The Sun.
London, England, 1837-02-25 00:00:00

few and little necessaries of the most helpless part of them.
and to consign them to strangers.—(Hear, hear.) On the
subject of improvident marriages, on which so much had been
been said, and which had been so strongly deprecated as the
source of evils in this country, he hoped the house would allow
him to read part of a letter from a personage whose name
must be familiar to many in the House—he meant the Styrian
friend and correspondent of Captain Basil Hall, and who had
many opportunities of observing the consequences result-
ing from the prohibition of any other than what are called
prudential marriages among the poor. This personage, a
lady, too, of Scottish extraction, thus wrote :—" We have
no poor (that is, in the province of Styria), which, owing
to the question in England respecting the Poor-laws, is
deserving of being noticed. No mail is allowed to marry
till he can prove he is able to maintain a wife and family ;
and this, with the law of celibacy of the clergy, and the
security required by a pecuniary deposit of the military before
they can marry—almost an act of celibacy—are checks on po-
pulation which would make the hearts of Mr. Malthus and
Miss Martineau burn in them for admiration. The result is,
the entire demoralization of the people. The mask of religion
helps nothing. At the last grand jubilee in the next parish,
seventy-two pairs of single women adorned the procession,
dressed in white and covered with garlands of flowers. In
eight months forty-four of them were in the family-way.--
( Loud cries of " Hear !" and much laughter.) Madame
Nature is not a political economist—( Hear, hear !)—and she
does not let her laws be outraged with impunity."—( Cheers
and laughter.) From every account that he had heard,
lie had reason to infer that a great increase of the crime of
infanticide had taken plate in consequence of the new bas-
tardy law; and this result was foreseen and predicted by
seventy-one Members of the other House. He would content
himself with reading one clause in the Leicester petition upon
the subject:—" We cannot omit, also, expressing our unqua-
lified dissent from the principles of (what are termed) the
bastardy clauses of the Act; offering, as they do, in our view,
a direct premium for infanticide, and consigning in many in-
stances, as they must, helpless and deceived females to perma-
nent degradation and misery." And among a mass of evi-
-1 dence to the same effect, he would also select the verdict of a
coroner's jury last summer, " That the infants were found in.
decently exposed ; but whether born alive or otherwise, there
was no evidence ; and the jury were of opinion that the deser-
tion of the children by the parent was attributable to the in-
justice and- demoralizing effects of the bastardy clause of the
new Poor Bill." The House would be pleased to observe,
that these and other cases are incidental evils only, which he
was obliged to pass over rapidly in order to leave himself time
for the other heavy evils of the system. One of those heavy
grievances was, the magnitude and extent of the Unions.-
-(hear.) Originally, it did not appear to have been in-
tended to comprise more than five or ,six parishes within
one Union. Such an arrangement might have allowed the
helpless inmates to indulge a hope of seeing their friends on
some occasions or other. But now they had been extended
to 30, 40, and even 50 parishes. It was, therefore, a day's
journey for a wretched son to go and see a confined
mother.—( Cries of " Hear.") To show how little credit
was due to the statements made in the last Report of these
Commissioners, he would read to the House the contradictory
accounts which they themselves put forth respecting one par-
ticular union—the Biggleswade Union. One individual
said—" I consider the new Poor-law acts remarkably well,
and is one of the best that was ever passed by any legisla-
ture. The check it has upon drunkenness—( Hear, hear)—
with the incentive given to make the best they can of every
shilling they receive, is truly wonderful. Our beer-shops
were crowded on the Sabbath, from morning till evening ;
and now, I believe, very few enter them at all on that day—
(Cheers from Lord John Russell and the Members about him)
—and almost all go to some place of worship. We are paying
our labourers Is. per week more than we did previously to
the advance in wheat. We now give them Bs. per week. I
believe there never was more contentment between the em-
ployer and the employed than at present. The number of
misdemeanours has greatly diminished."—(Cheers from the
Ministerial benches.)-13ut a second witness said, " They
frequent the alehouses quite as much.--( Hear and laughter.)
