Page:A letter on pauperism and crime.djvu/14

10 No Charitable Societies to be established in a parish without the approval of the Board.

As the Poor Law system now in force promotes Pauperism, it ought to be entirely suppressed.

The Workhouses might be converted into Infirmaries, for incurables of the working classes, or almshouses. The superannuated poor should be enabled to end their days in their own homes, or in such almshouses as it might be found advisable to establish.

As nothing but association, in a family, can prepare children for domestic duties, Orphanages should be suppressed, and the children of the working classes, who are entire orphans, should be boarded out with their own class. The sum paid with each child ought to be, not only sufficient for its maintenance, but likewise an ample remuneration for the care and responsibility attending the charge.

Strikes, being a prolific source of pecuniary distress to the working classes, should be prohibited by law, and the Government should appoint an officer, of high legal standing, as arbitrator, who should have as his coadjutors, on every occasion of a difference of opinion between the masters and their men, a working man and an employer of labour, whose decision should be final, and capable of being carried into execution, if need be, by the arm of the law.

Just as Pauperism finds its origin, speaking generally, in almsgiving, in like manner Crime, in the majority of instances, is due to Pauperism. It is suggested that all prisons be reformatory and self-supporting. The mistaken sympathy now so conspicuously displayed in reference to the health