of England is subjected to a set of grating, inconvenient, and
tyrannical laws, totally inconsistent with the genuine spirit of
the constitution. The whole business of settlements, even in its
present amended state, is utterly contradictory to all ideas of
freedom. The parish persecution of men whose families are likely
to become chargeable, and of poor women who are near lying-in, is
a most disgraceful and disgusting tyranny. And the obstructions
continuity occasioned in the market of labour by these laws have
a constant tendency to add to the difficulties of those who are
struggling to support themselves without assistance.

These evils attendant on the poor laws are in some degree
irremediable. If assistance be to be distributed to a certain
class of people, a power must be given somewhere of
discriminating the proper objects and of managing the concerns of
the institutions that are necessary, but any great interference
with the affairs of other people is a species of tyranny, and in
the common course of things the exercise of this power may be
expected to become grating to those who are driven to ask for
support. The tyranny of Justices, Church-wardens, and Overseers,
is a common complaint among the poor, but the fault does not lie
so much in these persons, who probably, before they were in
power, were not worse than other people, but in the nature of all
such institutions.

The evil is perhaps gone too far to be remedied, but I feel
little doubt in my own mind that if the poor laws had never
existed, though there might have been a few more instances of
very severe distress, yet that the aggregate mass of happiness
among the common people would have been much greater than it is