If anybody supposes that two shillings a week is the maximum to each individual, he will be greatly mistaken.

Two shillings a head per week is the sum we endeavoured to arrive at as the average receipt of every man, woman, and child receiving assistance; consequently, a man and his wife with a family of three or four small children would receive, not two shillings, but ten or twelve shillings from the fund--an amount not far short of that which in prosperous times an honest and industrious labourer in other parts of the country would obtain for the maintenance of his family.

I am not in the least afraid that, if we had fixed the amount at four shillings or five shillings per head, such is the liberality of the country, we should not have had sufficient means of doing so.

But were we justified in doing that?
If we had raised their income beyond that of the labouring man in ordinary times, we should have gone far to destroy the most valuable feeling of the manufacturing population--namely, that of honest self-reliance, and we should have done our best, to a great extent, to demoralise a large portion of the population, and induce them to prefer the wages of charitable relief to the return of honest industry.

But then we are told that the rates are not sufficiently high in the distressed districts, and that we ought to raise them before we come on the fund.