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36. 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. 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. See the Reports on the Corn Trade.
39. 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
This arrangement amounts to the same sum as stated in this work, Part
II, line number 1068, including the L250,000 for education; but it
provides (including the aged people) for four hundred and four
thousand families, which is almost one third of an the families in
England.
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