date

[152a-082] Collateral Uses
[152a-082]

Collateral Uses

3 Poor Mans Loan Office

Note continued.

will /would/ be a dearer business to him, than of an personal security he had paid interest for the same sum at the rate of some hundred per cent. For under the existing structure of the laws, it is not one of the least misfortunes attending the condition of the poor, that the burthen of law-charges of all sorts, as well as so many other legal burthens, having a minimum below which it can never fall, [...?] upon the individual in a ratio increasing more and more in the direct ratio of his poverty, that is in the inverse ratio of his ability to bear it (a)

Note

(a) See Protest against Low Taxes (by the Author) 1796. Were a man who had occasion for ,10,000 upon a mortgage obliged to pay ,l0,000 to his lawyer or a tenth part of the money, the hardship would be deemed intolerable. A Cottager in the later circumstances is actually obliged to pay in much larger proportion to the [...?] quarter, and nobody has stated the grievance as worth remedying.

Text resumed

When a Cottager applies to an Attorney to raise a pittance upon his Cottage, the part of the object of the transaction to which the principal regard is paid must in the nature of things be the emolument of the Attorney, and the result the converting the scratch made in the little property by misfortune or mismanagement or misfortune into a fatal gangrene. Were the Governor of a House of Industry, under the controul of his superiors in office, impowered to administer the relief on the footing of charity, it would of course be administered only in as far as it was wanted, and in as small sums, and those, within the limits of the value, repeated as often as it were wanted. Were the burthen of the Stamp duties taken off in the instance of money not exceeding a certain sum in the whole thus advanced to a person of a description intended to be thus favoured suppose a labourer is Husbandry) and intelligible forms, [...?] of
Similar Items
  • Title: [[153a-034v2] System of Industry Houses]
    Description: [153a-034v2]

    System of Industry Houses Collateral Uses.

    I. Pecuniary

    1. Poor Man's Loan

    Offices -

    When a Cottager applies to an Attorney

    to

    in a year, it would be a dearer business to him, than if, on personal security, he had paid interest for the same sum, at the rate of some hundred per Cent. For, under the existing structure of the laws, it is not one of the least misfortunes attending the condition of the Poor, that the burthen of law-charges of all sorts, as well as so many other legal burthens, having a minimum below which it can never fall, presses upon the individual, in a ratio encreasing more & more in the direct ratio of his poverty, that is in the inverse ration of his ability to bear the burthen.

    See Protest against Law Taxes (by the Author) 1796. Were a man, who had occasion for ,

    l0,000 upon a mortgage, obliged to pay ,

    l0,000 to his Lawyer, or a tenth part of the money, the hardship would be deemed intollerable. A Cottage, in the like circumstances, is actually obliged to pay in much larger proportion to the same quarter, & nobody has stated the grievance as worth remedying.

    I have in the publication already referred to, had occasion to shew, how the Poor of this country, (that is to say, by many times the greater number of the inhabitants of this as of every other country,) are kept in most respects in a state of perpetual outlawry, partly, for the supposed

    benefit of the public, by the insensibility of the man of finance, partly by the insensibility or incapacity, or policy, or all together, of the man of law, & at any rate for the real benefit of the misery-making & nonsense-manufacturing profession, whose most valuable property consists in the unintelligibility & worthlessness of its own works. Happy the man of humanity, who, on any occasion, or on any pretence, can, in favour of any class of subjects, however inconsiderable, succeed in procuring this outlawry to be reversed! By the enlightened humanity of men now in office, it has already been reversed to certain proposes, in favour of the contributors to the Societies called Friendly Societies.
  • Title: [[152a-122] Collateral Uses 4. [..]
    Description: [152a-122]

    Collateral Uses 4. [...?]

    5. & 6 Poor Mans Inns &

    Carriage Stages

    Note to p.1

    (a) The degree of economy with which this business may be carried on depends, on one hand, on the expense for which a man can be maintained in full health and strength for a day, on the other hand on the value of the work which a man of the working class, being in a state of ordinary health and strength, can without hardship be made to perform in the same compass of time. The expense I state at 3 d: grounding the estimate on the experiments and observations made by [...?] Romford in his 3 [...?] pay relative to the Poor (p.239), in which the expense of a days allowance of soup and bread consisting of 4lb 3oz is stated at 2 d:, computed according to the extraordinarily high prices and those the London prices of the present winter: being an allowance in point of nutrition evidently much greater and probably at least twice as great as the average of the allowance at which prisoners have been actually kept for many years, in remarkably good health at least, at the Penitentiary House at Wymondham, See Account of the regime of that House in the Annual Register for 1788.

    The value of the work I set down at 1 s a day: being less than the lowest wages of the commonest Day.-bour any where in England.

    On this footing, the average value of a man's daily earnings, in one of the Houses in question among adults of the male sex being in a state of ordinary health and strength and not disabled by age, may be stated at four times the daily expense of his food, leaving a clear surplus of 9 d. The value of the earnings of a grown person of the female sex, I set down at 6 d, half the value of that of a grown person of the male sex. The calculation seems rather low than high, if applied to such works of the laborious kind as are exercised in common by both sexes: and in the instance of the [...?] employment of spinning the average earnings of 112 children candidates for [...?] was 5 d2. See Account of the Society for the prevention of Industry in London District F Edition No date but [...?] to 1789.p.89. The children, it is true were all candidates for [...?]. But the average of their ages (most of them female) was but ll years, ll months.
  • Title: [[152a-091] Collateral Uses]
    Description: [152a-091]

    Collateral Uses

    3. Charitable Loan Office

    Note continued

    At Rome, and other towns in Italy, I have heard it frequently said by Travellers who received their information on the spot, and have even read as much in books which I know not at present how to refer to, the business is conducted upon terms still more favourable.

    At Hamburgh, (if we may depend upon a work, now not very modern, but in its day of some account, having been compiled by government and printed for the sole use of Government in France) in Hamburgh, Pawnlending though performed at so low a rate of interest as 6 per cent, is reckoned among the sources of revenue: producing to the government an annual profit amounting in those days to 150,000 eens, whatever may have been meant by eens. Before government took this branch of trade into its own hands, the common rate of profit made by private dealers had been, (it is there stated) between 60 and 80 per cent. See Memoirs concernant les Impositions et Droits en Europe 4 Vol in-4 to a Paris Imprimerie Royale. 1768. Vol.[...?]. art. Hambourg.