and by which they wont to regulate their 
 habits and their expenses.
 
 20 
 
 The first change then, that we should propose 
 in the parochial system for the management of the 
 poor, is that, in reference to every new applicanf, 
 the special power of justices to order relief, should 
 be taken away. The parish-vestry would, in this 
 case, be the ultimate and the only place of appli- 
 cation ; and their decision, both as to relief, and as 
 to the amount of it, would be final. Henceforth, 
 all summoning, by a justice, of parish overseers, to 
 show cause why relief should not be given, would 
 cease. The question of relief would, in fact, be 
 confided, as it practically is throughout the greater 
 part of Scotland, to the humanity and discretion 
 of the paroc'hial court. And the point to be ascer- 
 tained in the trial parishes, is whether there would 
 not be less of unrelieved poverty, as well as less of 
 profligacy and disorder under the new regimen, 
 than under the old one.* 
 
 * The following testimonies, however weighty as to the evils which arise 
 from the interference of the justices, must be taken with allowance, in as 
 far as regards the personal worth and talent of an order of men, among 
 whom are to be found many of the most exalted and estimable characters in 
 our land. " First, the appeal to justices is a bad enactment. They are often 
 weak men men uninformed, and knowing little or nothing of business. 
 They do not feel the burden they impose, but, on the contrary, a love of 
 popularity and other passions often induce their determinations and even 
 when this is not the case, it is impossible they should know a pauper's 
 real wants. His oath is received the onus refutandi lies on the parish, 
 who often submits to imposition rather than take the trouble and expense 
 attending the necessary proof. I know the Select Vestry Act has put the 
 power in other hands still with an appeal to justices. This is wrong. Is 
 it to be supposed ten or twenty respectable inhabitants in a parish all want 
 humanity ? If they do, they have a character to sustain, and gross acts of 
 oppression would soon find their way to the public ear. If, then, the
 
 21 
 
 The second change that we should propose, re- 
 lates to the fund out of which the new applications 
 
 power was solely in a select vestry, it being made imperative on the clergy 
 and a competent number of respectable inhabitants to form that vestry, I 
 am persuaded immense good would immediately be seen." 
 
 " Your statement respecting clerical magistrates is perfectly correct. 
 They universally favour paupers." 
 
 " I am thoroughly satisfied that the interference of magistrates does much 
 harm. It encourages the lazy, who are always thrown out of employment 
 and most clamorous, and often puts the good and bad upon an equal footing. 
 Overseers might, no doubt, sometimes be severe and even unjust but 
 they are far the best judges of those immediately under their care and 
 parishes would not submit to any flagrant acts of injustice towards a 
 pauper." 
 
 The Select Vestry Act has done much, in those parishes where it has been 
 adopted, to check the evils of this interference. That Act may be regarded 
 as a partial homage, to the sufficiency of the parochial court within itself 
 for doing its own business and it were well, if the homage were at length 
 rendered complete and conclusive, by a progressive abolition of the power Of 
 the justices in matters of pauperism throughout the land. There are ade- 
 quate securities, in every parochial community, for a due regard to the wants 
 of the poor, and the claims of humanity. It were at least well to submit 
 this to the test of experience. 
 
 On a recent excursion through England, however, we find a growing 
 disposition on the part of magistrates, to make common cause with the 
 parish overseers, against the demands of idleness and profligacy and the 
 heaviest complaints that we met against them, were in some parts of Dor- 
 setshire and Leicestershire, and in some of the London parishes. 
 " A great deal of vexatious interference on the part of magistrates." 
 " Many summonses, and the magistrates generally favourable to the 
 paupers." 
 
 " You ask, Do not the magistrates often refuse to listen to the plea of 
 character, alleging they have to do with the plea of distress ? Answer. Yes. 
 On one occasion I relieved a woman, who had an illegitimate child, witli 
 2s. per week, when she summoned me before a magistrate, who ordered 
 her 7s. per week ; and I refused to comply, and sent her into the workhouse, 
 when she discharged herself and child the next morning, and she did with 
 the allowance of 2s. a-week as before." 
 
