The Sun.
London, England, 1842-11-08 00:00:00

THE NEW POOR-LAW.

A Report of the Poor-law Commissioners' opinion
on the subject of two orphan children, whose case has
excited public sympathy, and which is of importance,
as regards the future disposal of necessitous persons,
has been directed to the parish officers of St. Marga-
ret's and St. John's, Westminster, and to the Board
of Guardians of the West London Union. The case
which has called for the interference and condemna-
tion of the Commissioners is as follows :—About a
fortnight since a grocer, named Cook, residing in the
Vauxhall Bridge-road, found two boys, ten and
twelve years of' age, named Bastings, sitting on the step
of his door crying bitterly. They were without home or
shelter, and had come to ask assistance of their aunt,
a poor old woman, who occupied Cook's kitchen, and
who earned a pitiful subsistence by mangling. She
was unable to maintain herself, much less to relieve
the children, and, under these circumstances, Mr.
Cook took them to the parish of St. Margaret's,
where they refused to have anything to do with them,
and directed that they should be taken to the parish
of St. Bride's, Fleet-street, their f'ather and mother,
who died in December and January last, having
been in the employ of a gentleman in Bolt-court.
The children were taken there in the pouring
rain, when the relieving officer, who lived in Salis-
bury-court, Fleet-street, refused to do anything for
them, and they were again taken back to St. Marga-
ret's with a similar result, and again brought into the
city, where an officer at the station-house sent them
to the workhouse, in which they were received for the
night, but turned out in the morning. Three days were
occupied in taking the children from St. Margaret's to
St. Bride's and back, and they were paraded at the
Mansion-house, Guildhall, and Queen-square, at all of
which places they were commisserated ; but as the au-
thorities at either parish refused to relieve them, de-
claring that they would take the responsibility
of refusing, Cook was obliged, as a matter of feel-
ing, to provide for them, and he, accordingly, by the
recommendation of the Magistrates, took them lodg-
ings in King's Head-court, Shoe-lane. As a dernier
resort, he vs as advised to lay the case before the Poor-
law Commissioners, and, accordingly, made a written
statement of the facts. He was examined at some
length before the Assistant-Commissioner last Satur-
day, and the officers of St. Bride's and St. Margaret's
stated their reason for refusal, which amounted to
neither more nor less than that the children did not
belong to them, the one declaring that the other had
a better right to maintain them than the other. The
inquiry, after lasting four hours, then closed, Mr.
Cook being recommended to still keep the poor or-
phans until a decision was come to.
On Friday the Poor-law Commissioners made a
communication to Mr. Pontifex, Clerk to the Guar-
dians of the West London Union, in which they ex-
plain the real state of the law in regard to such cases
in the following words :—" The Commissioners desire
explicitly to state to the West London Board of Guar-
dians, that the Commissioners are aware of no valid
foundation in law for the opinion that a destitute person
is entitled to relief from the parish in which he sleptthe

night before, although he may be found destitute in
another parish. The real state of the law is, that a
destitute person is to be relieved in the parish in
which he is found destitute, and the question
of where he slept the night before is altogether imma-
terial. The fact of the boys having been improperly
refused relief in St. Margaret's, on the Tuesday
evening, could not affect the • obligation on the re-
lieving officer of the West London Union to give
them relief on the following day, if they were desti-
tute in any parish in the union, and if the boys apply
again, in a state of destitution, for admission into the
workhouse of St. Margaret's, or the West London
Union, relief should be given to them, either in the
palish of St. Margaret's, or the 'West London. Union,
accordingly as they happen to be destitute either in I
the one or the other."

LIT ERATURE.
SELF-DEVOTION. 3 Vuls.
ColGurn London, 1842.

• " The following volumes,"says the Editor,
Mr. Gleig, in his introductory notice, " came
before the public • under circumstances of so
striking and melancholy a nature, as will not, I
am sure,- fail to give to them a degree of interest
at once more powerful and more lasting than
their intrinsic merits might perhaps have other-
wiSe called flirt!). Not that on the latter score I
haveone word of apolozy to advance for them,
for they are every way worthy of the replication
of the authoress of the c Only Daughter.' It
has become my sad duty to announce that
Self-Devotion' is a posthumous work, ‘fritteni,
indeed, and printed off more than two years ago,
yet now standing forth as the last legacy of her
whose genius wove the web. For Harriette
Campbell has been removed, in the very
spring time of youth and beauty, from this
world to a better, without having been per-
mitted so much as to see, in their perfect
state, the results of some months of light, but
not, therefore, unlaborious exertion." Under
these circumstances, criticism is necessarily dis-
armed ; but, in truth " Self-Devotion" stands in
no need of the critic's indulgence, but may safely
rest on the broad basis of its own merits. It is
sweetly and feelingly written throughout, and
there is just enough ofmystery in the plot to keep
the reader's curiosity continually on the stretch.
The. heroine, Katherine Randolph, is a portrait
draWn with uncommon skill and delicacy; and
the scene at the Nun's Fountain, where Julian,
the twin-brother of Katherine, plights his, troth
to the young atitl susceptible Lady Ida, is scarcely
inferior to the memorable interview between
Lucy Ashton and the Master of Ravenswood,
which Sir Walter Scott describes with such em-
phasiS in the "Bride of Lammermuir."