ONE:Napoleon's grand army had now dwindled down to twelve thousand men, with about thirty thousand stragglers, who added little to his strength. They were in Poland, and provisions were now more abundant; but they had still to cross the Beresina, and at this moment he heard of the fall of Minsk, and that Victor and Oudinot, instead of attacking Wittgenstein, had quarrelled about the manner of doing it, and so had not done it at all. Wittgenstein and Kutusoff were thus at liberty to attack his flanks, and Tchitchagoff to occupy the Beresina before him. On this, he turned from the route to Minsk and made for Borissov. At Borissov was a bridge of three hundred fathoms in length, and this he had sent Dombrowski to secure and hold; but now he heard of Dombrowski's defeat, that the bridge was in the hands of the Russians, and that they had broken it down. In his agony, he stamped his cane on the ground, and exclaimed, looking upwards"Is it, then, written that we shall commit nothing but errors?"[See larger version]
TWO:The evils of this system had reached their height in the years 1832-3. That was a time when the public mind was bent upon reforms of all sorts, without waiting for the admission from the Tories that the grievances of which the nation complained were "proved abuses." The Reformers were determined no longer to tolerate the state of things in which the discontent of the labouring classes was proportioned to the money disbursed in poor rates, or in voluntary charities; in which the young were trained in idleness, ignorance, and vicethe able-bodied maintained in sluggish and sensual indolencethe aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery incident to dwelling in such a society as that of a large workhouse, without discipline or classification, the whole body of inmates subsisting on food far exceeding, both in kind and in amount, not merely the diet of the independent labourer, but that of the majority of the persons who contributed to their support; in which a farmer paid ten shillings a year in poor rate, and was in addition compelled to employ supernumerary labourers, not required on his farm, at a cost of from 100 to 250 a year; in which the labourer had no need to bestir himself to seek work or to please his master, or to put a restraint upon his temper, having all a slave's security for subsistence, without the slave's liability to punishment; in which the parish paid parents for nursing their little children, and children for supporting their aged parents, thereby destroying[364] in both parties all feelings of natural affection and all sense of Christian duty. The Government, therefore, resolved to apply a remedy. The following is a brief outline of the main features of the measure they proposed, and which was adopted by the legislature. They found the greatest evils of the old system were connected with the relief of the able-bodied; and in connection with that lay the chief difficulty of administering relief. It was, above all things, an essential condition that the situation of the pauper should not be madereally or apparentlyso desirable as that of independent labourers of the lowest class; if it were, the majority of that class would have the strongest inducements to quit it, and get into the more eligible class of paupers. It was necessary, therefore, that an appeal to the parish should be a last resourcethat it should be regarded as the hardest taskmaster and the worst paymaster. This principle was embodied in the Poor Law Amendment Act; and the effects which quickly followed on its operation were most marked and salutary. Able-bodied paupers were extensively converted into independent labourers, for whose employment a large fund was created by the reduction of parochial expenditure; next followed a rise in wages; then a diminution, not only of pauper marriages, but of early and imprudent marriages of all sorts; and lastly, there was a diminution of crime, with contentment among the labourers, increasing with their industry: relief of a child was made relief to the parent, and relief of a wife relief to the husband. In fact, the law combined charity with economy.[See larger version]
FORE:
Nunc at viverra risus. In euismod quam ac dictum varius. Nunc at viverra risus.
Nunc at viverra risus. In euismod quam ac dictum varius. Nunc at viverra risus. In euismod quam ac dictum varius. Nunc at viverra risus. In euismod quam ac dictum varius. Nunc at viverra risus.