 We in Scotland were approaching lately to this state of things, in some
 
 22 
 
 for relief shall be met. Of course, it is intended 
 that a poor rate, levied as it is at present, should 
 
 parts of the country, where the practice had crept in of an appeal, on the 
 part of the applicants for relief, from the Kirk-Session to the Sheriff of the 
 County. There has, however, been a recent decision against this, ar.d the 
 appeal now lies from the Parochial Court to the Court of Session in Edin- 
 burgh the analogous process to wliich in England, would be that of ob- 
 taining, against the decision of the Parish Vestry, a mandamus from the 
 Court of King's Bench. The apprehension is, that the poor might starve 
 before the court should determine and therefore it is, that in England a 
 nearer place of appeal is preferred to a distant. In Scotland the more re- 
 mote and operose method of redress has been preferred and the experience 
 is, that the poor are never permitted to starve, and most assuredly never 
 would, though both the near and the distant places of appeal were alike 
 withdrawn from them. On this account we regret the failure of Mr. Ken- 
 nedy's bill in Parliament. 
 
 It may be interesting to our English readers to perceive how it fared 
 with two parishes within a few miles of their own borders first, when our 
 system approached to theirs, by the right of appeal lying from the pauper to 
 the sheriff; and afterwards, when the right of appeal, by being shifted to a 
 distant court, was made so operose as to become practically useless. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Morgan of Gratney writes, " To avoid the expenses of 
 litigation, we have now and then judged it prudent to grant a trifling weekly 
 allowance. But since Lord Pitmilly's decision in an appeal case, relative 
 to the jurisdiction of sheriffs on cases of pauperism, we have not been so 
 pestered with letters and summonses. We have, however, managed so 
 well hitherto as to incur no legal expenses, which has not been the case in 
 a neighbouring parish. Owing to our vicinity to England, our poor imagine 
 that they have a right to be treated in the same liberal way, as their English 
 neighbours ; but our heritors and kirk-sessions have not allowed this idea to 
 have any weight with them. In this parish, consisting of a population of 
 1945, for some years past the poor on our roll have averaged about sixty, 
 and our subscriptions for their relief, for we have had no assessments, have 
 not at any time exceeded two hundred pounds or guineas annually. At 
 present they scarcely reach the half of that sum. We relieve the aged and 
 infirm ones, who have no friends or relatives in ability to help them." 
 
 We likewise offer the following very instructive communication from the 
 Rev. Mr. Monilaws of Kirkpatrick- Fleming, a parish, by the last census, of 
 1696 individuals.
 
 23 
 
 provide the fund out of which all the expenditure 
 of the old pauperism shall be defrayed, an expen- 
 
 " The amount yearly of the funds for the poor, before the assessment was 
 resorted to, was about 30. This arose from collections. Inconsiderable 
 as these funds were, I never heard a complaint from the poor, and their 
 quarterly proportions of the above sum were received with thankfulness. 
 An assessment was first imposed in 1813, for the support of a friendless 
 young man who had lost his sight. The heritors sent him to the asylum 
 for the blind in Edinburgh, and supported him there by a weekly allowance. 
 The amount of the assessments during the years 1813, 1814, 1815, was 
 about .10 10s. per annum, for the support of the above individual ; when 
 after that period, in consequence of his being able to maintain himself by his 
 own industry, he ceased to become a burden upon the parish. In the year 
 
 1817, in consequence of the almost total want of employment among the 
 labouring poor, the heritors saw the necessity of aiding this description of 
 people, and assessed themselves to the amount of ^114 for that year. Im- 
 mediately thereafter, and about the month of July, a great number of other 
 indigent people, seeing with what facility the labouring poor had obtained 
 relief, and encouraged by writers, threw in their claims also for parochial as- 
 sistance. Some of these claims were admitted, and the others refused, but 
 the heritors being threatened with prosecutions before the sheriff, and actu- 
 ally in one case subjected to the expense of above .50, listened to the 
 petitions of most of these claimants, and assessed themselves to the amount 
 of .42 for their support also, for that half-year. 
 