I think it quite out of the question for a man with a family
to save money out of Bs. a-week. Their rents average
Is. 6d. a-week, and clubs 6d. a-week, to be deducted from
that sum." A third person said, " Poaching and petty de-
predations have increased in this parish double to any former
year." A fourth said, " I am not of opinion that poaching
and petty depredations have at all diminished • but that the
greater crime of sheep-stealing has increased to a tenfold
degree." And with respect to the beer-shops, another per-
son said, " They increase daily in number, and the quantity
of money spent in them by the labourers is very great. I may
be wrong; but I consider them as at present constituting the
chief obstacle to the assumption of orderly and domestic habits
by the labourer. He can hardly rs turn to his cottage at night
without passing ono of them ; and when he sees a companion or
two there, and a comfortable room and a blazing fire, and knows
that he shall be met at home by all the wants of poverty, it is
a great temptation to him to enter in and enjoy its luxuries."
Gentlemen might recollect the mention, the other night, by the
Noble Lord, in introducing his Irish Poor Bill, of a parish
called Cholesbury. He adduced that parish as an example or
warning in legislating for the poor of Ireland, as he believed
another Noble Lord had formerly done for the poor of Eng-
land. This parish also made the most prominent figure in the
Report of the Commissioners. But neither of the Noble
Lords, though they stated that all the farms in the parish had
gone out of cultivation under the old system, added the im-
portant fact, that " all the farms" consisted of only two in
number, of fifty acres each.—( Hear, hear.) The whole
parish contains only 110 acres of arable and meadow land.
But his objection to this law—and it was a fundamental ob-
jection—was its total variance with the principles of every
other law, and with the general maxims of the Constitution.
When he looked at the persons from whom it had sprung,
his Majesty's present Ministers, he was lost in astonishment.
Was it not their constant boast, and did they not celebrate it in
all their toasts at political meetings, that the people were
the source of all power ? and now they invented a law, and
would diffuse it over the whole realm, that they and their
Commissioners were the source of all power, and the
people its victims. The unconstitutional extent of the
powers given to the Central Board was well described and
justly reprobated by a gentleman well known to many
Members of this House, and of the highest character,
the Rev. Mr. Cookesley, who was a guardian of the Eton
Union. In an address to the rate-payers he asked whether
they desired their representatives (the guardians) to be mere
servants—" to be a mere court to register the edicts of a supe-
rior Board of paid Government Commissioners. I must (says
lie) profess my astonishment that the people of England should
have submitted to the exercise of such powers as these Com-
missioners exercise.—( Hear, hear, hear.) They are powers
such as no body of men since the days of the Star Chamber
have legally had in England, and such as no body of men
ought to have had.—( Hear, hear, from various parts of the
House.) Had the Boards of Guardians been open Courts,
these powers could not have been put in operation, for public
opinion would have compelled the Board to act with indepen-
dence in resisting the outrageous authority at present enjoyed
by the Poor-law Commissioners." Ho goes'on—" The new
Bill professes to be a Bill for the better provision for the poor ;
but I have yet to learn how this better provision can consist
with a total violation of their feelings.. The aged pauper, who -
has spent his manhood in labour, thinks as much of his own
arm-chair and his own fireside, and he loves the smile of his kin-
dred and his friends, as much as richer men love their enjoy-
ments. I know not how many hearts may be broken if this
system of incarcerating the aged in workhouses is to be car-
ried into general execution. Your Board of Guardiaps a few
weeks since came to the resolution of letting the aged pau-
pers out of their prison for a few hours during the day. But
of this they were afraid of informing the Poor-law Commis-
sioners, as they must prohibit any such infringement of their
barbarous rules and regulations. Is it your pleasure (says
he) that your aged poor—the creatures who flee to you for
protection from famine—who trust to your benevolence and
mercy—should be thus treated? Will you submit to these
mandates of a savage, relentless economy ? The windows in
your workhouses are bu4t at the tops of the walls of the
rooms. Why ? Lest the poor should have the blessing of
looking out of them—lest they should forget for a moment
that they were in a gaol.—( Hear.) Is this a wanton, deliberate
act of cruelty, or is it a benevolent instance of better provi-
