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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 239.: THE POOR LAW REPORT EXAMINER, 2 MAR., 1834, P. 137 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

239.: THE POOR LAW REPORT EXAMINER, 2 MAR., 1834, P. 137 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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239.

THE POOR LAW REPORT

EXAMINER, 2 MAR., 1834, P. 137

Mill is here commenting on the “Report from His Majesty’s Commissioners for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws,” which was printed in PP, 1834, XXVII, with Appendices A-F in Vols. XXVII-XXXIX; the Report had been issued separately without the Appendices in February. This article appears immediately after No. 238, separated from it by a printer’s rule. See No. 240 for a fuller discussion. It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A paragraph on the Poor Law Report, in the Examiner of 2d March 1834” (MacMinn, p. 38) and listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Paragraph on the Poor Law Report.”

we observe that the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners will shortly be accessible to the general public at the very low price of half-a-crown, and we doubt if so important a mass, either of facts or of comments upon facts, ever was attainable at so moderate a cost. We exhort all who have that sum to expend, and in particular all who exercise any influence on the public mind through the press, to possess themselves of the Report itself, and read it with the care and attention which its subject requires, and which its merits will amply repay. In the meantime we advise them to shut their ears to whatever they may hear on the subject from the London newspapers, which have in some cases even misstated what the Commissioners recommend, and where they have stated it truly, have separated it from those facts and explanations which alone can place it in its proper light.1

[1 ]Mill is probably alluding to reports in The Times, 24 Feb., p. 5, and 25 Feb., p. 2 (see No. 240) and to that in the Courier, 24 Feb., p. 3.