Page:Poor Law Administration, its Chief Principles and their Results in England and Ireland as Compared with Scotland.djvu/5

 police service—when it could be obtained—for the suppression of juvenile mendicancy, delinquency, and vagrancy. In some of the improving provinces of Spain, where monasteries have been suppressed, and where brigandage has also been suppressed, it was found necessary, as I am informed, to precede these measures by provision for the relief of the able-bodied. In the districts infested by brigands, the course adopted was to require from each individual an account of his mode of livelihood, and to offer those who could show none subsistence at the public expense, but with the obligation of making a return of some work or service. Those of the indigent who refused to work or to accept the provision made for them were held to be living dishonestly, and treated accordingly. The indigence relief, as a police measure, has, I am told, proved to be effectual. When the late Count Cavour was Minister of Public Works, I had the honour of a special visit from him, to inquire as to the methods of dealing with the indigent classes in England. I directed his attention to the operations of the police upon the common beggars' lodging-houses in London, which he visited, as well as other institutions and model dwellings, and made himself acquainted with much of our Poor-law institutions. If he had been alive, I should have expected of him that he would have been prepared for the introduction of an extended Poor-law system on sound principles, as one of the measures for the improvement of the condition of the Italian population, that the conflict with the great plague of brigandage, as well as mendicancy, in which the Italian Government is now engaged, and that the measures of simple repression would have been preceded or accompanied by a well-organised system of legal relief, including a provision for the able-bodied, to be used as I am informed such a provision has been used in Spain.

Introduction of a Poor Law System into Ireland. When our Government was pressed on the subject of a Poor-law for Ireland, I confidently advised the adoption of a provision for the relief of the able-bodied, which, by some statesmen, was deemed to be for Ireland a wild and dangerous provision, but my confidence in it was derived from observation of the working of analogous principles of relief upon able-bodied Irish labourers in England. Besides the deep-seated evil of mendicancy, such a provision might, I considered, be brought to bear on the evils connected with the occupancy of land and upon agrarian disturbances. Economically considered, whatsoever may be the importance of the freedom of change of the ownership of land obtained by means of the great measure—the Incumbered Estates Act—of which the late Sir Robert Peel said it was so good a measure that he really wondered how it had ever passed—of even greater importance is freedom of change of