sion for the poor ?' Some time since the circumstance of a per-
son having lived for some weeks upon workhouse diet was men-
tioned with pride in the House of Commons. Would this same
man have fattened on it within the walls of a workhouse shut
out from the view of everything but the wretchedness of
himself and fellow-sufferers? I am almost tempted to wish
that the man who first hit upon this infernal scheme of shutting
out the sight of our common earth from the view of the poor,
had been condemned to live in one of his own dungeons for
life. One topic more, and I have done. There are about
ten idiots in your workhouse. If I could fancy an aggrava-
tion of the miseries of incarcerated poverty, intense and tre-
mendous, it would be this simple addition of idiotcy. Upon
their companions falls the duty of attending them. *
In our house, at this present minute, a man is dying ; his
wife cannot see him, if he be an inmate." Thus, while the
Ministers had been putting the country in commotion about
establishing Municipal Corporations in Ireland, which they
said were necessary upon the principles of self-govern-
ment—they had been destroying self-government in every
parish in England—( Hear, hear,)—and consigning any-
thing but self-government of those parishes to Commis-
sioners sitting here in London. (Hear, hear.) If it were
attempted to cast any imputation upon the motives of
those who deprecate the new system, he hoped they might
be allowed to answer that they were only treading, at
however great a distance, in the steps of the illustrious men
who were at the head of both parties in this House in the
bygone generation,who only recommended the removal of abuses
from the old system, but strict adherence to the principle of
the system itself.—( Hear, hear.) Mr. Whitbread strenuously
advocated the right-of the poor to have work, and that at ade-
quate wages ; he said his " creed was, that no excuse should
be left them for doing wrong." Mr. Fox suggested the pro-
priety of an association to raise the price of labour. " It was
not fitting (he said) in a free country that the great body of
the people should depend on the charity of the rich." Mr.
Pitt said, "that the law which prohibited relief, where any
visible property remained, should be abolished. That degrigi,
ing condition should be withdrawn. No temporary oeoasion
should force a British subject to part with the last shilling of
his little capital, and descend to a state of wretchednes from
which he could never recover, merely that he might be entitled
to a eastial relief." His humane provision their new law ageln
abolished. They were forcing British subjects to part with
the last shilling of their capital, and compelling them to de-
scend to a state of wretchedness from which they could never
recover. If this horrible wrong were to be re Imposed, let it
be re-imposed by the local authorities, if they had the hearts to
do it. Let not strangers, let not Londoners, be called in to in-
flict the misery on those they never saw before. The Com-
missioners themselves acknowledged that the " pauverisetl

labourers were not the authors of the abusive system, and
ought not to be made responsible for it." Was tearing them
from their homes no responsibility ? They were told by the
sacred Word that they ought to do to others as they would wish
others to do to them. Was there any maxim of religion or
morality which said, thou shalt not relieve a poor man " till he
is in the last state of destitution"—( Hear, hear)—and that the
proof that he is shall be his being driven to accept so wretched
a \boon as their relief holds out? On the contrary, the Word
of Wisdom said, " Make not an hungry soul sorrowful, nei-
ther provoke a man in his distress. Add not more trouble to
a heart that is vexed, and defer not to give him that is in
need." He disclaimed any intention to repeal the Bill. The
difference between his proposition and that which the Noble
Lord chose to grant was this—he was for full inquiry—
( flear)—which, if the Commissioners' Reports be just, the
Noble 'Lord could have no occasion to fear. The Noble Lord
was for a partial inquiry, which, he would venture to say,
would not and ought not to be satisfactory to the people. He
then moved that a select Committee be appointed to inquire
into the operation of the Poor-law Amendment Act, and to re-
port their opinion to the House.
Mr. JOHN FIELDEN have always condemned
this Bill ; I voted against it on every division during the time
when it was passing, and I am here to-night to compiain of its
working, now that it is a law. The Commissioners are now
trying to introduce this Act into Lancashire and Yorkshire,
and I tell the Noble Lord he may as well attempt to conquer
the world as attempt to effect that object.—( Hear, hear.) My
own opinion is, that the motion of the Hon. Member for Berk-
shire ought to have been for a total repeal of this Act.—
Cheers.) The Noble Lord saye.that the Bill is working well.
