Dispauperization |
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Author:
| Pretyman, J. B. |
ISBN: | 978-0-217-46448-2 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2012 |
Publisher: | General Books LLC
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | AUD $27.90 |
Book Description:
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Section in. MATERIAL MISCHIEF TO THE HAND-WORKING CLASSES. If a traveller were to report the discovery of an island in the Pacific, where it was expressly ordained by law that, let any man or woman be as idle, or as improvident, or as disorderly, or as vicious as he or she pleased to be, such person could...
More DescriptionPurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Section in. MATERIAL MISCHIEF TO THE HAND-WORKING CLASSES. If a traveller were to report the discovery of an island in the Pacific, where it was expressly ordained by law that, let any man or woman be as idle, or as improvident, or as disorderly, or as vicious as he or she pleased to be, such person could claim public support, either the traveller's veracity would be called in question, or the inhabitants of the island would be set down as a people of singularly perverted understandings. If, however, our traveller's tale were thus far accepted, he would easily be believed when he added that in that island the hand-working people, though in full employment, and generally well paid, usually spent the surplus of their wages in self-indulgence, and that an enormous amount of indigence and destitution was to be found there, notwithstanding their legal resource and the beneficence of many persons of the wealthier order. Yet the only difference between the law of this supposed island and the law of an existent island situated between the 58th and 60th degrees of north latitude, and at about 5 degrees of east longitude, is that the Pacific law expressly ordains what the law of the existent islandordains by implication. The purport of the two laws would be the same, though it were not openly stated in both cases. Such is the Poor Law of England. The consequences of this law to the material and social condition of the classes who live by the labour of their hands, or who, possessing no means, live by no labour, are such as might have been expected, and are evident from abundant testimony, nay, even open to common observation. How to improve this condition, which is a disgrace to the nation, and not without danger to the social order, is a problem which has exercised the brain-power...