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forms the basis of these suggestions, pauperism once extensive, amounting to 6 or 7 per cent., is now, by a judicious administration, reduced to the lowest in England, namely, ½ per cent., while some neighbouring unions, under similar conditions, are hardly reduced at all from their normal level under the old Poor Law of 6 per cent. The chief features of this administration have been great individual supervision, a strict system of out-door relief, considerable regard to sanitary conditions, and generally an attempt to encourage provident habits, and to correct the communistic feeling of the old Poor Law by thrift. As regards the demoralizing influence of the beer-shop, legislation will no doubt shortly give to the magistrates, or some local authority, larger powers than the emasculated measure of 1869, One mode of legislation, not yet much considered, would be to raise the rating qualifications, which would at a stroke do away witlx many of the lower class of beer-shops. But in towns, in neighbourhoods where the beer-shops and public-houses amount to about one for every twenty or thirty grown-up males—not a very unusual proportion—it is evident that either the beer-shop keepers or some of the twenty or thirty men must, financially or morally, be ruined; and every inducement, legitimate or other, will be brought into play to prevent the financial ruin of the beer-shop, especially when temptation is so easy, and resistance so hard. This beer-shop and licensing difficulty is the natural result of the Beer Act, an instance of legislation by theory: what was then called free-trade in beer has turned out to be free-trade in vice, and vice, too, now with a vested interest acquired by law. But when actually under the guise of thrift and providence, that is, for the monthly or weekly meetings of a benefit club, labouring men assemble at the beer- shops, the landlord of which is the manager of the society, it is difficult for the most providently disposed to resist the insidious snare; and seeing that the friendly society, properly constituted, may ultimately be shown to be one chief correction and cure for the low condition of the labourer, you hereby have demoralization and improvidence introduced under the very guise of thrift—the fountain poisoned at its spring. The beer-shop and the benefit society, their antithesis and their confusion, are subjects for the legislator, as difficult as they are important.
But in the face of these adverse causes, fundamental and incidental, let us see what individualism, quâ landlords, can do notwithstanding. Much every way, by residence, by intelligent sympathy, and practical knowledge:—Thus (1.) Cottages and gardens; (2.) Land; (3.) Work; and substitute clubs for beer-shops, economic outlay for charitable doles, and thrift and self-respect for improvidence and dependence. It will not cost much in money, but it will require time and some personal sympathy and supervision. None other can do what a landlord can, neither clergyman nor constable, schoolmaster nor Government; and it is gradually being discovered that among some debased town populations, the relation of landlord and tenant (not by cash-nexus but by sympathy and kindly interest) is the greatest leverage and renovation for some of the poorer classes.