It is not working well. In page 6 the Commissioners state
that the complaints made by the labouring people are not so
much against the diet as against the imprisonment, and the
separation of man from wife, and of parent from child, that
they endure in the Union workhouses ; and I put it to every
Member of this House, whether chat complaint is not a just
one I And I put it to his Majesty's Attorney-General, whether,
according to the law of England, so severe a law can be in-
flicted, where there is no other crime than poverty ?—( Hear,
hear.) I should like to hear his Majesty's Attorney-General
justify this by any law that is recognised in England. I call on
him to state that such is the law, if it be the law of England ;
and I call upon the House to join us in demanding a full in-
quiry into the facts. I assure the House that the approach
of the Poor-law Commissioners has created extreme dread in
extensive districts of the north. I have myself received many
petitions to this House upon that subject, both from Lancashire
and Yorkshire. From one township I have received a copy
of the resolutions passed at a meeting, which I will read to
the House. Here the Hon. Member read a string of resolu-
tions, one of which was to the effect, that the object of the
Poor-law Amendment Act was to grind the labouring people
down to the level of our unfortunate brethren in Ireland.—
( Cheers.) Another was for raising funds to protect those
who may suffer from any resistance they may offer to the
Commissioners. Another was also for raising funds in order to
carry on a system of passive resistance to them, after the
manner recommended by Lord Fitzwilliam and Lord Broug-
ham—namely, " by buttoning up our breeches pockets, and
stopping the Supplies."—(Cheers.) When I first came into
this House, knowing intimately the sufferings of an immense
body of workmen, the handloom weavers, from an insufficiency
of wages, I attempted to procure for thorn some interference
from this House which should improve their condition. I pro-
cured a Committee to be appointed, before which I proved that
those workmen, labouring from morning till night, could earn
for themselves and theirfamjlies not more than the pittance
of twopence per head per day. This House refused to act
upon my suggestions to regulate the rate of wages that they
should receive ; and now I put it to the House whether, if
one of these hardworking men, through sickness or accident,
becomes incapable of labour, it is just to treat that man as a
criminal in the mode of giving him relief? Is it just to make
this man go into an union workhouse and put on a prison dress,
and submit to separation from his wife and children, before
you will aid him in his sufferings ? I deny that it is--( Hear)
—and as I have found that this House is unwilling to do that
which is to keep the people from poverty, 1 will resist this
Act, which punishes them for being poor.—(Cheers.) Now,
Sir, as to the means which are put in force to thrust this Act
upon an unwilling people. In plisse sof the Poor-law Commis-
sioners'Secondßeport they state those means in these words :
";Partial riots have occurred in different counties, but the aid of
small parties of the metropolitan police (who, by a provision of a
most useful Act of the last session can now be sworn in and paid
as special constables in any county in England), occasionally
aided by the support of a military force, these disturbances
have been put down without any considerable injury to pro-
perty." So that here is this well-working Act of the Noble
Lord, which satisfies the country, and yet which requires this
new military force to carry it into execution.—( Hear, hear.)
Consulting the votes of this House, I find that the Act was
brought in after twelve o'clock at night, by the Hon. Fox
Maule, the Under_ Secretary to the Noble Lord at the head
of the Home Department.—( Hear, hear.) The object of
the Act is clear enough. The Poor-taw Commissioners hail
it as useful; and it is doubtless useful to the Poor-law Com-
missioners. We have got, Sir, by stealth, and at midnight,
that rural police which, I trust, we never could have had
by the light of day. Already I see by the newspapers that
this London police has been sent 220 miles down into the
country to quell the Cornish miners, who are resisting the
new Poor-law. I do not forget, Sir, the words of Sir James
Scarlett with respect to the Poor-law, when it was passing
through the House. I remember his saying of the Central
Board of Commissioners, that it was an imperium in inzperio,
and that the people of England would never be made to submit
to Hear.) I hold in my hand an essay on the English
Constitution, written and put forth to the world by Lord John
Russell ; and in describing the sort of force that would be the
destroyer of the English Constitution, lie has held up to our
eves, as a warning, the picture of that very force which the
Poor-law Commissioners have described to us as a " useful"
reality.—( Cheers.) But, Sir, these are the words, and they
arc contained in page 379 of his Lordship's own book :—" It
is in this point of view that the increase o: a standing army
is really dangerous, and the encouragement of military
habits most pernicious. And the reptile is the more to be
guarded against as it would approach without the rattle
which gives warning of its vicinity, and serves as a pre-
servative against its poison. A standing army which destroyed
the freedom of England would not march by beat of drum
to Westminster, and dismiss the House of Commons. It
would not proscribe the House of Peers, and deluge the
streets of London with the blood of her Magistrates. It
would appear in the shape of a guardian of order ; it would
support the authority of the two Houses of Parliament; it
would be hostile to none but mobs and public meetings, and
shed no blood but that of labourers and journeymen. It would
establish the despotic power, not of a single King, or a single
General, but of a host of corrupt senators, and half a million
of petty tyrants." Now, what I anticipate is, that this now
force will be sent down into the peaceful valley of Todmor_
den, where I have all my life lived, there to coerce me and
my neighbours into subjection to these three Commissioners.
