better for society if land to an amount equivalent to the charge
were taken from the estate and assigned to the poor. If a man is
charged with L100 a year poor-rate, it would make no real
difference to him, while it would make a vast difference to the
poor to take land to that value, put the poor to work tilling it,
allowing them to enjoy the produce. Any expense should be paid
direct by the landlord, which would leave the charge upon the land,
and exempt the improvements of the tenant, which represent his
labor, free.

The evil has intensified in magnitude, and a permanent army of
paupers numbering at the minimum 829,281 persons, but increasing at
some periods to upward of 1,000,000, has to be provided for; the
cost, about L8,000,000 a year, is paid, not by landlords but by
tenants, in addition to the various charities founded by benevolent
persons. There are two classes relieved under this system, and
which ought to be differently dealt with--the sick and the young.
Hospitals for the former and schools for the latter ought to take
the place of the workhouse. It is difficult to fancy a worse place
for educating the young than the workhouse, and it would tend to
lessen the evil were the children of the poor trained and educated
in separate establishments from those for the reception of paupers.
Pauperism is the concomitant of large holdings of land and
insecurity of tenure. The necessity of such a provision arose, as I
have previously shown, from the wholesale eviction of large numbers
of the occupiers of land; and, as the means of supplying the need
came from the LAND, the expense should, like tithes, have fallen
exclusively upon land. The poor-rates are, however, also levied
upon houses and buildings, which represent labor. The owner of land
is the people, as represented by the Crown, and the charges thereon