14
to feed the poor. In the agricultural districts they are the chief rate-payers. Now, the corn-laws augment the poor-rates by a double operation. They increase the number of paupers, by depressing trade and manufactures;—and they add to the cost of their maintenance, by raising the price of corn. The latter effect may be judged of from the annexed table,[1] from which it appears, that, in five agricultural counties alone, the difference of pauper expenditure between a cheap year, and a dear one, was £78,131 under the old system, and £71,913 under the amended law. The former effect, though equally certain, it is not so easy to show by tabular statements; but it is notorious that the manufacturing districts, when prosperous, draft off, and provide employment for many thousands of labourers from the agricultural counties, who would otherwise have to be supported by the rates of their native parishes;[2]—that, if these labourers had
- ↑ SUMS EXPENDED FOR THE RELIEF OF THE POOR, dil
COUNTIES. Under the Old Poor Law. Under the New Poor Law. 1829. 1833. 1837. 1839. - ↑ "We do not know the exact amount of migration from rural to industrial districts, but we know that it must have been immense; for while the natural increase of the population (i.e. the excess of births above deaths), during the last ten years, has been much the greatest in the former, the actual increase has been much the greatest in the latter. A careful examination of the table given below, coupled with the annual increase of the population, will leave little room for doubt, that since 1836, the manufacturing districts have found employment and subsistence for at 400,000 additional persons.
Agricultural Counties. Increase per cent. in the Population from 1831 to 1841 Births to Population in 1830. Deaths to Population in 1840. Manufacturing Counties. Increase per cent. of Population, from 1831 to 1841. Births to Population in 1830. Deaths to Population in 1840. N.B. The year 1830 is the last for which we have any calculation of the births."
"Not Overproduction," &c. by W. R. Greg, p. 16.
