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families. Sorry am I to be obliged to acknow-
ledge, that through the unwise and imprudent
mode of administering the poor laws of this
country, our agricultural labourers are, in some
places, reduced to nearly a similar situation. The
pay from the poor-rate for labour, in proportion
to their number in family, relieves the poor man
from the anxiety of providing for them, and
renders him careless about the future. It is, in
fact, an encouragement to improvident marriages.
My present object is to prove, that the bettering
the condition of the poor, the giving them the
means of supporting a family independent of
parochial relief, is the best and safest mode of
altering this miserable state of things. Give
but the labouring class the same preventive
checks to early and imprudent marriages, which
operate on the middling and superior classes, and
there can be little doubt, that in this country, as
in the other countries of the civilized world, a due
proportion will be maintained between the num-
ber of the inhabitants and the means of their
support.
But the question for our present consideration
is simply this, has the letting of land to the poor
had the effect of increasing their population in
those parishes in which the system has been for
any time in practice, more than in those parishes