 " In the year 1818, the amount of assessment was, . ~^135 
 
 In the year 1819, do. do. 149 
 
 In the year 1830, do. do. 160 
 
 In the year 1821, do. do. 140 
 
 In the year 1822, do. do. 116 
 
 " It being found, by a decision of Lord Pitmilly, that the sheriff is incom- 
 petent to revise the decision of the heritors and kirk-session regarding the 
 application of persons to be admitted to parochial aid, has had a most bene- 
 ficial tendency indeed for we have not be*en served with a summons to ap- 
 pear before the sheriff, by a poor person, for two years past ; whereas in 
 
 1818, 1819, and 1820, we had many citations. Nor has a new applicant 
 appeared at any of our meetings of heritors, for eighteen months past ; and 
 I sincerely hope that this system of assessments will be abolished altoge- 
 ther, when the poor on our present list dies off. I have only further to 
 add, that the sum arising from collections, has never been mixed up with
 
 24 
 
 diture, however, which lessens every year by the 
 operation of death on the old cases. But we hold 
 it essential to a sound and abiding reformation of 
 the system of pauperism, that no fund should ever 
 be raised in this way, for the new paupers that 
 the power which the church-wardens and over- 
 seers now possess, of making a rate, either with or 
 without the concurrence of the inhabitants, for the 
 purpose of meeting any fresh applications, shall 
 henceforth cease and that, if any fund be judged 
 necessary, in order to meet the new cases, it shall, 
 under whatever administration it is placed, be al- 
 together a gratuitous, and in no shape a legal or 
 compulsory one. For the purpose of creating such 
 a fund, the minister and church-wardens may be 
 empowered to establish a weekly collection at the 
 church doors; or the sum which is now gathered 
 at the administration of the sacrament, may be 
 made over to it; or donations may be received 
 from individuals by all which means the revenue 
 of a kirk-session in Scotland is mainly upheld. The 
 fund might be still further, perhaps, reinforced in 
 
 the above assessments, but has been managed by the kirk-session as for- 
 merly, and applied to the relief of a different set of poor, whom our kirk- 
 sessions have always been in the habit of supporting. " 
 
 We could not desire a better exemplification of the way in which pau- 
 perism advances under one system, and may be made to recede again under 
 another. Could some such voluntary fund be provided in an English parish, 
 as that to which the pauperism of Kirkpatrick -Fleming is now under the 
 process of being recommitted, we have no doubt that the pauperism of the 
 former too might at length be conducted to a similar landing-place and 
 that, simply by the operation of death on the old cases, and an uncontrolled 
 treatment of the new cases on the part of the vestry.
 
 C 25 
 
 England, by an act of parliament, empowering 
 parishes to assign this new destination to at least 
 that portion of the charitable donations which 
 abound in that country, and which have either 
 no specific object, or a bad one. We do not 
 think this measure indispensable, though it might 
 give a little more confidence, at the outset of a 
 prosperous result. We conceive, on the contrary, 
 that many parishes might venture on their new 
 cases without it ; and, that under a kind and moral, 
 though an uncontrolled administration of the ves- 
 try, there would be provided, by the free-will of- 
 ferings of the parish, an instrument of sufficient 
 power to meet every new exigency which could 
 arise.* 
 
 * We hold it nearly as indispensable, that the power of raising money by 
 assessment, on the part of those who administer the parochial fund, should 
 be taken away, as the right of an appeal to magistrates, on the part of those 
 who apply for relief from it. There are many parishes of England where, 
 by local acts, this right is very much abridged, and yet the pauperism is often 
 as oppressive with them as in other parishes. In those parishes of the 
 south of Scotland too, where there lies no appeal from a pauper, but to the 
 Court of Session but where the practice of assessments has been intro- 
 duced, there is, generally speaking, a very rapid progress of expenditure on 
 the poor. The truth is, that the indefinite power of raising money has 
 often as bad an effect on the dispensers, by slackening their management, 
 as it has on the recipients, by corrupting them into habits of dependance. 
 This is more especially the case, where the men who practically adminis- 
 ter the fund, contribute very little towards the formation of it, as is the 
 case in the kirk-session of an assessed parish in Scotland ; or, as it might 
 often happen in the vestry of an English parish. We much fear that noth- 
 ing will effectually stay the contagion in Scotland, but a law by which it 
 shall be declared incompetent, after a given time, to raise a compulsory fund 
 in behalf of any who sliall apply for parochial relief. This would both 
 limit all new applicants to the kirk-session, and also confine the kirk-session 
 
