The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-04-09 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL 9, 1844.

The power, which centres in the three " kings of
the poor" at Somerset House, approaches its ob-
jects with a stealthy tread. For years past it has
been aiming, unseen, at an unchallenged supremacy
over the poor of the empire, and a sole administra-
tion of the millions annually levied for their mainte-
nance. Repressed by the legislature from direct in-
terference with those parishes which possess local
acts for the regulation of their poor, (of which Liver-
pool is one), they have gradually broken through all
restraints, until any legal exemption from their au-
thority has become almost a mockery.
But such indirect wielding of authority does not
appear to satisfy this triumvirate. It is not suffi-
cient for them to lord it unrestrained over the rural
parishes of England. They seek now even more
extensive rule. They seek direct authority to con-
trol the doings of vestries and parish boards,
hitherto only indirectly subject to them—to unionise,
to centralise, to classify, and to render still more
shadowy the little of local authority which their
past encroachments have left ; and a Conservative
government abets them in their endeavolirs to pro-
cure these new powers, by clauses in what they
have facetiously denominated their "Amended Poor-
law Bill."

We have already canvassed some of the proposed
enactments of that bill, and, in particular, expressed
our detestation of the clauses relating to bastardy,
which are characterised by little less than heartless
mockery towards erring womanhood, accompanied
by preposterous unfairness as regards particular
parishes. We shall now, therefore, confine our-
selves to those parts of the bill which affect places
having local acts for the regulation of their poor.
By the 17th clause of the bill it was evidently in-
tended—although Sir James Graham escapes under
the plea of obscure wording—to procure, in all pa-
rishes, including those having local acts, differently
constituted boards of guardians, by a division of
such parishes into districts, and by making the office
of chairman in all cases elective. This clause, how-
ever, with the 56th, which compels meetings of
boards of guardians and vestries to be held at least
once a fortnight, has been promised, at the urgent
remonstrance of deputations from the metropolitan
parishes, to be modified so as not to include those
places tving local acts. By the 28th clause it is
proposed to give power to the Poor-law Commis-
sioners to unite parishes, whether under local acts
or not, into audit districts; and its effect will in all
probability be to drag the authorities of such pa-
rishes as that of Liverpool, with their accounts, to
whatever central locality, 20 or 30 miles distant,
may be chosen by a Somerset House official in
which to set up his court of audit.
The most objectionable clauses, however, are
those which confer power upon the commissioners
to establish district schools for pauper children, who
are to be removed, say 20 or 30 miles from their own
parishes and friends, to some central educational
establishment; and to erect district asylums for the
reception of vagrant poor, in lieu of affording them
casual relief. Now we put it to our readers, what
must be the effect of the carrying out of these two
clauses. We are already erecting, At a great outlay
of money, schools for our own pauper children.
Will these buildings be permitted to be devoted to
their original purpose, or shall we be allowed only one
of these two alternatives, viz. to contribute to the
expense of some huge erection, on Chat Moss, or on
some equally lively locality, to which our poor chil-
dren are to be drafted from the neighbourhood of
their homes, or to enlarge our existing building
for the reception of the pauper children of some
forty or fifty additional parishes ? Would either of
these alternatives be gratifying—he any other than
most revolting to the ratepayers of Liverpool ?
They would not.
But even worse than this, so far as Liverpool is
concerned, would be the operation of the clause re-
lating to the erection of district asylums. We have
in this town, from its position as the inlet of the
masses of Irish labour to the agricultural and ma-
nufacturing districts of the north of England, a
greater amount of casual pauperism—of vagrant
pauperism than any town in Great Britain.
At a large expense, certainly, we have hitherto
dealt with that pauperism, in the old-fashioned
way pointed out by the old and humane law
of our forefathers ; but if we are to have our
present system wholly subverted, and in the place of
administering casual assistance to enable poor wan-
derers to reach their homes or a market for their
labour, we are to erect, at a vast outlay of money, a
building huge enough to enable us to apply to them
the favourite test of the Poor-law Commissioners—
the workhouse test—we venture to predict that the
ratepayers of Liverpool will find ample reason, in
the increased drain upon their resources which will
be required, to pray for a relief from that unconsti-
tutional power which thus roughrides them at its
pleasure, and to feel anything but gratitude to that
Conservative government which evinces such won-
derful alacrity in working out its inhuman and op-
pressive suggestions.

May we call the earnest attention of the Select
Vestry and of the parishioners of Liverpool to this
" Amended Poor-law Bill," which proposes to visit
so severely the interests of this parish ? A host of
cit ciAlustances have recently occurred to shew the
extent to which the central authority of Somerset
House has fastened its influence—its dictation—

upon our town ; have all but rendered nugatory the
possession of a local act for the governance of our
poor, and taken from us all save the mere shadow
of control over our parish funds. It is time that
we should be up and stirring in self-protection—
that we sho Id oppose a resolute resistance to those