Formerly, these persons had saved 40 l.

and 50 l.

before they married, and they were never burdensome to the parish; now, they have not saved a shilling before their marriage, and become immediately burdensome.' The farmers were not so discontented with this allowance system as might be supposed, because a great part of the burden was cast upon other shoulders.

The tax was laid indiscrimately upon all fixed property; so that the occupiers of villas, shopkeepers, merchants, and others who did not employ labourers, had to pay a portion of the wages for those that did.

The farmers were in this way led to encourage a system which fraudently imposed a heavy burden upon others, and which, by degrading the labourers, and multiplying their numbers beyond the real demand for them, must, if allowed to run its full course, have ultimately overspread the whole country with the most abject poverty and wretchedness.
There was another interest created which tended to increase the evil.
In the counties of Suffolk, Sussex, Kent, and generally through all the south of England, relief was given in the shape of house accommodation, or free dwellings for the poor.