A treatise on indigence; exhibiting a general view of the national resources for productive labour; with propositions for ameliorating the condition of the poor, and improving the moral habits and increasing the comforts of the labouring people ... / by P. Colquhoun.

  • Patrick Colquhoun
Date:
1806
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on indigence; exhibiting a general view of the national resources for productive labour; with propositions for ameliorating the condition of the poor, and improving the moral habits and increasing the comforts of the labouring people ... / by P. Colquhoun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the last two centuries, employed their thoughts and communicated their ideas on the means of amelio- rating the condition of the poor, without producing any salutary arrangement calculated to remedy the excessive evil against which all of them have declaimed, it may perhaps be thought presump- tuous, if not unavailing, in the author of this work, to offer his sentiments on a subject of such extreme difficulty ; but as a crisis appears to have arrived when it will probably be once more brought under the review of the Legislature, and as his public situation has afforded him many opportu- nities of practically considering this branch of po- lice, in the course of a long and laborious attention to the duties of a magistrate in the metropolis, he feels confident that an excuse will be found in the candour of the public, for the-attempt he now presumes to make of placing thus upon record whatever he has considered as likelv to be useful on a subject of such incalculable importance to the best interests of his country. In the following sheets it will be found, that the discussion, while it embraces every object that can elucidate a measure of such vital interest to the community, is at the same time as much corn- different periods during the two last, and some in the present century, on the subject of the poor, most of whom discover a great diversity of opinion. Although the chief part of the writers of the 17th and 18th centuries complain of the bad management and heavy burdens of the poor, how much would many of them be astonished if they lived in the present times !
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