The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-02 00:00:00

In the case of idiotcy or insanity referred to by the Hon.
and Learned Member fer Penrbyn, there could be nothing
like collusion.—( Hear, hear.) He protested against the
system of compelling a married woman to go into the
workhouse. He hoped his Noble Friend would con-
sult the feelings of the majority of the House—of those
who were anxious to see the best principles of the Poor-
law Bill carried out, and not press the clause at present.
Sir H. VERNEY would not vote against the clause,
but he should certainly concur in the recommendation to
postpone it. He had bad some experience in the working
of the Poor-laws, and he believed that they could not com-
pel the wives of sailors to go into the workhouse.— (Hear.)
Mr. AINSWORTH would vote for a discretionary
powcr being placed in the hands of the guardians as to
whether the woman was entitled to relief or not. If they
thought the case was one in which she should go into the
workhouse, they ought to have the power to compel her
to do so.
Mr. WAKLEY had moved the expulsion of the clause,
and ample grounds had been given for it. Gentlemen of
the highest professional acquirements had spoken upon
the clause, and had!given the most opposite opinions upon it.
Mr. FIE LDE N opposed the clause.
Lord J. RUSSELL said that there appeared to be a
very general feeling against the clause as it at present
stood, but at the same time before he stated what he pro-
posed t,, do he would remind the Committee of the hard-
ship of the law as it existed, and he hoped they would bear
in mind the principle, that while they were extending
relit fto one class of persons from a not very overflowing
tt Query, they were imposing burdens upon another class.
At present a man who was receiving very high wages at
sea, and who had a certain sum paid monthly to his wife fs r
her support, the wife of that man might apply for relief for
her children, and they might either receive out-door reief
or he taken into the workhouse. Again—if a man was
at work at a distance, upon a railway, and transmitted to
his wife enough of money to support her, that woman might
apply for and obtain relief for her children. —( Hear, hear,
hear.) But with regard to a man in the immediate
neighbourhood of his wife and famsly, the answer to any
application for relief was to be, " You cannot get it unless
you come into the workhouse." So 'gain with regard to
a widow, the Commissioners might say, "Although you
are destitute and have not the means of relict, we will
give you none unless you come into the workhouse." If
that were the case at present, was it not some hardship
to say that the law was to be changed, and that an
advantage was to be given to the woman whose
husband was at sea or at a distance, over the
hard-working man who was nearer home. He
thought it desirable that some amendment should be
made in the law in that respect.—( Hear, bear.) After
what had been stated by his Hon. and Learned Friend,
the Solicitor-Genera!, as to the effects of particular parts
of the clause, he certainly should not pres► the Committee I
to adopt it as it at present stood. He should therefore a=k
the Committee to postpone it for the present, and bring it
forward on a future occasion, because he felt the law could
not remain as it at present stood.
Lord GRANVILLE SOMERSET hoped the Noble
Lord would go a step further, and withdraw the clause
altogether, and it would be in his power to draw up an
amended clause at a future stage.
Lord J. RUSSELL had no objection to the proposi-
tion of the Noble Lord.—( Cries of " Hear, hear.")
The clause was then struck out.
Clause 20 was agreed to without observation.
On clause 21 being read,
Mr. GRIMSDITCH objected to the clause as giving
too much power to the Commisssoners to interfere with
and supersede at their pleasure the laws of the land.
Mr. WAKLEY asked whether the Act 7th of George
the Third was to be considered as repealed by this clause,
or was it to be left to the Commissioners to set aside Acts
of Parliament, or allow them to have force just as they
pleased.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL said that the object of
the clause was not to set aside the Act of George
the Third, which it recited, but to prevent the
inconvenience of two classes of persons exercising
the same powers given to the Commissioners by
this clause, and which other persons might attempt to
assume under the 7th Geo. 111., if not restricted by this
clause. He hoped if the amendments were not adopted,
the clause would be postponed.
Colonel SIBTHORP objected to the clause, and
thought that as so many clauses were objectionable, and
so many had already been struck out, the best and shortest
way would be to strike out the Bill altogether.
After a few words from Mr. SLANE Y and Mr.
G 0 ULBURN, the clause was agreed to.
On the reading of the 22d clause, which relates to the
cost of building workhouses,
Mr. THOMAS DUNCOMBE moved an amendment

:o the effect that the cost should not be incurred without

the consent of the rate-payers. The clause, as it stood,
would give the board of guardians, who were under the
complete control of the Poor-law Commissioners, the power
to tax the rate-payers without the consent of the latter,
and to any extent they pleased. In some of the metro-
politan parishes, there were, in fact, two sets of guardians
acting in opposition to one another—one being elected
under the Poor-law, and the other under a local Act. How
was this clause to be carried into effect in these parishes ?
The Bill, instead of producing uniformity would produce
confusion.

Mr. F. MAULE said that it was to produce unifor-
mity in the metropolitan districts the clause had been in-
troduced.

