-we find work in all parts of England areas in Ireland, and what was the result? Ten years later, when hard times came upon the people of the sister country, the Government had to appoint a Commission called the Boundary Commission to subdivide those large areas, and to reduce them to the areas of natural charity. The Boundary Commissioners state in their first Report that they found the unions in the north and east of Ireland in a far better condition than those in the south and west, and assign, as a chief reason, the fact that the electoral divisions were smaller and more nearly coterminous with property. Indeed they say throughout, that in their re-adjustment of the electoral districts they "Endeavoured to compose them of single properties, or groups of properties, in order that the stimulus and individual interest might be exerted for the improvement of the country and the condition of the people.” In their eighth Report, dated February, 1850, they say The next instance of the failure of large town divisions were usually those in which the "We found, as a general rule, that the largest areas of chargeability occurred in the time greatest pressure existed. . . And we had of Charles II. when all the large parishes little doubt that injustice was done to the more in England and Wales were divided into distant rural portions of those electoral divisions, townships for the support of the poor. It by the support being thrown upon them of the persons who swelled the population of the towns, was found at that time that in all the From this we endeavoured to liberate them, by smaller parishes the law was better ad- confining the electoral division to the space beneministered, and the wants of the poor bet-fited by its proximity to the town, and we deter cared for than in the larger parishes, where, notwithstanding the existence of the law, many persons, old and young, had died from the want of the necessaries of life. The preamble of this Act of Charles II. recites that "The inhabitants of certain northern counties and of many other counties in England and Wales, by reason of the largeness of the parishes within the same, have not, nor cannot reap the benefits of the Poor Law of Elizabeth ;" and the Act reduces the areas of chargeability in these large parishes to townships and villages. The effect of this Act was to increase the number of places maintaining their own poor in England and Wales from about 10,000 to about 15,000; and in these reduced areas the Poor Law has worked without difficulty ever since. The next great instance of the forced reduction of large areas of chargeability occurred in the present generation. In 1838, when the Poor Law was first established in Ireland, the Poor Law Commissioners had recently been beaten in their attempt to establish large areas in England. They, however, succeeded in establishing large Mr. Knight parted from the parish boundaries, when by doing so we could make the town more central. our general view of reducing the town areas, we the end to the towns themselves." Thus within our own time, and with all the advantages that could be derived from a central administration and from the union system, the principle of extended areas sought to be established by this Bill has been fully tried, and its signal and rapid failure has caused this third great national example of the forced reduction of widely extended areas of rating to the areas of natural charity-areas which to inquire into the state of different districts; all seemed to have started with a determination to make out a case for union rating. The Commissioner (Mr. a'Beckett) sent to inquire into the condition of the poor of Norwich, and into the causes of its extreme wretchedness, says allow of mutual knowledge and a common | Board, sent gentlemen round the country interest between the payers and the recipients of a forced legal charity. The stress the Commissioners place through out as the advantages of the boundaries of properties being coterminous with those of areas of chargeability, affords a great practical contradiction to those who talk of the evils of such areas in England, and stigmatise them as close parishes. "The subject of rating is beset with difficulty as far as Norwich is concerned, for its parishes are already united for the support of the poor, and whatever advantages are to be derived from the union system, it is now in the possession of. This system is found to be wholly inadequate as a remedy for the evils of which Norwich complains, and it is, therefore, no matter of surprise that the ratepayers should look to a national rate as their only hope of deliverance from the very heavy burden under which they are suffering." The ratepayers of Norwich looked to a national rate as their only relief from the heavy burden of union rating. Now, he (Mr. Knight) contended that if they were to repeal the Act of Queen Anne, and allow the forty-three parishes of Norwich to form separate boards for the relief of the poor of each parish, the misery of that place would soon cease, and the rates would be reduced. Another instance of the failure of the Poor Law to work satisfactorily in large areas was that of the large London parishes. Here the administration of the Poor Law had broken down. The rates in some of them were very high, and the poor died in the streets of starvation. A few years ago the whole country was in a fire of indignation at the disclosures about the Andover Union; but a single weekly paper at any time during the winter would recount in the metropolis twenty times the horrors which were brought before the Now, as regards the Scotch Poor Law, it should be observed that in the Lowlands, where the parishes were small, the law worked