The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-29 00:00:00

mons—shall go to South Kensington ! As matters
are at present the TURNER Gallery—a gallery per-
fectly unique in itself, and the value of which is
beyond the reach of all computation—is perversely
subjected to two perils. Being lighted up at night
by gas it is continually liable to destruction by fire.
Being retained down at Bronapton—apart from the
National Gallery, of which it was to have been an
integral portion according to the legal significance
of Mr. TURNER'S last will and testament—it is
liable, at the close of the stipulated period, to be for-
feited by the Nation. And all this for the sake of
that most preposterous Folly of the Boilers, Let
the House of Commons look to it.

Administration of charity, even when voluntary,
is always surrounded with difficulties, and those
difficu'lties are doubled when the charity is compul-
sory. The problem, which every day brings before
us, of giving only to the deserving, and of detecting
impostors, brings with it, in the case of legal
charity, the other problem, how to find the fair
contributories to the charitable fund, and how to
make them pay to it in the just proportions. The
first problem was the one attempted to be solved
by the great Whig reform of the poor laws. The
pauper poor had got the upper hand of the farmers,
the magistracy, and of every one, and a stringent
union and workhouse system was deemed necessary
to cure the evil; and, not however without a great
deal of unmerited suffering, it has done it to a large
extent. The latter problem is the one whose solu-
tion is now most important. It is acknowledged on
all hands that the distribution of the charge for
the relief of the poor is anything but fair and equal.
It is generally assumed that these who have had
the benefit of a man's labours, when in health and
vigour, ought to bear the cost of his necessary sup-
port in sickness and decrepitude. Mere co-residence
in a locality gives a neighbourly claim, but to have
had for long the benefit of a man's services gives a
claim, the equity of which no man dares deny. The
provision continually made for old servants in wills,
sufficiently indicates the common moral sentiments
on this point. Mr. VILLIERS' Bill is designed to
assimilate as closely as possible the legal
rating to the poor, and the place in which
they can claim relief, to this universal
sentiment. Such attempts have been made before.
Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Bill limited the power of
parishes to send away a pauper to " his parish,"
by making five years' residence sufficient to give the
man a claim for relief where his health or his work
failed him. Previously there was no end of litiga-
tion between parishes respecting a poor pauper, and
cruel expedients were resorted to, to prevent the man
becoming chargeable to the parish. Manufacturing
:owns when a time of pressure came, sent back to
:he country parishes, by hundreds, the men who

had done their unskilled work in better times, and

even many of their skilled hands too. The five years'
limitation was therefore a great step towards equity ;
and is, we believe, acknowledged, now, to be fair

even by those who at first opposed it. They

will in a short time equally accommodate
their opinions to three years, if, as we hope will be

the case, Mr. VILLIERS carries this clause of his b

But he has another clause which the country
gentlemen, or some of them, do not seem to like so
well. A clause which is substantially for Union
Rating. But these gentlemen must take care.
If they willingly accept clauses which enable them
to relieve their estates in three years instead of
five, from liability for a pauper's relief, but at the
same time oppose a clause which assesses them to
the poor rates in proportion to the labour they
must employ, this will at least look very suspi-
cious. The present system favours a most un-
worthy class of landlords. It makes the liability
of a parish to the rate for relief of the
irremoveable poor, dependent on the average
relief which has been given to the poor
in that parish during three years. Now, it is
notorious, indeed flagrant instances of it are within
our personal knowledge, that landlords have
diminished the rates in their parishes by allowing
cottages to go to decay, and even by pulling them
down ; they have thus driven the labourers to
reside in a neighbouring parish, a town, if one
were near, and to travel backward and forward
to their work further than they would allow their
farm horses to do, that they might get the parish
cultivated by labourers for whose support they
should not be responsible in sickness or old age.
The daily cruelty to the poor workmen, of adding
a walk of six or eight miles to their daily toil, and
the unfairness to other parishes, had no weight
with landlords, whose only care was to free their
own estates from Poor Rates.
The plan of Union rating would almost anni-
hilate this far too common practice. Mr. VILLIERS
proposes that the contribution of each parish shall
be in proportion to the rateable value of its pro-
perty. Now, it is certain that, with most insig-
nificant exceptions, the amount of toil and labour
of the workman in a parish is in proportion to its
rated property. Deviation from this must be the
exception ; and, happily, where it is the exception,
the value of the property is proof that no hardship
can be felt. It is certainly one of those exceptions
which prove the rule. The objections which
lie against county, and still more against
national rating, do no not hold against
Union Rating. In the former case it is but too

certain that the administrato►s of a national fund

would dip into it with too little care, perhaps might
come in time to rival the dockyards themselves.
Those who expend the rates need, doubtless, the
check of liability to feel the consequences of their
own extravagance. Of course this is felt most in
proportion to the smallness of the area of manage-
ment. A parish feels the consequences of local
extravagance more than a Union would, and a
Union more than a county. The question is, will
a Union feel it sufficiently to insure care ? We
think it will. It seems to be just about the
limit within which lavish poor-law expendi-
ture would be felt by the guardians, and
beyond which the reaction of their own acts would
tend to become a " vanishing quantity." As at
present advised, therefore, we lean strongly to both
the proposals of Mr. VILLIERS. We do not know
that we much object, with Sir G. C. LEWIS, to
abolish the law of settlement altogether, and expect
it will come to that. It is the right theory at
leait, for it creates perfect free-trade in labour. So
again is national rating. The poor of the nation
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would be charitable enough at others' expense, so
men who would be otherwise careful administrators
would lose the inducement to be so if it made no
difference to them, and if spendthrift colleagues
would neutralise all the effects of their care.

MISS MARY PROVOST.—Mr. Harris, the spirited
lessee of the Princess's Theatre, ever on the alert to in-
troduce fresh talent to his patrons, has entered into an en •
gagement with Miss Mary Provost, who will make her first
appearance on Tuesday, July 9th, as Rosalind, in "
As
.You Like It," Mr. Phelps playing Jaques on the occasion,
—Era.
The serious charge of fraud preferred against
Mr. Francis Atkin was tried at the Manchester city ses
m-
ons yesterday, and, after an investigation which occupied
about Biz hours, the jury acquitted the prisoner.