Transcriber’s Note: Suspected printer’s errorshave been corrected. Upper-case accents weren’t used in the original,and differences of spelling (etc.) between the different reports havebeen preserved.

[i]

STATEMENT
OF THE
PROVISION FOR THE POOR,
AND OF THE
CONDITION OF THE LABOURING CLASSES,
IN A CONSIDERABLE PORTION OF
AMERICA AND EUROPE.

BY
NASSAU W. SENIOR, Esq.

BEING THE
PREFACE TO THE FOREIGN COMMUNICATIONS CONTAINED
IN THE APPENDIX TO THE POOR-LAW REPORT.

LONDON:
B. FELLOWES, LUDGATE STREET.
(Publisher to the Poor-Law Commissioners.)
MDCCCXXXV.

[ii]

LONDON:
Printed by William Clowes and Sons,
Stamford Street.

[iii]

ADVERTISEMENT.

The following pages were prepared for the sole purposeof forming an introduction to the foreign communicationscontained in the Appendix to the Poor-LawReport. Their separate publication was notthought of until they had been nearly finished.When it was first suggested to me, I felt it to be objectionable,on account of their glaring imperfections,if considered as forming an independent work, andthe impossibility of employing the little time whichcan be withdrawn from a profession, in the vast taskof giving even an outline of the provision for the poor,and the condition of the labouring classes, in thewhole of Europe and America. But the value andextent of the information which, even in their presentincomplete state, they contain, and the importanceof rendering it more accessible than whenlocked up in the folios of the Poor-Law Appendix,have overcome my objections. The only additionwhich I have been able to make is a translation ofthe French documents.

[iv]

I cannot conclude without expressing my sense ofthe zeal and intelligence with which the inquiry hasbeen prosecuted by his Majesty’s diplomatic Ministersand Consuls, and of the active and candid assistancewhich has been given by the foreign Governments.

Nassau W. Senior.

Lincoln’s Inn, June 10, 1835.

[v]

CONTENTS