well. On the contrary, in the Highlands, where the areas for rating were immensely large, much misery and starvation have existed since the establishment of a New Poor Law in Scotland. He (Mr. Knight) believed that the proper remedy was pointed out in a passage which he recollected in the Report of the Scotch Commission of Poor Law Inquiry. It was there stated that, previously to the passing of the New Poor Law, some of these large Highland districts had in seasons of distress adopted a system which was called the "quartering system." The large parish was divided into five or six small quartering districts or neighbourhoods, and each house in these reduced districts took its turn in giving quarters to a certain portion of the poor and infirm. A division of the large highland parishes into such neighbourhoods for Poor Law chargeability, would, he doubted not, make the Poor Law in the Highlands a practical reality, and would be quite a parallel to the division of the large parishes in the North of England into townships. He hoped he might live to see such a division take place. There were many other instances of the failure of large areas of chargeability to work well-for in-public on that occasion. He believed that stance, about the time of Queen Anne, some ten or twelve unions had been found for rating purposes by private Acts of ParliaMost of these were of very small area, merely uniting the parish of a town. But the largest of these unions, Norwich, consisted of forty-three parishes, and in extent from 4,000 to 5,000 acres. Here the union system had worked as ill as possible, and Norwich had been ever since its union one of the most highly rated, and yet the most miserable district in all England. More complaints came from Norwich than almost any other union, and while it, cried for a larger area, he thought it had too large an area at present. The late Mr. Buller, when at the head of the Poor Law VOL. CLXXIX. [THIRD SERIES.] ment. a division of the large London parishes, such as was now being made for ecclesiastical purposes by the Bishop of London, and not an extension of the area, was the only mode in which relief could be obtained. In Paris, in 1848, we saw the experiment tried of putting a great city in one great area for the relief of its starving population. The attempt plunged the city in hopeless confusion. The expenditure became unmanageable, and the whole attempt was a miserable failure. It was another instance of the failure of a large area, and very possibly it was that which prevented the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Poor Law Board from proposing to deal with London distress, which cried loudly for G change, while he tried his experiments in | had been a decrease of between 700 and the country when the Poor Laws were 800 persons in nineteen parishes of Dockworking tolerably well and without muching Union. Now the only clue to be found complaint. to this decrease was in the speech of the Against all these instances of the break-right hon. Gentleman in bringing in the down of the Poor Law in large areas, the President of the Poor Law Board brought forward' only one instance of its assumed success. He had brought forward the case of Docking Union with a pan of triumph as the one which settled beyond all doubt the superiority of union rating over the existing system; and if that case failed it might be considered as certain that no example was known to the Poor Law officials of a case of success. The President had relied wholly on the Docking case to exemplify the success that was to attend his plan. He (Mr. Knight) had therefore gone carefully into the case of Docking, and would show the House that no favourable precedent could be founded upon it. The President of the Poor Law Board (Mr. Villiers) had garbled the case in a manner common to Poor Law officials-by means of short statistics he had made out a case of success. But the facts were these during the first eight years in which union rating had been established in Docking Union the poor rates had steadily increased to the amount of 19 per cent; then followed a decrease, not of Docking Union alone, but of most of the adjoining unions. Thus taking the average poor rate of Docking Union for the three years, 1846-7-8, before union rating had been established there, and comparing them with the average rate of the last three years, of which an account is published-namely, 1861-2-3, a decrease has taken place in the poor rates of Docking Union of 18 per cent. But during the same period the poor rates of the adjoining union of Swaffham has decreased 24 per cent; of the adjoining union of Aylsham 21 per cent; and of the adjoining union of Erpingham 19 per cent. Now, it is not open to the right hon. Gentleman to say-Look at Docking, it has decreased 18 per cent, because it has adopted union rating, and to quote it as an overwhelming proof of the success of his plan, without its being pointed out that Swaffham had decreased 24 per cent, because it had adhered to the contrary system. The population of Docking Union had steadily increased in every census from 1801 to 1851, and it was not until union rating was established that a decrease commenced. Between 1851 and 1861 there Mr. Knight Bill. He said (quoting the Chairman of Docking Union) that second rate or partially able-bodied labourers, if unable to find work in their own parishes, went further afield in search of work. It was clear that they went out of the union; in fact that they had been driven out of the union by the harshness and severity of the union system. Whenever the population in an agricultural district decreased, it was held by the Poor Law Board that this was occasioned by some sort of cruelty, and on the