EUROPE.
It appears from the returns that a legal claim to relief exists in Norway, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Mecklenburg, Prussia, Wurtemberg, Bavaria, and the Canton de Berne; but does not exist in the Hanseatic Towns, Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, the Sardinian States, Frankfort, Venice, Greece, or Turkey. The return from Saxony does not afford data from which the existence or non-existence of such a claim can be inferred.
The great peculiarity of the system in the North of Europe is the custom of affording relief by quartering the paupers on the landholders in the country and on householders in the towns.
NORWAY.
Consuls Greig and Mygind, the authors of the return from Norway, state, that the—
Impotent through age, cripples, and others who cannot subsist themselves, are, in the country districts, billeted or quartered on such of the inhabitants (house and landholders in the parish) as have the means of providing for them. By them they are furnished with clothing and food, and they are in return expected to perform such light services as they can. In the distribution, respect is had to the extent or value of the different farms, and to the number of the indigent, which varies greatly in different parishes. In some they have so few poor that only one pauper falls to the lot of five or six farms, who then take him in rotation; whilst in other parishes they have a pauper quartered on every farm or estate all the year round, and on the larger ones several. (p. 696.)
It is to be regretted that the information respecting the existing poor laws of Norway is not more full and precise. The return contains two projects of law, or in other words, bills, for the relief of the poor in the country and in towns, drawn up in 1832, in obedience to a government commission issued in 1829; and also the arguments of the commissioners in their support; but it does not state how far these projects have been adopted.
In treating of the modes of relief, the bill for the country states that,