 D
 
 26 
 
 The third change to be required, is in the con- 
 stitution of the vestry. Under the present system, 
 it is a certain amount of charge or assessment for 
 the poor rate which entitles to a vote ; a regula- 
 tion founded on the principle, that those who pay 
 the money ought to have a voice and power in the 
 administration of it. Perhaps it would not be de- 
 viating very widely from this principle, if, in re- 
 spect of the annual sum yielded by the church- 
 door collections, or the sacrament-money, the 
 ministers and church-wardens were made mem- 
 bers of the vestry a regulation by which, if the 
 church-wardens of a parish were only a more nu- 
 merous class, there would be produced, as to this 
 point, a near resemblance between the parochial 
 courts of distribution and supply in England and 
 in Scotland. And when the old charitable dona- 
 tions of a parish have, as we have proposed, been 
 transferred to the new poor's fund, it may become 
 further right, that the legal guardians, or adminis- 
 trators of these charitable donations, should also 
 be members of the vestry. And, if a constitution 
 still more popular were required, the contributors 
 of a specified annual sum might, for each year of 
 such a contribution, become members. But we 
 
 to its own proper income and we have the confident belief, that when 
 both parties were so limited, there would, from the more moderate expec- 
 tations of the one, and the more vigilant dispensations of the other, ensue 
 a far more comfortable system of relief, than could possibly be attained with 
 an ample command of means, and an appetency for absorbing them that 
 was equally ample.
 
 27 
 
 Shall venture no farther upon such details of regu- 
 lation ; though we are quite sure that there are 
 sound and obvious principles upon which, under 
 the new system, a suitable constitution for the con- 
 struction of parish vestries might be framed. 
 
 We are aware of the opinion which so generally 
 prevails in favour of a gradual amendment of the 
 pauperism, and that the change now recommended 
 is of such an entire and sweeping character as 
 might appear to be at utter variance with this wise 
 and salutary principle in the practice of legislation. 
 But it should be remembered, that there are two 
 ways in which a process of improvement might be 
 rendered gradual ; either by a series of successive 
 approximations, in the general law, to enactments 
 that shall at length be perfect and unexception- 
 able ; or by the application, at once, of the best 
 possible law, to a few of the more simple and 
 manageable parishes, and thence, the successive 
 extension of it to the larger and more unwieldy 
 parishes. Our own preference certainly leans to 
 the latter mode. Rather than make the experi- 
 ment at large with a defective principle, we hold 
 it better to seize, at once, on the right principle, 
 and try it on a few select and favourable territo- 
 ries, whence the light of experience may break 
 forth, and gradually spread itself over the land. 
 We should far rather behold a sudden change in 
 the jurisprudence of the question, followed up by 
 a gradual operation among the parishes ; than a 
 creeping and timid progress in the former, accom-
 
 28 
 
 panied by a general and immediate movement 
 among the latter. A law which enacted the abo- 
 lition of all legal parish relief to the mothers of 
 illegitimate children, or in aid of defective wages, 
 would raise a far greater ferment in the country, 
 and more effectually interrupt the career of ame- 
 lioration, than a law which empowered the aboli- 
 tion of all parish relief whatever ; supposing that 
 law so applied as to ensure the safe and gentle 
 progress which would not outrun the prejudices or 
 the fears of the community. In one view of it, 
 the process we recommend may be charged with 
 .something of speed and suddenness. But then 
 this speed and suddenness are all confined to the 
 statute-book, where it would be of importance at 
 once to recognize the true principle and philoso- 
 phy of the subject. Practically, there would be 
 no inconvenient suddenness. In the inner depart- 
 ment of legislation, there would certainly be a 
 gigantic stride ; but this would not be the case, 
 in the outer department of the kingdom. There, 
 the march of improvement would go on smoothly 
 and progressively. It is, therefore, on all accounts, 
 more expedient that, instead of feeling our way 
 through a series of imperfect enactments, to the 
 pure and the rational principle, we should lay hold 
 of it instanter, and with this in our hands, find our 
 way through a series of successive parishes, till it 
 was carried into full and practical operation over 
 the whole empire. 
 
