[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