The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-02 00:00:00

necessity for, or whether it is that the relieving
officers are refusing shelter to very many that ought
to be housed, our readers can judge for the mselves.
One of these two things is certainly the case if Mr.
Farnall's figures are to be relied on if they are not
reliable, then his explanatory defers T of the good
effected by the Act of last Session is-worthless.
Under the mismanagement which it is thus evi-
dent must be going forward somewhere, is it sur-
prising that the Refuges are as clamorous as ever
in their appeals for sympathy and support ? The
relief afforded by Refuges is not good as a system,
and as charitable institutions they are necessarily
hampered with extraneous expenses which would
make their system of relief, even if it was the best,
costly beyond proportion to others nearly as good. But
their inefficient system is very much better than no
system at all. To refuse help to the Refuges till the
workhouses did their duty would be acting very
much like those who should refuse their aid towards
restoring animation to a half-drowned man because
the legally qualified practitioner would not or did
not come. The real doctor is, of course, infinitely
preferable, but, in the meantime, we must do the
best we can till he arrives.

It is, perhaps, travelling beyond the record on
this occasion to refer to the question of outdoor re--
lief, yet there is no doubt that, as our correspondent
"W. D. B." pointed out, the ill-judged parsimony
with which this is accorded is, as a rule, productive,
not only of misery to the poor, but productive also
of heavy permanent burdens on the poor rates. The
poor have an intense dread of " the house " until
they have been forced to enter it, when they find it
so far from uncomfortable that it is often after-
wards difficult to keep them out of it. There is,
however, scarcely any amount of privation which a
family will not endure rather than enter "the house"
at first, and the miserable cases of death from desti-
tution which so often shock us are mostly to be
traced to this cause. "The house or nothing" is the
answer in very many cases to the applicants for even
the smallest amount of outdoor relief, and the ofitict
produced in a poor neighbourhood when a family is
starved into submission and enters the house is very
much the same as if they had all been swept off by
cholera—they have such a horror of it. This feel-
ing of horror, however, is soon overcome by those
who do enter, and it is unfortunately tootrue that
a large proportion of these get to like cpfiet
warmth with.scarcely any labour. Certain it is that a
family that has been forced in for one winter seldom
fail to force themselves in for many winters after-
wards. If a more comprehensive view of the very ob-
ject and purpose of outdoor- relief were taken, and it
were more generally allowed than it now is, it would
not only relieve an immense amount of suffering,
but would effect a considerable saving in the poor
rates. Anyone who is acquainted with the condition
of the poorest classes of the metropolis knows that
one• inmate of a workhouse represents. from four to
five poor outside who have more or less need of its
relief. Yet the utmther in the receipt of even the
smallest outdoor relief seldom exceeds double the
number of those whom the workhouses are com-
pelled to take in, and often compelled for the very
reason that they will give no other relief.
To return, however, to the homeless poor, we ven-
ture to think that there is no scheme which promises
so well for checking idle vagrancy and for insuring
uniform and economically-provided shelter to the
really deserving destitute as that which has been so
often proposed—namely, placing them under the
care of the police, to be by the police lodged for the
night in district asylums in various parts of the me-
tropolis. The main features of such a plan were
attempted to be carried out by the Poor Low Board
in 1846, and all the Unions of the metropolis were
for'this purpose divided into six great districts. In
each of these districts an asylum was to be built for
the homeless, and two districts, which were obedient
to the Poor La* Board, actually' bought the land
on which to build them. The other four districts,
however, declined to do anything of the kind, and,
as it was .no good going on with two, the land was
resold, and the scheme came to the ground. If this
plan were revived, and the care of these district
asylums intrusted to the police, the maintenance of
the buildings might be met out'of the general police
rate, and this expense, it is calculated,would actually
not exceed £6,000 a year for the whole metropolis.
The labourer on the tramp for work would in such
asylums readily find a night's lodging; the really
destitute would be forwarded from the asylums
to their prn.wr 4parish workhouses. Ida, the
regular vagrant, 1 the-- idle, drunken, and pro-]
fligate, would be lodged where they ought
to be—first in the station-house and afterwards at
the House of Correction. In the many parts of
England where this system has been adopted 'regu-
lar vagrancy is as unknown as dearhs from 'destitu-
tion. In London, unfOrtunately, we are but too
familiar with both these extremes which make so
painfully the shortcomings of our present system
of casual relief. Under a well-organised police
system, such as has been so often suggested, it is
believed by those best competent to form an opinion
on this subject That most of those evils connected
with our homeless poor would 'disappear, and what
is now becoming a costly, 'as it 'has long been a
scandalous, instance of mad-administration would
be unknown among us.