right hon. Gentleman's own principle it appeared that the poor had been driven from the Docking Union. The President of the Poor Law Board in bringing in this Bill made great capital of a Report by a medical man, Dr. Hunter. He had grounded on it that part of his case which referred to overcrowding in agricultural parishes. Very few Members had seen that Report, which had not been delivered to the House. Dr. Hunter had been sent all over the country, a careful examination was made in every county, and in many parishes, and a Report was made as to the number of cottages, what they were built of, and other details. But according to that Report there was next to no hardship on the score of overcrowding in the parishes he visited-in only one of these, Netherly, the seat of a late Baronet long a Member of that House, were persons described as being huddled together seven or eight in a house. Finding little in the parishes he visited out of which to make a case, Dr. Hunter appears to have examined the census, and extracted the names of 821 parishes in which houses had decreased, while the inhabitants had increased between 1851 and 1861. Not a word was said by Dr. Hunter of their being agricultural or close parishes. In fact, it turned out that a great many of them were town parishes, yet the president of the Poor Law Board, in bringing in the Bill, had most unfairly called them agricultural parishes. Dr. Hunter gave the statement without mentioning the name of a single parish out of the 821, the names of which he had had great difficulty in extracting from the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Poor Law Board. But, for the sake of argument, supposing the Report to be true, it was clear on the face of it that no overcrowding existed in those 821 parishes. The Report showed that the average number of persons to a house in those parishes in 1851 was 4.41, while in 1861 it was 4.87. But the average number of persons per house in England and Wales was in 1851 5.469, and in 1861 5.366. So that the chief thing this list of 821 parishes shows is, that in 1851 they had in them a large surplus of houses over population; and in 1861, although the ratio of surplus had been to some extent diminished, in some parishes by a decrease of houses, and in others by an increase of people, yet even then, as compared with the whole of England and Wales, these 821 parishes were still much overhoused as regarded their existing population. Since the commencement of the New Poor Law there had been a most extraordinary shifting of the population of Eng. land. It arose from two causes the refusal of out-door relief to able-bodied persons, and cheap railway transport. This had been the case, more or less, in almost every part of the country, and particularly in the West of England. But it ought to be observed that all this had arisen since, and was referable to, the operation of the New Poor Law, and was not the result of the old parochial system. When he (Mr. Knight) named such places as Devizes, Trowbridge, Great Bradford, Westbury, Warminster, Heytesbury, Amesbury, Salisbury, Cricklade, Corsham, Chippenham, Calne, Beaminster, Bridport, Whitchurch, Shaftesbury, Sturminster, Shepton Mallet, Wiveliscombe, Milverton, Nailsea, Yatton, Ilminster, Chard, Crewkerne, South Petherton, Ilchester, Castle Cary, Wincauton, Glastonbury, Anbridge, Cheddar, Tiverton, Bath, Bathford, Ashburton, Dartmouth, Totnes, Axminster, Honiton, Topsham, Chudleigh, Okehampton, and Crediton, as among the many towns in the West of England in which houses, or population, or both, had decreased between the Census of 1841 and that of 1851, he (Mr. Knight) could not allow that a corresponding decrease in any small agricultural parishes in the district could fairly be attributed to any other cause than a general resettling of the population under a new order of things, occasioned in great part by the action of the prohibitory order of the New Poor Law. It would be monstrous to assert that the diminution in houses or people in the towns he had named had been caused by a conspiracy on the part of the landlords to ease the poor rates, and that argument was equally false when applied to small parishes affected in like manner. The right hon. Gentleman, in introducing the Bill, had named the several Committees which had applied themselves to the subject of areas of rating. All the arguments brought forward in favour of an extension of the area of rating had turned on two points-first, the great injustice of inequality of rating; and, secondly, the close parish system-a term invented since the New Poor Law. But the injustice of inequality was not done away with by this Bill; because, whether it was a parish or a union that paid 6d., while another parish or union paid 5s., the great injustice of inequality remained the same. For his own part, when complaint was made of the inequality of rating, he confessed he did not see, when a property was purchased or inherited, why the purchaser or descendant should take what he had not purchased, or his predecessor did not possess before him. He (Mr. Knight) should next consider the close parish case, which was a new term invented since the New Poor Law by the Poor Law officials. He (Mr. Knight) had gone most carefully into the matter, and would show the House that no evidence was before the country of the existence of a system of demolishing cottages in small parishes for the sake of diminishing the poor rates. Nothing could be so easy for the Poor Law Board as to name the parishes in which this had taken place, if it really had done so ; but in all the parishes they had so named at different times the contrary was proved, as the census showed that in almost every instance