If the links of a chain are not all equally strong, before any strain is felt by the strong links the weak ones give way, and the chain is broken. The case is the same with the members of a community. Now, when you lay on taxes, the general tendency is to raise the price of food and labour; most labourers receive the advantage of the price of labour, but many pay unequally for the rise of food.

A tax on the wealthy, it will be said, is the thing proposed, but no, that would do nothing, it must be a premium or drawback to men with families who are poor, not merely to counteract the effect of any one tax, but the total effect of taxation with respect to maintaining their children. Wide, indeed, is the difference between a tax on those who are well able to pay, and a premium or drawback in favour of those who are not.

The manner of providing for the poor in England leads to a degree

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{195} Probably, the reason that so small a sum serves the purpose in Scotland is, that relief is administered to the families, at their own houses, by the minister and elders of the parish. It is a rare instance of an administration, without emoluments and without controul. The funds are distributed with clean hands, in all cases, and impartially in most.

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of wastefulness and improvidence unknown in any other country. Improvidence ought as much as possible to be discouraged; for, with those who labour hard and are indigent, the desire to gratify some pressing want, or present appetite, is continually uppermost. This may be termed the war between the belly and the back, in which the former is generally the conqueror. It would be a small evil if this victory were decided seldom, as in other countries, but in the great towns of England there is as it were a continual state of hostility. In London, the battle is fought, on an average, at least, once a week; and idleness, and the profits of those sort of petty usurers, called pawnbrokers, are greatly promoted by it.

Some part of this evil cannot, perhaps, be remedied, but there are certain articles that ought not to be taken in pledge, such as the clothes of young children and working tools. {196}

There is no doubt but, that, in a populous inhospitable trading town, where there is no means of obtaining aid, from friendship, where the want is sometimes extreme, the resource of pledging is a necessary one. This is to be admitted in the degree, but by no means without limitation; for the facility creates the want, (even when it is a real want) for it brings on improvidence and carelessness. The lower classes come to consider their apparel as money, only that it requires changing before it is quite current. {197}