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134 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
Number of Proportion to
Paupers. PopulatIOn per cent.
18 70'74 123,000 3-7
18 75-79 103,000 2·9
188q.84 100,000 2·7

Here there is the same steady diminution in the pro-
portion of pauperism to population all through as we
have seen in the case of England, accompanied in this
case by a steady diminution of the absolute number of
paupers since 1865-69. The Scotch administration has
been totally independent of the English, but the same
results are produced.
In Ireland, as already hinted, the history has been
different. There has been an increase in the pauperism
accompanied by a decline of population. But Ireland
is too small to affect the general result.
We are thus confronted by the fact that if there had
been a real check of a serious kind to the rate of our
material growth in the last ten years as compared with
the ten years just before, there ought to have been
some increase in the want of employment and in
pauperism, but instead of there being such an increase
there is a decline. The population apparently, while
increasing even more rapidly in the last ten years than
before, has been more fully employed than before. To
make these facts consistent with a check to the rate of
our material growth, we must contrive some such hypo-
thesis as that employment has been more diffused as
regards numbers, but the aggregate amount of it has
fallen off; another form of the hypothesis as to the
effect of shorter hours of labour already discussed.
But a little reflection will show that any such hypo-
thesis is hardly admissible. It is difficult to imagine
any change in the conditions of employment in so short
a time which would make it possible for larger num-
bers to be employed along with a diminution in the
aggregate amount of employment itself.
Another fact corresponding to this decrease of
pauperism is the steady increase of savings bank de-