cottages had increased in the parishes accused of having destroyed them. He (Mr. Knight) would examine seriatim the various attempts of the Poor Law Board to impress this House and the country with the idea that such a system existed. The first attempt was made before Mr. Charles Buller's Committee in 1847. Many Poor Law officials came forward to detail the horrors of the system, but as they did not give the names of the parishes they afforded no clue by which. their assertions could be verified. Mr. Hall, one of the Poor Law Inspectors, took a different course. He said he did not believe that cottages had been pulled down, and produced in support of his opinion the following facts:-Mr. Hall's district comprised 44 unions, 24 of which contained no close parish. In the other 20 unions, 76 close parishes existed. Between the cottages were pulled down, and the 1831 and 1841, 'houses in these 76 close labourers driven into an adjoining parish, parishes had increased 11 per cent, popu- one-third of the whole produce of the district lation had increased 9 per cent. In only must be spent in that parish; and it would 6 parishes out of the 76 had houses de- become thriving at the expense of the creased. Mr. Hall gave the names of other parishes. There was no instance of each parish and the figures for the census. a town which complained of the poor being This was the only real evidence given on driven in on them that was not benefited. the close parish case before the Committee For instance, the town of Spalding comof 1847. All the rest was mere outcry. plained that it was injured by being made Neither Mr. Charles Buller nor the Com- the place of residence of the labouring mittee were satisfied. They passed a reso- population of a large neighbouring extralution for union rating, but determined it parochial district called Deeping Fen; but, should not be reported to the House. After on inquiry, it was found that more than the sitting of that Committee, Mr. Buller £10,000 a year was carried in to Spalding by sent eight Poor Law Inspectors into the people who earned their wages in Deeping country to see whether the close parish Fen. Within a short period the valuation system existed or not They were sent into of that town had trebled, and it was quite 14 different counties, and the result was clear that the increase was in no small deprinted. He (Mr. Knight) had spent gree owing to the £10,000 which had several months in working out the results, been so brought into Spalding from Deepwhich he had placed before the House in a ing Fen for a great many years. private pamphlet in 1854. The extracts from the census therein contained showing the number of houses and persons in the parishes selected by the Commissioners as close parishes, showed that houses had largely increased in most of them. As a consequence Mr. Baines, in bringing forward his Motion for union rating, gave up the close parish case, and the charge of pulling down cottages. The number of close parishes reported on was 247, and the increase of the houses in those parishes was 44 per The increase of the population in the same period was very much less. The most curious thing in this inquiry was, that the amount of real property rated to the property tax between 1815 and 1843, in the parishes which were said to have been injured by having population driven into them by the close parishes, had increased immensely, while in the close parishes it had increased very little indeed. In 40 open parishes the increase had been 56 per cent, while in the corresponding close parishes the increase had been only 5 per cent, and throughout in similar proportion. The cause for this was obvious, for, assuming the old division of agricultural produce to be correct, and that onethird went to the labourers, that propor. tion must have been spent by them in those open parishes in which they lived. The theory put forward on the management of property was, that one-third of the gross produce of a farm went to the rent, one-third to labour, and one-third to the farmer. Now, if there could be imagined a district of 30,000 acres, in which Mr. Knight cent. The close parish case appeared to be dead as regarded the charge of pulling down cottages, and remained so for some years. It was, however, resuscitated in 1860 by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Villiers), on his becoming Chairman of the Irremovable Poor Committee. He (Mr. Villiers) brought forward witnesses who re-asserted the old cry of pulling down houses, &c. The Committee, however, refused to listen to such statements unless the names of the parishes were given, and evidence of the number of houses in each of such parishes, at every census since 1801, was afterwards given before the Committee. Five close parishes were spoken of near Lowth; but it appeared that in 1801 the number of houses in them was 82; in 1841, 151; and in 1851, 171; one was mentioned near Wakefield, in which the houses at those periods were 10, 9, and 9; two near Roy ston, in which the houses were 18, 44, and 64; four near Lincoln, in which the houses were 109, 173, and 206; one near Sunder land, in which the houses were 55, 78, and 86; five near Leeds, in which the houses were 523, 899, and 1,018; five near Birkenhead, in which the houses were 82, 94, and 100; five near Chesterfield, in which the houses were 653, 867, and 1,086; in only two out of the whole of the close parishes brought forward before this Committee had houses decreased. The increase of houses in those parishes from 1801 to 1841 was 51 per cent; and from 1841 to 1851 22 per cent. No failure could have been more calamitous than that of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. C. P. Villiers') wit |