The Sun.
London, England, 1836-01-18 00:00:00

THE NEW POOR-LAWS.

(From the New Bell's Weekly Messenger.)
" Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the other
provisions of the New Poor Law, both its advocates and op-
ponents are, we believe, very fast falling into an entire coin-
cidence as to the injustice, the cruelty and impolicy of the
clauses regarding illegitimate children. Under this head the
worst prognostics of the opponents of the measure are every
day being fulfilled to the letter, while parishes, which were to
have been benefited by the measure, are, next to mothers and
helpless infants, the greatest sufferers by it—being in most
cases left without any remedy at all. That abortion, child-
murder, and desertion, are among its consequences, now
admits of no doubt."

The above is from the Morning Herald : we give the
passage, because it is a summary of all that has been
said against the clauses in the Poor Law Amendment
Act concerning illegitimate children, and we are pre-
pared with, what we trust will be considered by all our
readers, a most satisfactory reply. All that our contem-
porary states in the above extract is false, and we are in
a condition to prove it false. We are aware that upon
this subject we have the feelings of many kind hearts
against us ; but we request their attention for a few
moments only, that we may explain the error of prevailing
opinions, and show that so far from the bastardy-clauses of
the New Poor Laws having a tendency to cause infanticide,
and the rest of the horrors pictured by the Herald, they
are calculated to check the increase of illegitimacy, while
at the same time the pauper mother and the pauper child
are much better treated, in a moral sense, than they were
under the old system.
Is prostitution a thing to be encouraged ? Is immorality
in such repute, that the increase of illegitimate children is
become the popular wish ? Is there such a love of depra-
vity among the rate-payers, and the rest of society, that so
far from their considering the prostitute who burthens the
parish with illegitimate children to be deserving of punish.
ment, they would give her a premium—a reward for every
fresh burthen she puts upon their shoulders ? Modest
readers will be horrified at the bare supposition of the en-
couragement of vice and immorality, but it is themselves
that encourage them ! It is themselves that have sanctioned
the increase of crime, by their outcries against the original
bastardy-clauses of the Poor Law Amendment Act, wich
they contrived to maim in the progress of that Act through
the Legislature ! The Herald affirms that " abortion, child-
murder, and desertion" are among the consequences of the
Amendment Act. We challenge our contemporary to the
proof. We defy him to establish what he has so roundly
asserted. We accuse him of a wilful and deliberate false-
hood, and entreat our readers not to be misled by the re-
presentations of a mere man of words.
Were there no cases of infanticide before the passing of
the Amendment Act ? Was child-murder a thing un-
unknown ? Was desertion what the world had never
heard of before the Legislature passed an act for the relief
of the rate-payers, who were almost eaten out of house ard
home by the illegitimate offspring of wanton women ? God
forbid that we should shut the parish-doors against the
helpless one in the hour of her need ! The Poor Law
Amendment Act advises no such thing : we should hate
it if it did. No ; it provides these unhappy ones, and the
less virtuous, with a home and every necessary attendance ;
but it does not offer a premium to vice ; it does not com-
pel the parish to give a woman a reward for every ille-
gitimate child she pleases to produce.
Mr. Leslie's admirable pamphlet (which has been the
subject of some previous commentaries of ours) furnishes
all the evidence that can be required to prove the utter
groundlessness of the allegations of the Herald and the
Herald's followers. The good people who objected to the
bastardy-clauses as originally proposed, and who also object
to them in their present form, commiserate the unfortu-
nate woman who has been betrayed and seduced, and are
desirous of punishing the seducer. But, as Mr. Leslie
justly states, " this was not the question before the legis-
ture. The real question was—How can the Legislature
best preserve the virtue and integrity of female character
in the poor of England ?" The sympathy of those who
object tb the Amendment Act has no reference to the
virtue of the female 4 they put its preservation entirely out
of the question, and allowing her to be victimized without
one effort to save her, would overpower her with humanity-
when the evil is done, and " the purity of the female cha-
racter is lost."

Now, this we take to be a virtueless method of preserving
female virtue, and we trust that the preservation of female
virtue is the desideratum of the good people (fathers and
mothers of children many of them are) that are misled by
the false representations of the Herald, and other more in-
terested parties. Preserve the virtue of your children, say
we, by setting before them the deformity and the painful
consequences of vice.

