England America
L s. d. L s. d.
For a family of five persons 14 17 6 1 5 0
For a family of six persons 17 17 0 1 10 0
For a family of seven persons 20 16 6 1 15 0
36 ([return])
[ Public schools do not answer the general purpose of the poor. They are chiefly in corporation towns from which the country towns and villages are excluded, or, if admitted, the distance occasions a great loss of time. Education, to be useful to the poor, should be on the spot, and the best method, I believe, to accomplish this is to enable the parents to pay the expenses themselves. There are always persons of both sexes to be found in every village, especially when growing into years, capable of such an undertaking. Twenty children at ten shillings each (and that not more than six months each year) would be as much as some livings amount to in the remotest parts of England, and there are often distressed clergymen's widows to whom such an income would be acceptable. Whatever is given on this account to children answers two purposes. To them it is education—to those who educate them it is a livelihood.]
37 ([return])
[ The tax on beer brewed for sale, from which the aristocracy are exempt, is almost one million more than the present commutation tax, being by the returns of 1788, L1,666,152—and, consequently, they ought to take on themselves the amount of the commutation tax, as they are already exempted from one which is almost a million greater.]
38 ([return])
[ See the Reports on the Corn Trade.]
39 ([return])
[ When enquiries are made into the condition of the poor, various degrees of distress will most probably be found, to render a different arrangement preferable to that which is already proposed. Widows with families will be in greater want than where there are husbands living. There is also a difference in the expense of living in different counties: and more so in fuel.
Suppose then fifty thousand extraordinary cases, at
the rate of ten pounds per family per annum L500,000
100,000 families, at L8 per family per annum 800,000
100,000 families, at L7 per family per annum 700,000
104,000 families, at L5 per family per annum 520,000
And instead of ten shillings per head for the education
of other children, to allow fifty shillings per family
for that purpose to fifty thousand families 250,000
—————
L2,770,000
140,000 aged persons as before 1,120,000
—————
L3,890,000