J. M. GUTCH, FELIX FARLEY'S JOURNAL OFFICE, BRISTOL, AND MESSRS. F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON, LONDON, To whom Communications (post-paid), may be addressed; has found it advisable to suspend its publication for a few months. He is free to confess, that he has discovered there were well-grounded objections entertained against some articles which appeared in the three first Numbers; and that an unfavourable impression upon the Public mind was thereby created, which he fears it is impossible to overcome or surmount, without this suspension. The resumption of the Work under a new Title, at an appropriate period, will he is led to believe meet with better success; and he flatters himself it will recommence under more favourable auspices. Bristol, 19th April, 1822. COUNTRY CONSTITUTIONAL GUARDIAN; BRISTOL. AND LITERARY MAGAZINE. 1822. Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum. MAY. HORAT. EPIST. L. 1. Ep. 1. ON POPULAR REFORM. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE EARL GREY. MY LORD, IN our two former letters to your Lordship, after having endeavoured to deduce from appearances notorious to the world the real character of Popular Reform, shown also that the support of the constitutional liberties of the country is, in no way, connected with it, and explained summarily our own views of amelioration on those acknowledged legislative defects and financial evils which form the principal objects of its clamour, we promised, in this our concluding address, to direct the attention of your Lordship and our rulers to those REAL REFORMS which alone can, in our opinion, confer any permanent and essential benefit upon the nation. But before entering on the particulars involved in this discussion, we cannot help again observing generally, as reflecting men, how miserable and strangely vicious is the delusion which now prevails, to so great an extent, upon this favorite topic of political change. No one, indeed, can reasonably wonder at the progress of any sedulously inculcated error amongst the ignorant and the needy, when these are taught to believe that the delusive scheme which they are ex horted to embrace, is to secure their elevation in rank and property; but we confess, my Lord, that it covers us with shame and confusion to see any of the honest and intelligent among our countrymen maintaining seriously, that any changes in our national Institutions would give to our labouring classes more equal justice than they now enjoy, or increase their domestic means and comforts; that they would exempt agriculture and trade from the effects of unavoidable occasional fluctuations, or relieve immediately, either those interests or the community at large, from any considerable financial pressure. Every person at all acquainted with the country well knows, that the labouring poor were never better provided for than they now are, wherever they can find employment; and every body of common sense knows also, that it is out of the power of any Parliament, however constituted, to raise the price of agricultural and manufacturing produce, artificially, so as to increase the means of employers, without inflicting most serious injuries upon the nation in its collective capacity. Nearly two thirds of the Taxes received into the exchequer are well known to be paid again to a large proportion of the community itself, in discharge of debts honestly due; whilst by far the greatest part of the remaining amount must, under any reform, be expended for purposes, without liberally providing for which, the nation could scarcely exist. Undoubtedly indeed a radically reformed legislature might turn the public creditors adrift in bankruptcy, cut off the established provision for the poor, rob the church, disband and destroy the national defences, pull down the dignity of the monarchy, and starve every branch of the civil administration. Cheap republicanism might, it must be admitted, thus be gained, through the usual processes of jacobinical villainy. But, my Lord, is social happiness amongst us to be promoted, by thus involving in misery and plunder a whole generation; by thus increasing, in a tenfold ratio, the sum of beggary and distress, and the number of mendicant labourers in the land? Yet some one or other of the above revolutionary improvements must take place, to some extent at least, before any considerable portion of those pecuniary burdens, which are now falsely considered as such intolerable grievances, can be removed from the property of the country. But if Reform is not thus meant to be the nominal exemption of all from imposts, by means of the robbery of the greatest and best part of the nation, and the destruction of its most useful establishments, what is the magical power by which it is to operate all its imputed wonders? We leave the answer, my Lord, to this question in the hands of those shallow empirics, who are constantly babbling their mischievous trash upon this subject both in and out of Parliament, and to those depraved impostors (a smaller but more dangerous band) who are wilfully pushing on public desolation, that they may revel in future triumph amidst the ruins. But to proceed. It is, and has long been clear to every reflecting mind, that no civil reforms can ever be beneficially felt as such by the people at large, except those which carry real improve ments into the ordinary details of social life. Speculative innovations and hazardous changes, never can have any direct practical tendency of this nature, and are infinitely more likely to impede than to quicken those wholesome and timely ameliorations, which are now constantly progressive under our present excellently operating system of civil polity. Instead then of exhausting their energies, my Lord, upon the promotion of any unreal and doubtful reformations, how happy would it be for the country, if every talented reformer would honestly apply himself to the remedying of one of those acknowledged practical evils, which affect the intimate welfare of society, and through which time is ever liable to impair the excellence of the most