Page:Poor Law Administration, its Chief Principles and their Results in England and Ireland as Compared with Scotland.djvu/11

1864.] and matrons of workhouses, paid district medical officers, paid schoolmasters, and, it may be added, of paid assistant-commissioners and inspectors, with the paid officers of a Central Board, together with a large expenditure upon new buildings throughout the country, all of which were the outcries as extravagancies; a large saving has, nevertheless, been effected upon the unpaid services, chiefly of one parish officer throughout the country—the unpaid parish overseer. I cite the statistics of Mr. Purdy, who shows that, in the 22 years preceding the reform of the Poor-law in England, 143 millions was the sum spent for relief, but in the 22 subsequent years it was only 129 millions, notwithstanding that the population averaged nearly 25 per cent, more in the latter than in the former period. This is equal to a total decrease of 33 millions, or yearly more than 21 per cent, on the service of parish officers, but the reduction is really much greater, as formerly there was very large expenditure in labour rates and otherwise, which did not enter into the parochial accounts. By a higher administrative organisation, and executive expenditure and complete action, on the principles originally purposed, the saving might be nearly doubled, apart from the difference of results. I have lately shown, for example, in respect to education that by a higher organisation for education, with a head master at double the ordinary salary, aided by a second and a third assistant master, with a staff of paid pupil teachers, with a drill master for physical training, as originally contemplated and realized on the half-time and industrial training in the district pauper schools, the cost is reduced to one pound per head per annum, and the work done in a superior manner, in half the time of the single competent master, at a charge of two pounds per head, and with vast differences in the comparative industrial aptitudes imparted, and in the moral and economic results achieved. The public economy would be considerably augmented in the directions I have indicated by the concurrent action of a general police. It has been proved, as respects the partial organisations of isolated county forces which followed our recommendations of a general force in England, that the services of paid privates, paid sergeants, paid superintendents, and paid county high-constables, under disadvantageous conditions for economy of the exclusion of the burghs, were brought immediately within the total expenses attendant on the services of the one officer—the unpaid parish-constable. In fact, we were prepared to ensure the services of an organised general police force of some twenty-two thousand men, for the whole of Great Britain, it might be said for nothing, or within the whole of the direct and collateral existing expenses attendant on the services of the parish constables, paid beadles, and isolated borough constables.