" What has been the practice under the bastardy laws," asks
Mr. Leslie, "and what have been the consequences? The
parishes, eager to indemnify themselves, have almost invariably
appealed to the justices: who thereupon have made an order
for so much to be paid weekly by the reputed father, which the
parish officers, whether they obtained the money from the re-
puted father or not, paid over to the female; and this process
of indemnifying the parish, as it was called, has plundered the
honest and industrious rate-payers to an incredible extent, and
which none but those who have been behind the scenes and
closely investigated the working of such a plan can form any
conception of. If this were the only evil of the law and prac-
tice, it were bad enough ; but the consequences are much
worse than any pecuniary loss, for the result has been, that it
has established in all the 15,000 parishes in England and
Wales A PUBLIC FUND, receivable through the overseers of the
poor, FOR TILE DIRECT ENCOURAGEMENT OF PROSTITUTION, PRO-
FLIGACY, AND PERJURY."

Thousands, we may say, of profligate women were en-
couraged in their course of life by the certainty which they
had of receiving parish-pay for their illegitimate offspring.
It mattered not to them who the fathers were, the parish
was the paying parent, and it being necessary to swear to one
man, in many instances the poorest one in the parish has been
fixed upon. We might ask the amount of perjury in the
neighbourhood of our Universities. It was to remedy this
evil that the bastardy-clauses of the Amendment Act
were conceived. The cases of accidental error do not
constitute a hundredth part of the whole, and it is to the
evil in the mass that public attention ought to be directed ;
from that opinions should be formed, and not from solitary
cases.

The Herald says that this new law promotes infanti-
cide. "We think," says Mr. Leslie, " the last reflection
will prove that the cause of infanticide does not originate
in a dread of not being able to support the infant, but
that it arises from a desire to prevent the exposure and
loss of character which a discovery of the mother's conduct
would insure."

In reply to the allegation of cruelty, we feel persuaded
that we need only set before our readers an example from
the plan adopted by Mr. Leslie's parish (St. George, Ha-
nover-square). " A pregnant single woman presents her-
self to the parochial authorities : she states that she has been
betrayed under false promises, and that in consequence of
her loss of character all her friends shun her, and she is in
circumstances of destitution. Taking the applicant's state-
ment as true, she is told—we will receive you into the work-
house, you will be immediately provided with such
work as your present condition will allow you to per-
form ; you shall be furnished with every necessary me-
dical and other attendance • you will there also receive
the daily consolations which religious instruction can
afford you : that as you are the proper source of
nurture for the infant you are about to bring into the
world, you must remain in the workhouse to suckle your
child ; and that, as you recover from your confinement, you
will gradually be set to work for the two-fold purpose of
assisting to pay the expense the rate-payers will be put to,
in supporting yourself and child, and to prepare you,Avhen
you quit the workhouse, to commence a course of beneficial
occupation to maintain yourself and child. In opposition
to the cry of cruelty to the poor, we submit that in this
plan there is everything which the most humane can desire
—a shelter is given to the outcast from society ; protection
afforded to her in the hour of Nature's sorrow—and the
daily advantage of religious instruction by a conscientious
Minister of the Gospel, at a season when the mind is
eleven
deeply susceptible of consolation and instruction. But
there is no pecuniary temptation ofered to the woman as
example to others to imitate her conduct." Where,
an
where, we ask, is the cruelty of this plan ? Where is the
father of a family that will not admit its justness—its hu-
manity ? And now let us see the consequences. The
commencedereonin
Mount
-street at
w
• de women, and eight others with their infants ;
pregnant sin,„
also, 267 receivingthe average, weekly, 2s.
upon
.. 6d, each,
the most of whom had been plhainchwtaism
time
n delivered in the work-house
theress,
of Mount Street—and—after their confinement—were
discharged from the workhouse, and placed upon the
out-door pay list. At Lady Day, 1835, there were but
two pregnant single women in the workhouse, and when
Mr. Leslie's pamphlet was written (4th August 1835) there
was not one pregnant single woman chargeable either in or
out of the workhouse to the ratfrpayers. And since Lady