Excerpt from Colonisation: A Natural, Safe, and Effectual Mode of Relief for National Distress

We have the poor-houses, but they are filled and detested. We have the Labour Act. It gave partial relief for a season but can a single Act of Parliament feed a people. No matter how benevolent the intention of that Act may be? The evil consequences of three centuries of mis. Rule require smoothing more than the petty provisions of a temporising scheme, which professes merely to help the starving. And mocks even them by its austere and insulting regulations. The heroic patience of the people, under all their sufferings, is justly'admired and praised. But I have witnessed. With indignation, the indignities to which they have been subjected by the operation of this Act. All their little family secrets, all the humiliating circumstances of their distress, exposed in cpcn court.

After travelling a long journey, with hungry stomachs, and waiting a whole day under the open air, in rain and frost and snow, or pushed about by rude and saucy policemen, they were often dismissed in the evening without promise of employment, perhaps without an answer. The second, the third, the fourth, the tenth scrutiny came; the same heartless inquiries were repeated, the same cheerless scenes re-enacted; or if a few of them succeeded, at length, by positive proofs of destitution, 111 gammg the high honour of being enrolled in the list of labourers, another sea of misery was before them. At the beginning and even still in most cases, only one member of a family could be admitted into this legion of honour - the wages were limited to 10d. A day-those wages were paid only once in the week, many of the days were broken and the wages of course diminished - we may say 7d. A day for the entire winter season. Then there were gaugers, overseers, and clerks, and check-clerks, and surveyors, and committees, and inspectors and a cross word or a crooked look at any of them ended generally in the dismissal of a labourer. In a family of six, or eight, or eleven, 10d. 11 day pay able at the end of a week, and, perhaps, after allowing for sickness, broken days. The humour of the pay clerk, and other contmgencies, only half that sum paid. Was equivalent to an edict of starvation or murder, when meal was sold at 3d. Per lb. The same reasoning may by antici pation be easily applied to the Drainage Act. With this difference - that the drainage of the land has the permanent effect of remotely con tributing to the production of food for the people, and of rent for the landlords. These measures may have their faults or advantages. They are auxiliaries, but withal, only auxiliaries. Temporising schemes, such as these, will never succeed in restoring the broken frame of society. Or in lifting up a people beyond the recurrence of such afflicting destitution.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.