"The stillness of these frosty plains, Their utter stillness, and the silent grace Of yon ethereal summits, white with snow, (Whose tranquil pomp and spotless purity Report of storms gone by To those who tread below.")
Or the winds howl, the biting sharpness of the frosty air nips the joints and shrivels the flesh, and the smoking smouldering fire has no power to control the winds which rush across the room. The scene changes. The lowlands are flooded, and the waters reach to, and stagnate at the cottage door. The rains descend; the air is saturated with water; it chills the frame; the heart beats languidly, and the soul of man stoops to the deadening influence of the elements. Agues, rheumatism, and fevers prevail. The hardships of the season bear down old and young; for the want of sufficient or nutritious food has shorn them of their strength.
Upon awakening from this trance, "which was not all a dream," and reflecting how far aid is distant, even if it can be obtained from the nearest overseer, how forcibly must the thought occur--what numbers suffer and die whose suffering is unrelieved and unknown! If our pedestrian learn nothing from his trip for health and pleasure more than this, he will have learnt enough to satisfy him that the point we have directed his attention to, viz. that the means of relief in rural districts should be made as ample as possible; and that, therefore, the right and duty of the overseers to relieve promptly should be encouraged and zealously guarded.
Reference must now be made to the notorious "Prohibitory Order." And in doing so, it is not to the order itself, either in its original or amended form, that the following remarks are especially made, but to the practices which owe their origin to the enactments of the Poor-Law Amendment Act, to the Utopian expectations of many, that a strict work-house test would destroy pauperism, and to the explanations and reports of the Commissioners themselves. The following is the prohibitory in its latest and most humanised form:--
"Article I.--Every able-bodied person, male or female, requiring relief from any parish within any of the said Unions, shall be relieved wholly in the work-house of the said Unions, together with such of the family of every such able-bodied person as may be resident with him or her, and may not be in employment, and together with the wife of every such able-bodied male person, if he be a married man, and if she be resident with him; save and except in the following cases:--