ST ASAPHS-VALE OF CLWYDD. 221 are as harmless. A child armed with a stick will attack and kill the rattle-snake, which is very sluggish-it is met only in dry stony places. The snakes of moist places are not venomous. We are now arrived at St Asaphs, in the beautiful valley of Clwydd, (pronounced Cluid) only 28 miles to-day, through the finest country imaginable:-glorious views of the sea,-ruined castles, with the usual stories about Cromwell's cannon. He was a great master of the picturesque, and his ruins are always in the best taste. The Castle of Aberconway, 600 years old, is still nearly entire. July 27.-On our way from St Asaphs to Denbigh, we stopped at the house of a gentleman we had seen in Norfolk; he was not at home, but one of the ladies of the family accompanied us to Denbigh. From this house the view takes in the whole valley of Clwydd, 20 or 30 miles long, and about six broad, with hills of moderate and irregular height on each side. A great number of gentlemen's houses were in sight, with their usual accompaniments of wood and lawn, but no cottages,—I mean real dwellings of the poor. If there ever was here a revolution à la Françoise, declaring guerre aux châteaux, paix aux chaumières, the castles would certainly carry it, being a hundred to one. This general appearance of the country brings to my mind a bon mot of Carlin, the famous harlequin. "Quel dommage que le pere Adam ne se soit pas avisé d'acheter une charge de Secretaire du Roi,-nous serions tous nobles!" I do not know what office the Father Adam of England bought, but every body in it seems rich. Whenever I have asked proprietors of land, or farmers, why they did not build houses for their labourers, the answer has generally been, that such houses 222 WALES-POOR LAWS. are nests of vermin, pilferers, and poachers; and that, far from building, they would rather pull down such houses. The labourers reside in some small town or village in the neighbourhood. Denbigh, for instance, has doubled in extent within a few years by this accession of inhabitants. Labourers have often several miles to walk to and from their work, which is so much out of their labour, or out of their rest. This, I own, has lowered a little my ideas of universal felicity, which the appearance of this country encourages one to form. There are then, it seems, obscure corners, where the poor are swept out of the way, as the dust of the walks of the rich, in a heap out of their sight; and, to judge properly of this general prosperity, it would be necessary to see what passes in these abodes of the labouring class. The poor of England are under certain regulations, called poor-laws, forming one of the distinctive features of this government. Their object is half police, and half charity; but their utility very questionable. They were principally established under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and furnish a strong instance of the danger of governing too much. It was enacted, that the overseers of the poor "shall take order from time to time, by and with the consent of two or more justices, for setting to work the children of all such whose parents shall not, by the said persons, be thought able to keep and maintain their chin; and all such persons, married or unmarried, as having no means to maintain them, use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by. And also to raise, weekly or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant, and every occupier of lands in the said parish, (in such competent sums as they shall think WALES-POOR LAWS. 225 fit) a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, and other necessary ware and stuff, to set the poor to work.” * The legislators of that period imagined that labour of any sort was sure to command subsistence at any time,-but woollen and iron-ware are not bread. Let us suppose a greater number of weavers, or other workmen, than manufacturers can employ; some of them becoming destitute, overseers are to set them to work according to law ;that is to say, are to employ them in making, for the account of the public, the very articles for which the trade had already proved unable to furnish them employment. The market being thus overstocked, every shuttle set in motion at the public work-house will necessarily stop another elsewhere; for private manufacturers cannot afford to lose on their goods, although the overseers may. The workmen thus dismissed by individuals will, of course, pass over to the overseers, till at last the public, becoming the only manufacturer, would have the same surplus of workmen as the trade had originally, to be ultimately supported without working, as the goods will not sell beyond the consumption, which might as well have been done at first. Work-houses have, therefore, in a great degree, become out of use, and weekly assistance in money substituted to such labourers as can find no work, or whose work cannot support them. Money, however, it not bread, any more than woollen or iron-ware; for when the baker has only ten loaves to offer to ten purchasers, if an eleventh purchaser comes forward, his money may * Essay on Population by Mr Malthus, quarto, p. 413. 224 WALES-POOR LAWS. raise the price by competition, but cannot create a corresponding eleventh loaf,-therefore unless money can draw supplies of corn from foreign countries, it produces no national relief; for every loaf of bread you enable any individual to purchase, by supplying him with money, you deprive another individual of that very loaf. This assistance in money afforded to individuals by the public, has, by degrees, increased to a prodigious amount. Foreign readers will hear, with surprise, that the tax raised for that purpose, on the rental of the kingdom, exceeds seven millions sterling, annually; and in some parishes is imposed at the rate of 4s. or 5s. in the pound. The income tax itself, raised on all sorts of property, and which is thought so exorbitant, produces only from ten to twelve millions. The necessary con. sequences of this system are, 1st, An encouragement to idleness and improvidence, and to marriage without the means of supporting a family. 2d, A multiplicity of vexatious laws respecting settlements, by which the right of removing, at pleasure, from one part of the country to another, is so abridged, as to attach, in a great degree, the labouring class to the glebe, as the Russian pea * Id 1776, the poor-rates amounted to L. 1,529,780 sterling, and the average of the years 1783-4-5, was L. 2,167,749 ster ling. The price of wheat in 1776 was L. 2, 2s. 8d. sterling; in 1783-4-5, L. 2, 3s. 7d. sterling, per quarter; at the same period, the workhouses cost L. 15,892 sterling a-year; and what is most wonderful, L.11,713 sterling for entertainments; L.24,493 sterling expenses of removals of individuals, &c.; and finally, L.55,891 sterling law charges! In 1803, the poor-rates were L. 5,318,000 sterling, of which L. 4,267,000 sterling only expended on the poor. The rack rental was then 40 millions, now nearly 55 millions, therefore the poor-rates may be estimated 7 millions and a half now.Quarterly Review, No, XVI. WALES-POOR LAWS. 225 sant is. Parishes being bound to provide each for their own poor, it becomes a matter of importance to prevent new comers from acquiring a settlement, by removal to a new parish; and the poor are repulsed from one to the other like infected persons. They are sent back from one end of the kingdom to the other, as criminals formerly in France de brigade en brigade You meet on the high roads, I will not say often, but too often, an old man on foot, with his little bundle,—a helpless widow, pregnant perhaps, and two or three barefooted children following her, become paupers in a place where they had not yet acquired a legal right to assistance, and sent away, on that account, to their original place of settlement, supported, in the meantime, by the overseers of the parishes on their way. 3dly, The funds of the poor are under the administration of overseers, at least as to the details of individual relief; men for the most part not much above those to whom they administer this relief, in point of rank and education, and more awake to the feelings of a little brief authority, than to those of enlightened humanity,-fond of governing; watching the poor with jealousy; meddling with the management of their families with a degree of ill-natured 'curiosity, and subjecting them to the most odious of tyrannies, l'insupportable joug de nos égaur. 4thly, When carried to an extreme, (and 5s. in the pound is very near an extreme), the system of assessment operates like an agrarian law, a levelling principle, tending to put everything in common; that is, to destroy the very foundation of society, industry, national wealth, science, and everything which distinguishes the civilized from the savage life, depending on the right to property. 5thly, The wages of labour tollow with difficulty the gradual |