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 184: PAUPERISM public charity through her numerous institu- tions of beneficence and her religious orders. Since the suppression of these in Spain, Portu- gal, and Italy, no legislative provision resem- bling a regular poor-law system has been in operation. In Rome while under pontifical rule a "commission of relief "was intrusted with the direction of public charities. It was composed of a cardinal-president and 15 mem- bers. The city was divided into 12 districts, each of them being under the immediate super- intendence of a member of the committee. In each parish within the district was a local board composed of the parish priest, two deputies (one a layman, the other a lady), chosen for two years, and a salaried secretary and trea- surer. Alms were given in money, tools, and raiment. In Spain the hospitals and asylums formerly endowed for lunatics, the blind, and deaf and dumb, as well as for foundlings, &c., are still maintained by the government. Be- fore the late revolutions the public treasury gave to each province a stated yearly sum in aid of the poor, the provinces themselves being bound to double this amount by vol- untary or compulsory assessment. British Poor-Law Statistics. Mr. N. W. Senior, who was one of the most active promoters of the poor-law amendment act of 1834, has pointed out the fact that the compulsory charity of England, from the time of Lord Bacon to that of the younger Pitt, was so cautiously admin- istered by the parochial authorities, under the rigid law of settlement, and after the reign of George I. by the use of the workhouse test, that pauperism did not increase inordinately, in proportion to the increase in population and wealth. The able-bodied and industrious poor were not fed from the public revenues, as was the case during the wars with Napoleon, but it was the aged, the infantile, and the invalid poor who were relieved. The poor rate of England and Wales in 1673 was estimated (perhaps too highly) at 840,000, the popula- tion then being 5,500,000, or about the pr,es- ent population of Ireland. Of these, Greg- ory King estimated in 1688 that no less than 1 ; 300,000 were " cottagers and paupers," be- sides 30,000 vagrants ; the poor rate he cal- culated then as 665,000. Probably those strictly to be called paupers, in 1688 were not more than 500,000, or one in 11. In 1698 Fletcher of Saltoun estimated the mendicant poor of Scotland at 200,000, and said that their average number in times past had been 100,000; the population of Scotland did not then probably exceed a million. From these figures, and from the statements of Sir Josiah Child and Defoe, we may infer that pauperism in Great Britain 200 years ago was as great an evil proportionately as it now is. But be- tween 1792 and 1832 it was stimulated in Eng- land by a most imprudent administration of the original poor law of 1601. Certain acts passed in lT95-'6 at the instance of Mr. Pitt, allowing the parochial relief of " industrious " poor persons at their own houses, practically accomplished in a few years what the act 43d Elizabeth had not done in two centuries, and, in the words of Mr. Senior, " let in a flood of pauperism, which in the years succeeding the Napoleonic wars threatened the destruction of property and civilization." In France, during the revolution of 1792, the same laxity of poor- law administration prevailed, until checked by the prudent regulations of Napoleon, who rec- ognized the principle, laid down by Child and Defoe, that the first duty of charitable admin- istration is to prevent the need of charity. The division of landed property in the revolu- tion has doubtless done much to check the growth of pauperism in France, more than the absence of a compulsory poor law, upon which many writers have commented. A poor law in itself neither increases nor diminishes pau- perism, except as it is well or ill administered. There is no distinctive poor rate in France, yet the amount raised by taxation for public char- ity in that country is now more than 15,000,- 000 francs yearly. No country has had, for the past hundred years, so high a poor rate as England. In 1773, Lord Kames estimated it at 3,000,000; but in fact it was only about 1,600,000 in 1776. In 1801 it was more than 4,000,000; in 1818, 7,870,801, the popula- tion at that time being 11,575,000, or some- thing more than twice as many as in 1688, when Gregory King's tables were made out. Thus in 130 years the population had doubled and the outlay for the poor had nominally be- come ten times as great. This state of things alarmed the government, and from 1818 to 1834 persistent efforts were made to modify the poor laws, resulting (1834) in what has since been known as "the new poor law." Its first execution reduced the outlay for the poor from nearly 6,500,000 a year to 4,000,- 000; but this has since risen to 8,000,000, though for 1874 it was but about 7,500,000, or less than in 1818, the population having in the mean time nearly doubled. The average yearly cost of pauperism in England in the ten years 1819-'29 was 6,300,000; 1829-'39, 5,700,000; 1839-'49, 5,200,000; 1849-'59,- 5,500,000; 1859-'69, 6,500,000; since 1869, 7,750,000. The highest cost was in 1872, 8,000,000; the lowest for 60 years was in 1837, 4,044,741. The number of paupers on a given day in England and "Wales has some- times been more than a million, but for sev- eral years it has been decreasing. This de- crease has taken place in spite of the abolition of many of those restrictions on the freedom of the poor which were formerly imposed by the "law of settlement." It was supposed that the increase of the "irremovable" poor, as they are called, would work an increase of actual pauperism, but such does not seem to be the case. Relative Amount of Pauperism. In proportion to the population of England, there has been a great diminution of pauperism since 1870, when, with about 22,400, 000 inhab-