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THE EXAMINER. 131
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short of three years' purchase. But this is not a fair statement of
the question. It assumes that the whole expenditure of the country
on account of poor-rates is pure uncompensated outgoing, without
any return. Now this, we admit, is to a great degree the case at
present, but it is so merely from mal-administration; and mainly
from the established mode of managing the poor piecemeal, by each
parish within itself. Undoubtedly every pauper should be chargeable
solely to his own parish, but there is no reason in the world why he
should be set to work within the parish exclusively, where perhaps
there is no employment for him of a more productive character
then drawing gravel. If we had duly-constituted municipal
councils, or, in default of such institutions, an officer named
by the Crown in each county, and bound to find employment
for all the paupers of the county, on public works, in agriculture,
in manufactures, in any manner in short in which their
labour could be turned to greatest account; or what would be still
better, if the poor of the county were farmed by open competition to
private contractors, proper securities being taken that no pauper should
be mulcted of his due allowance or otherwise oppressed; no one,
we believe, who has considered the subject, will doubt, that the
paupers of England might be made to reproduce annually the whole
amount of their maintenance, in the same manner as other labourers
reproduce theirs with considerable profit. In this way the annuity
of twenty-five pounds a-year would be redeemed by the advance of
that sum once only; and therefore the present measure, which
requires an advance of sixty-six pounds for the same purpose, is
unthrifty and unadvisable.

Objections of detail present themselves in great numbers against
the proposed mode of facilitating emigration: but the consideration
which we have just stated applies to the principle, and appears to us
o be decisive.

Yet we are friends to emigration; and are persuaded that from it,
in conjunction with other measures, material relief might be afforded
to the laboring classes from the pressure of their own excessive
competition for employment. But, to be entitled to this praise, the
scheme must be such as to pay the expenses of a second body of
emigrants from the produce of the labour of the first.

Every one admits that the labour of a man in England produces
very little; that the labour of a man in Australia or Canada
produces very much; and that every labouring man, who could be
removed from England to either of these colonies would, by his change
of abode, occasion an increase of the produce of the world which
would suffice in two or three years to repay, with interest, the
expense of his passage. Here then, by general admission, is on the one
hand a value lost, namely what the pauper would have produced at
home, together with the expenses of his passage; on the other hand,
a value created in the colony, exceeding the value lost; and it is actually
given up as an insoluble problem, to make a portion of the gain available
to cover the loss! It is an insult to the human understanding to
pretend that there are no means of making emigration pay for itself. If
the emigration of a moderate number of labourers in the prime of life
were defrayed by an advance from the treasury, and a portion of
what was added to the produce of the colony by their labour, were
exacted in the form of a tax, and appropriated to form a fund for
further emigration, a perennial stream of emigrants might be kept up
without further expense to the mother country, until Canada, South
Africa, and Australia were fully peopled. Whether this drain could
be rendered sufficiently large to prevent overflow—whether
emigration on this principle could ever be sufficient to relieve
overpopulation at home—can scarcely be known before trial; but the
grounds of hope are amply sufficient to render a trial not only
advisable, but imperative.

The best mode which we have seen proposed, of enabling
emigration to pay its own expenses, is that to which Mr. Robert Gouger,
and Mr. Tennant, the member for St. Albans, have so perseveringly
called the public attention—that of fixing a price upon waste land,
the highest which could be levied without so crowding the inhabitants
as to lower wages below their highest rate. There is no difficulty or
disadvantage in this measure. The government of the United States
raises a considerable annual revenue from the sale of unappropriated
land; to the great benefit of the inhabitants, which benefit would be
still greater if the tax were higher, as it is almost certain that the
population of the back settlements is even now far more widely
dispersed than is consistent with the most productive employment of
their labour. The same principle has been adopted in part by the
present ministry, in the colonies of New South Wales and Van
Diemen's Land. All that is wanting is, that the minimum price of
waste land should be higher; that the system should be established
by act of parliament, not by a mere regulation, revocable at the
pleasure of any colonial minister; and finally, that the produce of
the sale of land should be wholly devoted to emigration, and to the
emigration of young couples,, in order that the greatest effect may be
produced on the future growth of population, by the removal of the
smallest number of individuals.

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TITHES.—Nothing can more pointedly illustrate the stagnating influence
of our aristocratic institutions on the mind and energies of the community
than our continuance of the tithe-tax, so long after its impolicy and injustice
have been demonstrated. Even Mr. Pitt, who throughout his political
life was the slave of a paltry ambition for place, and the tool of a despicable
faction, meditated its removal. It has been denounced by Bishop
Watson, by Dr. Paley, by Burke, by Malthus, and every writer and
statesman with the least pretension of intelligence and patriotism. It is
supported by the example of no country in Europe. Though England
swarms with separatists, and can hardly be said to have a national religion,
yet, for the maintenance of one handful of spirituals, the whole nation is
insulted, and the operations of rural industry fettered and impeded.—Black
Book.

Identifier: | JB/004/070/003"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 4.
Date_1	1831-02-27	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	004	Main Headings	lord brougham displayed
Folio number	070	Info in main headings field
Image	003	Titles	the examiner / sunday, february 27, 1831 / no. 1204
Category	printed material	Number of Pages	8
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	(130-144)
Penner		Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections	jeremy bentham	Paper Produced in Year
Notes public	[[notes_public::"john fonblanques eulogium on brougham" [note in bentham's hand]]]	ID Number	1991
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