Mr, WAK LE Y supported the amendment. He said
the object of this clause was to do away with the local
Acts in the metropolitan parishes, and to bring them under
the complete control of the Commissioners. If the Noble
Lord would not consent to postpone flat, clause, he must
appeal to the Right Hon. Baronet opposite ( Sir R. Peel)
to come forward, as on a former occasion, with his mag-
nanimous support.—( Hear.) It was so painful to him to
appeal, night after night, in vain to those who called them-
selves the friends of the people, that he could not speak
always in such dulcet tones as the Noble Lord could corn-
mand—( Laughter)—but could scarcely speak with tem-
per. —( Hear. )
Sir R. PEEL did not know whether the Hon :Gen-

. . ...... ..„..
.—...-
tleman's appeal to him was a joke or not.—( A "'ugh.)
1
But he thought the clause very reasonable.—( Hear, hear.)
At preseot the guardians had the power to build, repair,
and enlarge workhouses, and the only extension of their
poseur now proposed was that they should be ab!e to select
and purchase a site.—( Herr, hear.)
Mr. HAVES considered the clause an excellent and
humane one.—(ilear.) Its only object was to enable the
guardians to provide better accommodation for those who
had the misfortune to be obliged to take refuge in the
workhouse.—( Hear.) lie held in his hand a return of the
state of Bethnal-green workhouse, under the old system.
There were there, at one time, 170 boys in twenty-four
beds—( Hear, hear, hear)—and 123 girls in twenty-one
beds. The same number of persons had now in that
union 164 beds.—(Hear, hear, hear.) In t'se old and
vicioss st stsm there were many interests bound up toge-
ther, which the improvement had destroyed.—( Hear.)
And hence all the discontent and clamour. But the ob-
ject and the effect of the new system was to benefit the
poor themselves, and to diminish pauperism. lie sup-
ported the clause.
Mr. T. DLTNCOMBE considered this Bill as much a
Tory as a Whig Bi!l. It appeared to him to be a speci-
ous compound of philosophical Whigery.—( Hear, hear.)
He thought the Hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hawes) must have
derived his statement from Somerset House, and the gen.
tlemen there were not remarkable for the candour of their
statements. If the Hon. Gentleman had said bedsteads
instead of beds he would probably have been more cor-
rect, for under the old system many of the beds were
made on the floor, and were as he (Mr. Duncombe) un-
derstood, much mere comfortable than the others.—
( Laughter.) After what the Right Hon. Baronet (Sir
R. Peel) had stated, a division was necessary. If the
clause was not postponed, he should move the insertion
after the words "metropolitan districts," of the words
" with the consent of the rate-payers in vestry assembled."
M-. HAWES said that he had not received his infor-
mation from Somerset House, as his Hon. Friend had
stated, but from a professional gentleman of the highest
character, and whose testimony was of undoubted autho-
rity.—( Hear, hear.)
Mr. GROTE said the Hon. Member for Finsbury, al-
though in the habit of indulging in vituperation against
the Poor-law Commissioners, should not impute to them
acts which they had never done, for the manifestation of
his spleen. The Hon. Gentleman had dwelt upon these
topic nsque ad nauseam. At one time the Hon. Gentle.
man used as an argument the confidence which the House
might place in the guardians, but now, when there was a
clause in which the words " Poor-I,w Commissioners" did
not appear, the Hon. Member for Finsbury told them that
If no more confidence was to be placed in the guardians
than in the Poor-law Commissioners, and that no confi-
dence could be placed in any body but a vestry of rate-
ps2a..slt•teebrnies,.......tdhiusi.,s carrying them back to ail the evils of the old
11.seeaci to a
a, hear.)se,,t He
toe a
nt trusted sst en%
proposition.
the
question of local Acts was really not involved in the
present discussion, whatever e
l determinationde the House
might cpoemnneittoinwteitihferreengeae withrdto the degree
Acts
ecint which they
no necessity to introduce any such words
as, t
thleereHwoans.
Gentleman proposed. There were, to his own knowledge,
in many London parishes
el
:mse goodwere andrel n
iroomyted in workhousesi
The powers in this
deficient power of the guardians, especially in n
parishes, where the site of ground was so dear. He would
also make one remark on the observation in the speech of
the Hon. Gentleman with regard to this clause, namely,
that the Poor-law Amendment Act and the authority f
the Commissioners was becoming. more andnsatymhatohtreawthutichnh-e
Heneiatr,whaesarlr_st
popular. He did not know if thia were the case in the
Gentlemanesentedr represented, ews ear; t eadh,l butable
tn i
hdeist(riNcltrt.hGe rHotoen). repr
,11 which
a m existedost
eangtaiirneslyt
subsided
-1
wards the law and the Commissioners
statedhe thinlia d
withthe
ailinnotdsrtoitdlhiutayct thereintroduced,
was a friendly and wioeulledrsispinoseadil letahneintghrteoe.
honour to represent. —( Hear, he. r.) unions comprising the constihtueerncc
undoubtedly a decided opinion
first proposed, there was
the greater pleasure, because, in 1834, when the 1311. was
wHheich
i
ageiast it ; and having, as he did, taken a decided part in
its suppo7t, although he felt great pain in taking such a
•had
now eg rinst the feelings of his own constituency t wash da
great satisfaction to him to state that that feeling
now almost entirely subsided, and that the law in this dis-
trict was regarded favourably by the great body of the
rate-payers.
Sir R. PEEL observed that the latter part of the
clause referred simply to the sites cif workhouses. If the
amendment were carried the guardians, although they
would have the power to increase the workhouses, would
not have the poser to raise the ;sums necessary for the
parporie without the consent of the rate-payers, than which
nothing could be more absurd.
Dr. LUSHINGTON said that no truth could be more
undoubted than that no greater efforts could be made
than were made in the district which the lion. Gentle-
man represented to relieve the sufferings of the poor,
and to supply them with a good education. The amend-
ment proposed by the Hon. Member for Finsbury would
be quite impracticable, for in the parish of Shoreditch
60,000 rate-payers, and in the parish of St. George's-
in.the. East 40,000 rate-payers would have to be consulted t