The second annual report of the managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, in the City of New-York : read and accepted, December 29, 1819. To which is added, an appendix, on the subject of pauperism.

Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in the City of New York

Date:: 1820

Credit: The second annual report of the managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, in the City of New-York : read and accepted, December 29, 1819. To which is added, an appendix, on the subject of pauperism. Source: Wellcome Collection.

40/92 page 40

$mencement, and disregarded in the first stages of their progress. The evil of pauperism, at the present moment, in the kingdom of Great Britain, fully demonstrates the truth of our remark. Although some doubt envelopes the subject, yet it is probable, that the pauper system in England had its commencement more than three eentu- ries ago, in the fifth year of the reign of Elizabeth. In most, or in all the succeeding reigns, statutes were passed, while paupers increased. Vast commercial speculations, brilliant wars, and other dazzling objects of public regard and national policy, abstracted the at- tention of the government and of individuals, from the rapid increase of paupers and poor-rates, until the evil arrived to an extent that threatened to impoverish the British nation. Then it was, that such statesmen as Pitt, Whitbread, Sheffield, Brougham, Colquhoun, and others, equally profound and illustrious, began to reflect on plans of reform. Had the combined exertions of British statesmen and British jurists, been arrayed against the present system, in season, a tremendous calamity might have been averted. But the day passed by; and England now presents a spectacle, unparalleled in the compass of civil history. The voice of her par- liament, the language of her legislators, and the testi- mony of her public economists, concur in pointing to her pauperism, as an abuse which shakes the British throne.^ * “ The territory of this kingdom may truly, at this time, be called the PAUPERS’ FARM; from which every vagabond who chooses to claim it, receives in the course of the year, a large sum, without tax, toll, or custom ; thence the annual four pounds which 3Vh\ f vans appor- tions to every man and child, as the profits of the National Estate ” Quarterly Review, June, 1818, p. 261.$