The committee then express their intention of proceeding, “in further execution of their duty,” to inquire into the practicability of ameliorating the condition of the labouring poor, “by facilitating the application of the funds of private individuals and associations for their employment in useful and productive labour,” by which alone the entire and permanent removal of the malady can be expected, although it is, they say, much mitigated in its severity, and more circumscribed in its extent than heretofore. The disease still however, it is observed, continues to press heavily on the community, and by “the united testimonies of every competent inquirer is attributed to the want of employment of the labouring classes, as a primary and powerfully efficient cause.”
[Sidenote: 1819. On the condition of the labouring poor.]
On the second head of inquiry, the condition, or in other words, the employment of the labouring poor, the committee “find themselves in a great measure controlled by the unquestionable principle that legislative interference in the operations of human industry is as much as possible to be avoided.” There are however, they say, certain exceptions to such a rule, either when injurious impediments are to be removed, or where any branch of industry cannot at its commencement be carried on by individual exertion, on which occasions, it is considered, parliament may with advantage interpose its aid. The existence of general distress and the deficiency of employment were so notorious, that the committee deemed it unnecessary to encumber their Report with evidence on the subject. Their inquiries were particularly directed to agriculture and the fisheries, as being the two most important departments of labour, and as “those likewise to which the greatest extension may be given without hazarding reaction.” They refer to the Report of the Commissioners on the Bogs of Ireland, which they consider “prove the immense amount of land easily reclaimable, and convertible to the production of grain almost without limit for exportation”—whilst, “the small extent to which the commissioners’ recommendations have been acted upon, demonstrates lamentably that want of capital which in Ireland unnerves all effort for improvement.” The institution of commissioners of sewers, as in England, is then recommended, as is also the draining of the great bogs and marshes, and the making a legal provision for repayment of the necessary outlay. The formation of roads in the mountainous districts is likewise recommended, those districts not having, it is said, “their due share of the benefits of the grand-jury system.”