The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-08-25 00:00:00

st,—Owing to a conspiracy among the nightmen, it
cost impossible to get the soil removed from the

ind poisoning the air in every
and will ere long mach the hearth of
ess of the atmosphere favours
thy masses, and each case of
s its quota of con

ivies—this is overflow
rt of the town,
le rich man. The clo
e putrefaction of the

gious exhalation to
fficient to generate disease. Then

At has a'

.ready been

the meat rots in the house, the vegetables decay,—partly
from the heat, partly from poisoned air,—the water in the
little tob in the poor man's cellar kitchen gets putrid in
twenty-four hours ; and here again the circle of repro-
dttetion of disease is again formed. _ _

I have just had an interview with the Town-clerk, who
s kindly promised that he will immediately attend to
y suggestions, and see if anything can be done to remedy

frightful state of things

ird should be posted inviting parties to
ties, who would AT ONCE cause
)ved. I also suggested that the
applied to, to furnish water
It parts of the town during

k the liberty of sug-

Besting that a p 1
apply to the local whorl
such nuisances to be remc

,er companie

)ce, if not twice, daily to
ie prevalence of the " plague'
Should the municipal body,

_ the advice of their
cb immediate steps, they will
e gratitude of the poor—aye,
if they had each subscribed
local " to the Infirmary, the Dia-

Town-clerk, tak

ye more truly de

h too—t

ies, or the Orphan Asylum

ude, in h

ste, yours, &c.,
H. G. HARBORD
(reef, Monday Afternoon.

Upper Parliament-,

e most infamous engine of oppression of the

poor ever erected in a christ'an lan-d is at length
tottering to its fall. The new Poor Law Commis-
sion is doomed. Many of its enormities have been

laid before our readers, but worse than all there is
rebellion raging within its own bowels. Assistant-

Commissioners and Secretaries are peaching against
each other ; and there is a proverb which assures
ie that, when a certain class of people fall out honest
men get their own. Another session of Parliament
will, in all probability, see the Augean stable of
omerset House cleared out ; and its dietaries,
pondence, minutes of pro-
dings, returns, reports and other formal rubbish,
igned to the nearest trunladakers or marine

rders, epistc

A strange feature of the eclaircissenzent made by
the report of the Select Committee appointed to
enquire into the Andover Union affair is the fact,
that what all the world imagined to be a system
unerring in regularity, with checks of all imaginable
sorts, with no possibility of error or malpractice in
working, turns out to be no system at all. The
we understood, were a trio,—a
edings each member had a

Commissioners
Boar'l

P—in whose proc,

voice, and none an independent jurisdiction. We
have been accustomed to imagine them sitting in
conclave, contributing to a common stock their se-
veral experiences of the capacity of pauper stomachs
d vigor to pauper
thic amount of diet ; deter-

give adequate sustenanc

able a man to break a hunt

I weight of stones ;

and how many would turn him into a refractory
subject—drive him to knock down a governor or
throw his gruel in the face of a nurse. We have
supposed that a secretary sate daily at the foot of
the Board-room table, recording the proceedings,
signing authoritatively the missives despatched to
Boards of Guardians or Governors of Unions. We
are now awakened, however, from our romantic
dreams. All the excessive regularity is a fiction.
A Board is merely an individual usurping the func-
tions of three. A trio is three individuals with inde-
pendent action. A Secretary is a person of so dan-
gerous a character that he is not permitted even to
be present at. the meetings whose proceedings he is
supposed to record. The whole fabric of the three
kings of Somerset House, with their laws like those
of the Medes and Persians, their unalterable dieta-
ries. their resolute rejection of the principle of out-

or rel.

Yet we have paid tolerably well for this trouble-
some fiction in the calamities of those submitted to
its irresponsible inflictions. Many a heart these
have lacerated. We know now, however, the object
of this combination ; and that object bears most
importantly upon the policy recently adopted by the
Government of this country. In the report of the
Select Committee, we find it stated that—
" The bad administeati,,n of the Andover workhouse,
and the rigour with which the board of guardians, gene-
rally acting in accordance with the frequently published
views of the Poor Law Con mis,ioners, have carried out
the law, have often been the means of inducing labourers
to accept reduced w-ges in order to avoid the workhouse."
We have, in common with most opponents of the
Poor Law, stated all along that its principle was to
reduce the lower classes to a lower standard of
wages. Practically we say to the unfortunates, who
apply to our Boards of Guardians fir temporary
relief, in cases of sickness, stagn :don of trade or
,
other emergencies,—" We can support you in the
workhouse for so much. Choose between our die-
tarfand the acceptance of such wages as we offer

you." Free trade enables us to reduce the cost of
supporting an adllt from half-a-crown a week to
eighteen pence. If there is anything, therefore, in
the principle of the new Poor Law, as laid down
above, any reduction in the price of food must be
followed by a reduction in the money price of wages.
They will at pres nt accept this reduced price "in
order to avoid the Workhouse" ; and when Work-
house keep is cheapened the alternative offered will
be proportionately reduced. There is no escape from
this conclusion. It is inevitable.

We are not, however, about to dwell upon this
point, as proved by the Select Committee's report.
The bearing of the whole document is a theme
from which we cannot afford to wander. It is now
palpably before the world that the system, through-
out, is one of tyranny and collusion. The irre-
sponsible Commissioner crushes at will all beneath
him, from the Assistant Commissioner and Secre-
tary downwards to the pauper. He holds in his
hands the power of summarily dismissing every
official whose conduct squares not with the new
Poor Law standard of justice. Mr. Assistant Com-
missioner Parker, in his conduct of the Andover
inquiry, betrayed that fact. He was not disposed
to throw the shield of office over the delinquencies
of a peccant governor. He allowed the light to find
its way into the secrets of the workhouse prison,
and was cashiered for his indiscretion. Mr. Day,
Mr. Jenkin Jones, Mr. Mott, and Mr. Coode were
condemned to a similar fate. They offended not by
sinning against the inflexible system of Somerset
House, but by sinning clumsily. Mott was too
clever ; and placed a Home Secretary under an
obligation by a timely report, which assisted him in
crushing a troublesome political opponent; and
having done so, and bungled it, was no longer
useful. Mr. Day was simply too honest—the worst
possible fault in an Assistant Poor-law Commis-
sioner; and the Secretary, Mr. Chadwick, was
" dangerous" for the same reason, added to the
fact of lals being the only man connected with the
commission whose sincerity could not be called in
question.

- What is the conclusion to which we are impelled
by these awkward disclosures ? Are we to white-
wash the Commissioners, or simply to discharge
them ? We incline to say, get rid of the commis-
sion itself. Wipe away the stain which is inflicted
upon the character of a Christian land by the exist-
ence in it of a system confessedly designed to op-
press its unfortunate poor. Let us hear no more
of workhouse tests, of bone-crushing, of dietaries,
even although, as the result, we are compelled to
pay fair wages to the working man, or to submit to
a trifling increase in our poor rates. We shall never
be entitled to call ourselves Christian people until
the whole fabric of iniquity is swept away.