It is true, that if we adopt to preventive measures, if we persist blindly in our course of error, the temporary relief affordedby emigration will come to an end, and the vacuum will, in sixteen or seventeen years, be filled up. But is it certain that weshall not profit by experience? Have we a right, or, rather, are we compelled, to assume, as a link in the argument, that weand our successors must be madmen ? If a man has been outrunning his income, is it quite certain that we can do him nogood by paying his debts, on the ground that if he goes on in the same thoughtless expenditure, he will again be involved asdeeply as ever? And even granting that the vacuum will be filled up, will it be nothing to have obtained sixteen years' respite? -- to have weathered the existing storm? -- to have adjourned the crisis to a period which may be more favourable,and cannot possibly be less so?
We are told that the labourers form the strength of the country, and that to diminish their number is to incur voluntaryfeebleness. But does the pauper, -- the man whose labour is not worth his subsistence, who consumes more than heproduces,--does he add to the strength of the country? When I hear such remarks, I fancy myself standing by the bedside ofau apoplectic patient, and hearing tile nurse and the friends prohibit tile lancet. 'The blood,' says one, ' is the support of life: how can you think of diminishing it in his present state of weakness ' 'If you do diminish it,' cries out another, ' with hishabits of free living, it will be renewed; in a year the vacuum will be filled up.' But is it impossible that the blood can be inexcess? Is it certain that his habits are unchangeable? Shall we let him die low, lest we should have to bleed him again ayear hence?
It will be observed, that I have assumed that the paupers are willing to emigrate. That they have been so as yet, isunquestionable: I hope, I had almost said I trust, that they still continue to be so. But if they are allowed. to fix the labourthey are to give, and the wages they are to receive; if they are to help themselves, while it lasts, from the whole property ofthe country, it is too much to expect that they will not prefer idleness, riot, and plunder at home, to subsistence, howeverample, to be earned by toil and hardship abroad. But this only shows the danger, the madness of delay. While we aredeliberating, or even before we have begun to deliberate, 'the moment for applying the remedy is passing away.
Hitherto, it has been common to defend every existing practice as agreeable to common sense, in opposition to thevisionary schemes of political theorists; to. plead experience in behalf of everything that has long prevailed, and todeprecate new experiments. It is high time that those who profess to venerate experience should now, at length, show thatthey can learn from it. To what has common prejudice, reigning under the title of common sense, brought us? Have the practical men who have hitherto administered our system of poor-laws saved us from being brought to the very brink ofruin? Or have they suggested any effectual means for stopping our downward career? Surely common sense, if there be anysuch thing in the country, will now, at last, bear witness to the truth of Bacon's maxim, that he who dreads new remedies,must expect new evils!'
Lincoln's Inn, December 3, 1830.
