What has been done? Surely the two bodies have not each issued the same regulations to paupers and prisoners. If this be so, the matter cannot rest. And that it must be so, is obvious from a mere inspection of the means which the workhouse master and the jailer have at their disposal. It is not an oversight or an abuse. The data being given, the consequences are inevitable. Each conclave has separately arrived at nearly the same conclusion. In one case a prison and a prisoner, and a brief period of incarceration is given, with the condition, that his punishment shall not be so severe as that of the criminal deeply dyed in crime; and yet his circumstances shall be less desirable than those of the independent labourer. In the other case, a pauper and a Union-house is given; and if the condition of the problem be, that the pauper's situation shall be less disagreeable than that of the independent labourer, the solution becomes impossible; and, if this latter condition be left out or forgotten, the result is, that the prisoner and the pauper are in the same position. This mode of treating the matter has been preferred to that of comparing dietaries and labour-tables, and to quoting from evidence showing the indifference with which the prison and the workhouse are regarded by the lower class of paupers. Our object has been to show that the strict workhouse system leads necessarily to these evils.
It is argued, on the other side, that pauperism has diminished in those Unions where the "prohibitory order" has been issued; and, in proof thereof, we are referred to reports and tables showing diminished expenditure. A family, with a judicious out-door management, would be able to subsist with the occasional assistance of two, three, or four shillings' worth of food weekly. The cost of the family in the house would be about 18s. weekly; and yet the expenditure in the rural Union, where the "prohibitory order" is in force, has been reduced. No especial reference can now be made to the amount of unrelieved suffering which this fact discloses. Those who decline the order cannot now be followed to their homes; nor can another incident of this system be dwelt upon--its tendency to reduce the standard of wages. The employer is likely to get labour cheap, when he has a number of unemployed labourers to choose from, who have just preferred to "live on" in a half-starved condition, rather than submit to a system of prison discipline. To return to the allegation, that pauperism has been diminished in those Unions where the order is in operation. The reply is--that the statistics do not touch the question. They ought to be thrown aside as useless, until the condition of those who have refused to enter the Union walls has been ascertained. Have their numbers become thinned by the ravages of the fever, which their "houseless heads and unfed sides" have unfitted them to resist? Have they been unable to pay their pittance of rent; and is the cottage, which was once theirs, now falling to decay? Have estates thus been thinned without the formality and notoriety of a warrant? Have the able-bodied left the Union, and become wanderers, seeking for an understocked labour-market; and, finding it not, are they becoming, through common lodging-house associations, half labourers, half vagrants--labouring to-day, begging to-morrow, and stealing the next? Is the inclination to wander growing into a passion? Are habits of strolling being formed? Is he gradually deteriorating to the half-savage state? Is this so? A great national question is involved. The French government know, by experience, the importance of a true knowledge of "Les Classes Dangereuses."