Page:The reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor (IA b21971961 0001).pdf/28

xiv is on parochial relief, and the mode and principle upon which it has been administered by the magistrates of the hundred of Stoke.

I cannot close, without suggesting to the reader some of the very beneficial effects, which may be produced by union and perseverance in a proper system of conduct with regard to the poor; our present parochial expences being at the same time diminished, and a very gentle and gradual variation being made in our code of poor laws.Let it be imagined that the landowner may be awakened to his real interest, and the industrious labourer supplied with a sufficient portion of garden ground, and, in many instances, with the means of keeping his cow:—that neat and comfortable cottages supply the place of those wretched hovels which disgrace many parts of the kingdom;—that the fire-places of cottagers be improved, and their supply of