The Second Class includes small populous parishes, grouped into Unions, in which the population bears a large proportion to the number of statute acres they cover.

The Third Class consists of large single parishes, in which the population bears a large proportion to the number of acres.

The following diagram will explain this classification:


County.
Union.
No. of
Parishes		 Population of
Parishes.
______________
Highest | Lowest		Population
of Union.		Area of
Union,
Statute
Acres.		No. of
Reliev-
ing
Officers.
First
Class,		Denbigh,
Durham,
Staffordshire,
Derbyshire,
Lincoln,		Ruthin,
Easington,
Uttoxeter,
Shardlow,
Louth,		21
19
16
46
88
 2066 97
2976 10
4864 116
3182 23
6927 24		 16,019
6,984
12,837
29,812
25,214		166,619
34,660
56,685
66,974
152,251 		2
1
1
2
3
Second
Class,		Middlesex,City of
London		98 401 7257,1003703
Third
Class,		Middlesex.Parish
Marylebone,		1 ..... .....138,164 1490...

These divisions of territory may be regarded from different points of view. They may be seen through the media of statute-books, reports, returns, and statistics; or they may be actually surveyed. Each course has its peculiar dangers. The mind, occupied with matters of detail and routine occurrences, is apt to lose in comprehensiveness as much as it gains in minute exactness. To avoid this danger the mind must soar as the facts accumulate. It must regard them, sometimes from the height of one theory, and sometimes from the height of another. For the mind becomes tinged with the hue of whatever is frequently presented to it. Opinions even are hereditary. And every set of facts leads to a different conclusion, according to the texture of the minds they pass through. Refer to the facts connected with the condition of the poor, which have been proclaimed during the last few years; and then reflect to what contradictory opinions they have led. The man of strong benevolent feelings deduces one inference. The politico-economical theorist deduces another. And the man of practice and experience is as likely to be deluded as either. He sees destitution so frequently connected with imprudence, laziness, and crime, that he is apt to believe that the union is indissoluble. His mind has never embraced a general idea, or traced effects to causes, or distinguished them, the one from the other. And in this matter, where the causes and effects are so complicated, and entangled by their mutual reaction, he is likely to be at fault. Then the man of pure benevolence sees only the pain, and demands only the means of immediate relief. And the political economist tells us, "That the law which would enforce charity can fix no limits, either to the ever-increasing wants of a poverty which itself has created, or to the insatiable desires and demands of a population which itself hath corrupted and led astray."

In the First Class, the parishes are large, thinly populated, and situated generally in rural districts. In some cases, the Union includes a country town; the neighbouring parishes and hamlets being connected with it. The total number of parishes may be eighteen or twenty. In other cases, the Union consists of about twenty-five parishes, townships, hamlets, and chapelries. In some instances, the population of the parishes are collected into so many villages, which are distant from each other. In others, the entire surface of the country is sprinkled thinly with cottages. The communications are by high-roads, and muddy lanes, over high hills, and through bogs and marshes, and by bridle-roads and footpaths—

"O'er muirs and mosses many, O."

In each of these Unions, the management of the relief fund is confided to a Board, consisting of resident rate-payers, and resident country magistrates. The former are guardians by election, and the latter ex-officio. The Board is completed by the addition of the churchwardens and overseers. The chairman is generally the most distinguished, and the vice-chairman the most active man in the Union. The chairman regulates the proceedings of the Board, and ascertains its resolutions. The clerk records them. The relief which applicants are to receive, is determined by the Board; except that which is given by certain officers in cases of "sudden and urgent necessity." The management of the Union-house is invested in the master—a paid officer. His duties are ascertained and fixed. He is liable to dismissal by the joint resolution of the Poor-Law Commissioners and the Guardians, or by the order of the Commissioners alone. It is also the duty of the master to attend to such cases of destitution as may be presented at the Union-House gate; and, if their necessities be of a sudden and urgent character, to admit them into the house. It may be remarked here, that information is wanted upon this point. The question is not, by what general term may the cases be designated, whether sudden or urgent, but what the circumstances of the cases really are, which are so relieved. The answers to the question would throw light upon the relation subsisting between a strict work-house system and the increase of vagrancy. To continue. The sick poor are confided to the care of the medical officer; and the out-door relief is chiefly administered by the relieving-officer. His duties in rural Unions are as follows:—To pay or deliver such amounts of money or food as the Board may have ordered the poor to receive, at the villages, hamlets, and cottages where they may reside. He must visit the poor at their homes. He receives applications for relief; and when the necessity is sudden and urgent, he relieves the case promptly with food. He must report upon the circumstances of each case, and keep accounts. For neglect of duty, he is liable to penal consequences, and to dismissal, in the same way as the master. The average number of parishes, townships, and hamlets committed to the care of the relieving-officer may be about twenty. The reader may be able, from his local knowledge, to picture this Union, and give it a name.

The Union then consists of twenty parishes. The Union-house is pretty central, and situated near a small market-town. The meetings of the Board are held in the Union-house, and upon the market-day; because then the guardians, churchwardens, and overseers, after having transacted their private business, may conveniently perform their public duties. At the last meeting of the Board of Guardians, certain poor persons appeared before them, and were ordered to be relieved with money or food, at a specific rate, and for a specified time. The relieving-officer resides in that part of the Union from whence he can reach the most distant and opposite points with nearly equal facility. He divides his district into rounds, and each occupies the greatest portion of a day. At the end of each week he will have visited the whole of the twenty parishes.

The Board met yesterday, and to-day the relieving-officer's week began. By the conditions of his appointment, he must have a horse and chaise. The contractor for bread is bound to deliver it at the home of the pauper; he must therefore provide man and horse, and they accompany the relieving-officer. They set out on the first day's journey; they arrive at the first hamlet on the route, and stop at a cottage door. Around it and within it the destitute poor of the hamlet are assembled. Each receives his allowance of money and bread. But a group has collected about the door, whose names are not on the relief-list. One woman tells the relieving-officer that her husband is ill with fever, and her children are without food. He knows the family; he hastens down the lane, and across the field, and enters the labourer's hut. The man is really ill, and there are too evident signs of destitution. A written order is given on the medical officer to attend the case, and necessary relief is given. The man who now approaches the officer with such an air of overbearing insolence, or fawning humility, is also an applicant. He is known at the village beer-shop, and by the farmer as a man who can work, but will not; he is the last man employed in the parish; his hovel is visited—it is a scene of squalid misery. What is to be done? He may be relieved temporarily with bread, or admitted into the Union-house, or he is directed to attend the Board. The relieving officer then proceeds to his next station. There a larger supply of bread awaits him, for he is now in a populous parish. The poor of the place are assembled at the church door, and the relief is given in the vestry-room. The applications are again received and disposed of. He then rides to the cottages of the sick and the aged, and again continues his route. He does not proceed far before he is hailed by the labourer in the field, who tells him of some solitary person who is without medical aid. By-and-by, he is stopped by the boy who has long waited for him on the stile, and begs him to come and see his mother; and the farmer's man, on the farmer's horse, gives him further news of disease, destitution, or death. He completes his day's journey before the evening. To-morrow another route is taken; and thus he proceeds from day to day, and from month to month, through summer's heat and winter's cold.