 III. But, it may be asked, what is this rational
 
 29 
 
 principle? Have we a right to imagine such a 
 principle, and to go abroad with the phantasy over 
 the land ? Is it not possible that after all, we are 
 wrong in the outset ; and how are we to know, 
 that under the operation of this boasted panacea, 
 we might not add to the number, and sorely aggra- 
 vate the wretchedness of our suffering families ? 
 
 Now, to meet these questions, we would beg of our 
 readers to remember, in the first place, that the pro- 
 posed process is, in its nature, strictly tentative. It 
 is not the dictatorial imposition of a new law on the 
 community. It is the confident recommendation 
 of a plan, on the part of one who simply asks that 
 it may be submitted to the touchstone of experi- 
 ment ; and who is willing to submit himself to the 
 guidance and the correction of this safe school- 
 master. There is all the difference in the world 
 between rashly presuming on the truth, and re- 
 spectfully feeling our way to it. A very few ini- 
 tial attempts will decide the question and set it at 
 rest. The question is between the free or gratui- 
 tous, and the compulsory or legal systems of 
 charity. The latter has been tried all over Eng- 
 land and found wanting. Let the former be fairly 
 and fully tried, in a few parishes in England, and 
 abandoned if they become sensibly worse, or in- 
 deed do not become sensibly better. It is our 
 own belief, that every year will witness an addition 
 to the trophies and the triumphs of this new prin- 
 ciple that it will accumulate its credentials, at 
 each footstep, in the varied line of its perambula-
 
 30 
 
 tions, and, at length, be welcomed as an angel of 
 deliverance in all parts of the kingdom. But 
 should its career not be prosperous, it will only 
 share the fate of its many predecessors, it will 
 vanish, with other expedients, into oblivion ; and 
 the parliament of England withdraw its sanction, 
 when the people of England have ceased to ask for 
 it. 
 
 In order to watch the progress of this new sys- 
 tem, it is evident that there ought to be parlia- 
 mentary commissioners ; not indeed for the purpose 
 of receiving appeals on the question of relief; for 
 this would only be reviving the present system in 
 another form but for the purpose of noting and 
 reporting upon the state of those parochial com- 
 munities, where the parochial managers have been 
 left to their own unfettered discretion how it now 
 fares with the families and whether the charity of 
 law is so replaced by increased sobriety among the 
 poor, and enlarged sympathy among the rich, that 
 the charity of nature is more than enough to meet 
 all those apprehended deficiencies which, in the 
 distance, look so big and so fearful. If these com- 
 missioners can report any neglect or abuse more 
 flagrant in the trial parishes than now occurs on 
 the average throughout the parishes of England 
 if they can quote instances of negligence and 
 cruelty, which under the present style of adminis- 
 tration, would not have occurred if they can 
 pronounce sentence on the scheme, either on ac- 
 count of the particular evils they may be able to
 
 31 
 
 specify; or, on account of that darker aspect of 
 misery, which stands visibly out on the parochial 
 families under its operation then let such a con- 
 demnation to the effects of the gratuitous system 
 be final. But if, instead of this, they can allege, 
 as the fruits of it, an increased contentment, and 
 cheerfulness, and good- will ; a more manifest 
 kindliness of heart on the part of the higher or- 
 ders ; and a corresponding confidence and grati- 
 tude on the part of the lower orders ; a more fre- 
 quent intercourse between the various classes of 
 society; and withal, such an impulse on the side 
 of popular education, as to be sensibly raising the 
 mind and the habits of the peasantry ; if they can 
 further attest, that they had never been called to 
 witness the spectacle of distress, except in the case 
 of the guilty or idle a case in which nature should 
 be left to her own correctives, and her own cures ; 
 and that, even in these cases, starvation was a bug- 
 bear, which, with all their most diligent search 
 after it, they had in no one instance been able to 
 discover surely, if such shall be their testimony, 
 the voice of parliament will soon concur with the 
 voice of the people, and both will unite in stamp- 
 ing their acceptance on a system so fully tried, 
 and so nobly vindicated. 
 
