THE POOR REMOVAL ACT.
TO TILE EDITOR 8F TILE SPECTATOR.
Eltham, 2d December 1846.
Sin—No censure can too severely deprecate the obscure and doubtful phrase- ology of the recent Removal Act; which, at the same time that it imposes on Boards of Guardians the responsibility of carrying into effect an important altera- tion of the Poor-law, leaves them in uncertainty what it is they are in reality re, (inked to do. But it is obvious that the act was intended to operate as mitigatory of the law of settlement, by entitling persons to relief where they had resided for five years. I cannot, therefore, doubt for a moment that the Law-officers of the Crown have rightly. announced the purposes of the act, though it may be difficult to justify 'their interpretation of it by the language employed to convey them. And I can- not but say, as a member of a board who have adopted their construction, that it has already indicated a beneficial tendency, and cannot but, if continued, approve itself to the poor people for whose benefit it was designed. If, indeed, Boards of Guardians—perverting that discretion. with which they are necessarily invested in the administration of relief—choose to draw an in vidious distinction between the settled and irremoveable pauper to the disadvan- tage of the latter, that cannot be helped: let such misconduct receive its merited exposure and reprehension. But if—as I think they will when the act is better understood—if they will look upon the poor person who has been long resident amongst them as coining more reasonably and properly within their protection than that of those who in distant parishes cannot be so well qualified to attend to his interests, and will with a proper humanity acknowledge his title to relief where in reality his best. interests lie, s. e. where he has long lived, then it must soon follow that the ob- noxious law of settlement itself must give way, so that every destitute person should be entitled to relief in the place where he may be, without incurring a lia- bility to removal in consequence of his chargeability. That the law of settlement may be abandoned with advantage, you may see was the opinion of the Poor-law Commissioners in 1841; as you may also find they have expressed themselves in page 113 of Appendix No. 2 on the subject of relief to non-resident persons, in their Seventh Annual Report. And to the same effect the Lewisham Board petitioned the House of Commons in April 1845. As to the principle on which a wise poor-law should be based, it must be un- questionably that of providing work and requiring it to be done, in all cases in which there is no physical incapacity in the destitute person. How to provide that work, and how to compel it, is the difficulty. The workhouse test has not forced the pauper to procure it for himself, neither has it discouraged vagrancy: it has, however, by putting the vagrant and unprincipled on a level with the de- serving but unfortunate or infirm poor, operated on the feelings of these latter a very unfavourable and depressing effect, and has thus made the law.very unpopu- lar with persons of tender and humane feelings, who observe that it operates without distinction on the good and the bad, or rather more favourably on the bad, as it is these alone who will not make any sacrifices to avoid the necessity of being thud maintained. The Poor-law now engages much of public consideration, and serious altera- tions in it are expected: what they should be, and on what principle they should be made, I shall hope some day to offer for your approval my humble conception. I cannot say that your correspondent " A Guardian " quite meets my views.
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