Page:Poor Law Administration, its Chief Principles and their Results in England and Ireland as Compared with Scotland.djvu/13

1864.] Persons whose knowledge of the real condition of the classes who come within the range of a compulsory provision is not much better than that obtainable from seeing opera shepherds and shepherdesses, or the sketches of artists, treat out-door relief as a measure of severity; but those who have examined the foetid one-roomed tenement in which the members of a whole family, often more, are heaped together—La which children are bom, and the sick are kept amidst the healthy—^in which all die, and where the dead are retained amidst the living until the means of interment are found, know that every case of removal is an act of humanity, and sanitary relief to those who remain, as well as to those who are taken away. To the Irish cottier who may be persuaded to give up the wretched mud hovel, in which the pig has had its stye and its measles, with his children, in-door relief gives him a clean, well-ventilated lodging, a clean bed, and a dietary and condition of existence such as he never before had in his life, and gives him this freely for a moderate return of labour, until he can emigrate, or get labour in the open labour market. The existence of such a refuge relieves him from despair, and gives him courage to adventure far afield for the improved means of independent self-support. That it is resorted to as a refuge is shown by the fact that in-door relief is attended by a greater degree of fluctuation and change in ordinary times than out-door relief. Once on the out-door pauper roll no one voluntarily resigns his position, and consequently the permanent pension-list, by far the heaviest incumbrance on the English and Scotch poor-rates, undergoes comparatively little change in the course of the year. In Ireland, on the contrary, as the Commissioners state, the changes are continual, through discharges occurring voluntarily on the part of the paupers, and through admissions freely granted to the applicant for relief. Thus, the average duration of the cases little exceeds three months. The general workhouse provision enabled Ireland to weather through the horrors of the famine, which would without them have been enormously aggravated; and there can be no doubt that it has been one great aid to the improvement of the population now going on in Ireland.

After all, however, and at the best, the service for relief, like the police service of repression, is a melancholy service. It is a dreary prospect, if we view it as an inevitably perpetual condition. I have always, as my opportunities permitted, looked forward to the development and promotion of the means of prevention. The common cause of legislation at present for the relief of the destitute is like foundling hospitals, and making provision for the treatment of marsh diseases