 It is of course not wrong to demand evidence 
 of the soundness or efficacy of any expedient 
 but surely it is wrong to refuse his demand, who 
 asks that this expedient should be put to the 
 proof. There is no error, but the contrary, in the
 
 32 
 
 paramount value that is set upon experience. 
 But how can he be said to value experience, who 
 obstinately shuts out the light of it? And every 
 experiment lands in experience. An experiment 
 may be just as instructive by its failure, as by its 
 success and if there be parishes in England that 
 are sanguine enough to encounter its difficulties, 
 or willing to brave the hazards of an eventual dis- 
 grace on what possible grounds of reason, or of 
 expediency, should the opportunity be withheld 
 from them ? It interferes with nothing. It hin- 
 ders nothing. Those who dislike it will not be 
 disturbed by it and each corporation, whether of 
 parish or township, will be left to the repose of its 
 own settled prejudices, till the light of ocular de- 
 monstration break in, and awaken it. Even the 
 most incredulous may, at least, consent to the trial. 
 Meanwhile all the other devices of reform and re- 
 gulation, might go on as busily as before. This 
 particular plan does not elbow out any of the for- 
 mer from the parishes by which they are preferred. 
 The act of Mr. Gilbert has been tried. The act 
 of Mr. Bourne is in progress of trial. Other sug- 
 gestions, we doubt not, will be made, and, perhaps, 
 adopted, for the purpose of mitigating the load of 
 pauperism ; for the purpose of arresting the foot- 
 steps of this mighty destroyer. Let this one ex- 
 pedient be added to the rest. Let us, disappointed 
 in so many other projects, try the effect of a 
 change of principle, combined with a progressive 
 application of it of an entire revolution in the
 
 33 
 
 system of management, but so carried into effect 
 as to produce none of the anarchy or uproar of re- 
 volution of a process, chargeable, no doubt, with 
 the crime of novelty, and not, therefore, to be 
 permitted to range over the land, till it has earned 
 a credit by its actual achievements; a process 
 whose advances being measured by its successes, 
 can give no disturbance to other experimental 
 processes, and bring no danger to the common- 
 wealth.* 
 
 Nothing, it may be added, can be more easy 
 than adapting the law of settlement to a parish 
 brought under the new system. A stranger ac- 
 quires no right to relief in such a parish, though 
 he should fulfil all those conditions on which a 
 settlement is acquired in other parishes. He may, 
 or he may not, share with the other parishioners, 
 in the gratuitous ministratious of the vestry ; but 
 neither he nor they can have any right to relief, 
 after the care of human want has been devolved 
 on the free sympathies of our nature. Hence it is 
 evident, that a trial parish would not be likely to 
 import any burden by the influx of strangers from 
 the country at large ; the fair reciprocity for 
 which is, that the country ought not to be bur- 
 dened by any exports of poor from the parish. As, 
 
 * Should even the number of parishes that applied at the outset, bt> 
 deemed too great by the Commissioners, they might have the power of limit- 
 ing and selecting, and thus, of checking for a time, those parishes where 
 there seemed to be a smaller likelihood of success, or a less degree of hu- 
 manity and information among its householders. 
 
 E
 
 34 
 
 therefore, there can be no right of relief acquired 
 by one removing to a trial parish, neither should 
 there be any right acquired by one removing from 
 it. Let us not, however, look upon such a man 
 as an unprivileged outcast from the securities of 
 civilized life. He moves at his own choice, and 
 with his eye open to his circumstances ; and he is 
 richer far by trusting to his own resources, and 
 by the knowledge that he has nothing else to trust 
 to, than he, who, along with the rights, is suffering 
 from all the temptations of pauperism. Such a 
 man will find his way ; and it will, on the whole, 
 be a way of greater sufficiency and comfort than 
 any which law provides for the nurslings of her 
 artificial charity. The emigrants from a trial 
 parish into any other part of England, resemble 
 those who, under the present system, having ac- 
 quired no settlement in the place of their resi- 
 dence, yet choose not to leave it a class of indi- 
 viduals, it has often been remarked, of greater in- 
 dustry and virtue than is averaged in the mass of 
 the population. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 Printed by W. Collins ft Co. 
 Gkwgow.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 JAN 3 1 #50 
 DEC 1 1953 
 
 JAN 1 1 
 
 Form L9-42m-8,'49(B5573)444 
 
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