wisely framed institutions! One of the most serious and extensive of these evils, which an enlightened reformer would consider as among the first to require correction, is that which confessedly arises either from the mal-administration or the intrinsically mischievous tendency of our present Poor laws. On this important subject, so involved as it is in various difficulty, his zeal, however ardent, and his talents, however political, would find an ample field for profitable employment. And (what must be calculated to give real encouragement to any one engaged in such patriotic researches) he would, assuredly, find in the present unreformed Imperial Parliament, every grateful attention paid to the results of his labours. We, my Lord, are certainly to be classed among those who think that this subject loudly calls for the best efforts of virtuous reform. We see the system, of which we speak, really inflicting great moral and political degeneracy upon the mass of the population of the country. We see it at once degrading and enslaving the poor, and impoverishing indefinitely their employers. We thus behold it at the same time poisoning the very roots of national character, and encouraging effectually a progressive and widely-desolating extent of taxation. We would wish then, my Lord, to see this destructive political evil checked decidedly by a wise and temperate reformation. It is quite impossible, within the limits of that general discussion to which we now confine ourselves, to do more than throw out a rapid sketch of our own views upon this interesting topic. But we are happily relieved from much of the necessity of dwelling upon it, by the universal admission made by all enlightened men, of the obligation under which the Legislature lies, of constituting some effective encouragement of industry, providence, and self-dependence among our labouring poor, in place of that demoralizing assistance on which they now too generally rely. The mode, however, my Lord, by which this encouragement can best be given, is the point where difficulties hitherto almost insuperable begin. You cannot, for instance, with any regard to common equity, do as has been rashly proposed by some innovators, at once violently tear away, from under our whole pauper population, that prop which has legally sustained them for upwards of two centuries. You cannot, in this land of humanity and freedom determine, that, whatever necessary reverses the demand for labour may undergo at any future time, the poor man who is industriously disposed but cannot obtain employment, if in health and strength, shall be allowed to starve. You cannot decree, that the numerous offspring of a fruitful marriage shall, after a certain fixed day, be compelled to pine in unrelieved want and wretchedness, because the ordinary wages of labour, which may be amply sufficient for the support of ordinary families, shall be inadequate to meet such extraordinary demands. You cannot again, either reasonably or justly (in compliance with a recently renewed proposal) set a maximum upon the possibilities of human destitution, and ordain for it in any case, a proportionate maximum of relief, never legally to be exceeded. You cannot, my Lord, we repeat it, in your capacity of a Legislator, consent to embody any of these crude conceptions in the shape of national law; for, independently of their being all unjust, and likely to be most mischievous in their immediate operation, they leave the mind and habits of the people, which form the true seat of the evil, untouched; and would act more like a punishment on those defects of character, which have been formed by bad laws, than benevolent endeavours to counteract these operation by providing improved means of support for unavoidable distress, and casual infirmity. The very gradual removal of the old and deformed prop of parochial relief, proposed by some considerate projectors, would, doubtless, prevent entirely the perpetration of immediate wrong and misery; but the question occurs, will the now proverbially improvident poor ever become provident enough, under the continuance of the present system entire, so to act and feel, (with whatever certainty of a future total deprivation of their habitual resources before them,) as to suffer less misery when the day of that deprivation arrives, than they would were it at once to take place? And, again, is it fit or politic in an eminently civilized country, that the poor of the land should be without some kind of legal support; or, could any system of such support be framed more wisely, than that established by the act of Elizabeth, when amended by a few modifications, which time has rendered necessary? The leading principle, my Lord, of that celebrated law is a good one, namely, that, which recognizes and establishes the obligation of every christian community to support those of its sick, and aged, and worn out members, who depend upon their daily labour for their daily bread. And the mode by which the same law intended to provide for such support, that is, by an equal assessment imposed upon every species of property throughout the country, raised and applied under local controul, was at once equitable and calculated to be efficacious. Both these original intentions, however, of the law have been most injuriously departed from in the long course of its administration. The relief which it provided has been indiscriminately applied to the payment of the wages of labour, and the maintenance of idleness and vice, whilst, together with the vast increase in the amount of money expended, which has arisen from this most unwise appropriation of it, the sources of its supply have been proportionably contracted by the extraordinary exemption of every other kind of property but that of land and houses, from contributing towards it. Under the late much improved administration of the poorlaws, demanded first by the rapidly growing nature of their abuses, and established finally by the Select Vestry Act of Parliament, the former of these evils has been, to a considerable extent, removed; but it still remains for |