it is just as possible that good and able physicians may be very unsafe economists. They did well in warding off the incursion made upon their own territory. But let them not in turn, and by a sort of reverse astrology, make incursion on other sciences and other territories than their own. Their doctrine may be right or wrong, that destitution is both the origin and the active propagator of contagion; and that therefore its removal would operate as a preventive of fever. This is altogether their question, as lying within the province which rightfully belongs to them. But another question remains behind—whether the imposition of a poor-rate would operate as a preventive of destitution; and they, in taking this for granted, may be guilty of as egregious an assumption, as any ever made by a scholastic or visionary of the middle ages. We dispute not that Dr Alison of Edinburgh, and Dr Alison of Tranent, and Dr Cowan of Glasgow, and Dr Roberton of Manchester, may, one and all of them, be talented professional men, and among the highest of their order. And we as little dispute the possibility, that persons of their education and powers might become qualified for being as good judges and reasoners upon the one question as the other. We can only say that we perceive no symptoms of their having thus studied and thus prepared themselves in any of their writings. And on the contrary we have known physicians on their side of the controversy-that is calling out for a poorrate-and who yet allow, that with all the attention they have bestowed on the causes of fever,

they have never so much as entertained, and that on grounds and considerations proper to the question, the causes or cure of pauperism. Now really and in good earnest, it is astrology come back again, if men, because of their proficiency in one science, are thus to be vested with a mastery and a jurisdiction over two. It is a subject which must be treated economically as well as medically, else-even though the verdict may have been entrusted to the best and ablest of our physiciansthere is no security whatever against a lame and impotent conclusion at their hands. Meanwhile let not the public be hurried, by the impulse either of fears or feelings, into the same lame and impotent conclusion along with them. For even though it should be established, which it is far from being, that poverty is the specific cause of those large and frequent epidemical visitations of typhus which take place in towns, the question remains still unresolved, and I may add as far as they are medical controversialists who have taken part in the argument, still untouched uponwhether a poor-rate be indeed a specific cure for poverty.*

7. At the last meeting of the British Association held in Glasgow, Dr Alison gave a full exposition of his views; and his address on that occasion has been since published by him. Among the additional matters which he has there interspersed, there is a notice of myself, where he is pleased to express

* See the admirable discrimination and sound judicial sense of Mr Monypenny's observations on this subject in his Reply to Dr Alison.

his satisfaction at certain admissions made by me in favour of medical charities. If he conceive that these are recent admissions drawn forth for the first time, and in consequence perhaps of the new light then shed upon the argument, I have only to put him right by referring to various passages in certain works some of them published as far back as twenty years ago.* But I cannot wonder at his ignorance of these, as it is obvious from what he has written formerly, that, like his brother who with himself utterly misconceives the working of the parochial system in St John's-that neither of these strenuous advocates for a poor-rate had ever read them. Nor is this to be marvelled at either— seeing that both of these truly excellent men have settled it between them, that, on the question of pauperism, the lights neither of reason nor experience have ever been consulted by me; and accordingly the one tells his readers that all I have done

* See the Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation, Vol. II. pp. 128-132. being Vol. XV. of the series-the first Tract of Vol. XII. of the series, written twenty-two years ago—Vol. I. of Political Economy, being Vol. XIX. of the series, p. 419-and more especially my printed Evidence before a Commons' Committee in 1830, in Vol. III. of the Christian and Economic Polity, pp. 373-376, being Vol. XVI. of the series.

I may here refer to a sermon published by the Archbishop of Dublin on Christ as a Guide and Example to us in matters of Public Charity, where the same principles are advocated which I have ventured to advance in the various works now specified. I beg to take this public opportunity of acknowledging to have received from the Archbishop a copy of this Sermon, with a note in his own hand-writing of thanks for having suggested the topic to him a suggestion which came to him, I imagine, through the medium of this printed Evidence. I should not have adverted at present to the circumstance, but for the purpose of bringing before the minds of the Mr Alisons an authority in favour of my views whom perhaps they will have some respect for.

on this question has been under the impulse of an enthusiastic imagination, while the other tells them that in all I have said or written thereupon I have emitted nothing but flashes of oratory.

8. Nevertheless, and at the hazard of again calling forth these appellations, I must still persevere and continue to lift my warning voice against the fearful visitation which these gentlemen, in the eagerness of their miscalculating benevolence, so eagerly desire; and which, in conjunction with certain London associates the lovers of centralization, and its whole train of commissionerships and secretaryships and guardianships and directorships and assistantships, they in good earnest design for Scotland. I may well term theirs a miscalculating benevolence-for while the one brother tells us, and tells us truly, that, in every aggregate population of two thousand in the city of Glasgow, at the very least six thousand a-year is spent on intoxicating liquors alone; the specific remedy of the other for the distress and destitution of the lower classes in Scotland, is, that the annual sum of eight hundred thousand pounds should be raised, which would just afford six hundred a-year ab extra for the families of a locality, where the fund ab intra thrown away upon low dissipation is of ten-fold greater amount. The obvious question is, Whether the moral administration that would give a better direction to the expenditure of the latter and larger fund of Sheriff Alison, which exists within the parish, would not do more for the destitution and consequent disease of our cities, than the pecuniary administration from without of the former and far the lesser fund

of Dr Alison-but a humble fraction of the other. When this question was put, the reply it elicited from this truly estimable person, and which at once marked a heart teeming with sympathy, but a mind withal in which the lights of reflection and arithmetic were for the time suspended, was, that by thus dispensing with the fund ab extra, and drawing on the fund ab intra, I was making a proposition which when translated into plainer language was just that the poor should support the poor. This brings us to the ne plus ultra of reasoning; but while I henceforth must forego the hope of ever being able to satisfy this most amiable of men, or to silence his unfortunate advocacy of a measure fraught with a thousand evils to the people of our land, I will not forego the hope that under a better regimen they will yet emerge into a state of greater sufficiency and far more secure independence and that, not at the expense of each other, but at the expense of the harpies and oppressors who now so cruelly tyrannize over them-pawnbrokers, and more especially those destroyers of all fulness and comfort in families, the keepers whether of whisky-shops or of ginpalaces.

SECTION VIII.-Historical View of the Question.

1. There is nothing which stands forth more patently to the eye of an observant traveller, than the different states of different populations, in re