PARISH POOR IN LONDON.

IT is a fine thing, of course, to keep every
beadle tight in hand; for, if one beadle should
ever get over his parish bounds, and so come
to confront, upon his own territory, another
beadle, Hector and Achilles! there would be
a piece of work. Between them it should go
hard but they would trample into pulp the
British constitution. Before everything, let
us preserve all the rights, and all the wrongs
too, of the ancient parish. Let there be no
concert between neighbours to secure a fair
division of the work that parishes must do;
but let every clan of ratepayers rally round
its own bright beadle and defy all beadledom
beside.

Some revolutionary persons have been
making a preposterous suggestion. They
say: Look at the London poor. We will not
trouble you to go so far back as to the days
of Alfred, since which time, you tell us,
parishes have been what they are; but go
back to only a quarter of a century, and you
will find the London population to have been
so distributed that there was a tolerably even
division among ratepayers of the cost of
maintenance for the destitute poor. And
see, these centralising revolutionists go on to
observe, see how, in one day, the London
poor all crowd together into parishes of needy
people, being driven out of the wealthy quarters
of the town. From their much, therefore, how
little is contributed by the rich; out of their
little, how much do the poor give, under that
strict system which compels the needy to
maintain the destitute. Wealthy ratepayers
in the squares and terraces of Paddington are
only asked to pay, out of their superfluity,
four pence in the pound for the few paupers
burdening so rich a parish. Impoverished
ratepayers in the lanes and small streets of
Saint George's-in-the-East, are forced to pay
out of their doubtful little incomes, three
shillings and nine pence in the pound for the
relief of the great mass of hopeless poverty
whereof they form the upper part. This has
to be ground out of them. It is, to so many,
the gift of bread out of hungry mouths to
mouths yet hungrier. In this one parish
there are four thousand summonses for rates
issued in every quarter. What can be more
absurd and preposterous than an attempt to
modify a system working in this manner,
so clearly a part of the ancient parochial
system, so distinctly the birthright of a
Briton, and a bulwark of the constitution?
What more need be said to crush any such
attempt than, that to ask the rich parishes to
help the poor ones within the bounds of the
metropolis, is to introduce the small end of
the wedge? It is centralisation. It cuts at
the root of liberty.

Of course it does! The three hundred
thousand paupers relieved every year in
London parishes ought to be paid for
chiefly out of the small tradesman's till; and,
if the inhabitants of wealthy parishes pay
wages punctually to their footmen while
they work, that is as much as can be reasonably
looked for from them. When the
men of plush sicken in service, and can no
longer give a return for what they eat, it is
quite time that they should be off and throw
themselves upon the rates of the poor parishes,
whence they were originally drawn. That
was all properly settled by a merciful and
wise alteration of the Law of Settlement in
eighteen hundred and thirty-four; whereby
hired servants ceased to become chargeable
upon the parishes in which their employers
live. Thirty-two per cent, of the inhabitants
of Saint George's Hanover Square are thus
devoted to the uses of the rich; and, till the
judicious law was made that cast them out
of the parish into other parishes whenever
they fell into distress, the ratepayers of Saint
George's Hanover Square paid two and six
pence in the pound for the relief of
destitution. Now they have thrown their burden,
so to speak, over the parish wall into the
premises of poorer neighbours, and pay six
pence or seven pence against the ten shillings
payable in Saint Nicholas Deptford, the
eight shillings in Saint Nicholas Olave, the
six shillings in Saint Ann's Blackfriars, the
three shillings and nine pence in Saint
George's-in-the-East.

The most preposterous part of a preposterous
case is founded on the fact that,
whereas pauperism costs the metropolis about
three-quarters of a million yearly, and the
property tax value over the same area is
about fourteen millions, an uniform
contribution from the London people for the London
poor would hardly amount to more than a