But 1, in my turn, warn the Noble Lord against making us
feel this abandonment of his own principles.—( Hear.) I tell
him it will be resisted; and, moreover, I don't shrink from
telling him to his faro that I myself will, if necessary, be a
leader In the resistance. If it has come to this at last, that
the Sheriff's wand and the constable's staff are no longer effec-
tive in maintaining the peace, and if this new law is to be the
cause of that destruction of the Constitution which the Noble
Lord has himself so well described, resistance has be-
come our duty, and I am prepared to perform my part.—
( Hear, hear, hear.) I hold in my hand a statement put
forth by the Guardians of the Bridge Union, in Kent,
showing the receipts and expenditure for the quarter ends
ing September 29, 1836. The population of the Bridge
Union is 10,636, or 1-316th part of the whole population of
England and \Vales ; and I find from this statement that the
total sum expended in the quarter for in-door maintenance
and out-relief is 6101. 16s. 51d. ; fourstimes this would be
2,443/. Bs. 9d. for the whole year. Now, 1,316 times this is
3,214,9881. the actual amount that would be expended for
in-maintenance and out-relief in England and \Vales if every
parish were similarly managed. But then we have to add
the establishment charges—the cost of the machinery of
management. That item, according- to the same statement,
amounts, in the Bridge Union, fur tub same quarter, to
1,1451. 15s. ; four times this makes it 4,5751. for the year,
and 1,316 times this is 6,020,7001. for the whole of England
and Wales, when it shall come under similar management to
that of the parishes comprising the Union of Bridge. The
sum actually spent on the poor in this union, for a year,
and extended over England and Wales, would, according to
this, amount to 3,214,988/., and the establishment charges to
6,020,700 L, making together 9,233,688/. —a larger sum
than has ever been collected in the name of the poor, even
when it was customary to pay. county-rates and highway-
rates out of the sum collected as poor-rates. I will now
compare this expenditure with the actual expense of the
poor in two townships where the poor are relieved without
having this expensive establishment. The township of
Oldham, which I represent, is one, and the township of Tod-
morden and Walsden, where I was born, and I have always
lived, is the other. For this purpose I have taken the year
ending March, 1836, the last year the accounts are made up.
The population of the township of Oldham, according to the
census of 1831, is 32,381 ; or 1-432 d part of the population of
England and Wales. The sum disbursed to the poor was
2,194/. This multiplied by 432, the proportion of population
which Oldham bears to England and Wales, will be 947,8091.;
so that, under the management which prevailed at Oldham,
the expenditure for the actual relief of the poor would, if ex-
tended over England and Wales, be 947,808/., while, if all
were conducted in proportion to the expenditure of the Bridge
Union, the expenditure in actual relief for England and Wales
would be 3,214,9881., and the establishment or machinery, to
bring it about, would cost 6,020,7001., making together
9,935,688/. Now I will compare this with the expenditure of
the township of Todmorden and Walsden, where I served the
office of overseer of the poor in the difficult year of 1817. The
population, according to the census, is upwards of 6,000 ; or
1-2333 d part of the population of England and Wales. The
sum disbursed to the poor was, in the year ending March,
1836, 4031. This multiplied by 2,333, the proportion of
population' which my township bears to that of all England
and Wales, gives 940,1991. So that England, tnanaged in the
manner adopted at Todmorden and Walsden, would pay in
poop's-rate ti-Itel WV- Tile rpt4rnp from 0114491 494 fferfl
Todmorden I have had from the parish officess. They have
been audited and passed by the magistrates and rate-payers ;
but it is very singular that they do riot agree with the return
riven by the Poor-law Commissioners to this House, printed
do the leth of August hat, and now in the hands of Hon.
Members. I beg the attention of the House to this; for I
assert that here is a paltering with the truth that demands in-
quiry, In the Commissioners' retutt I find under the head of
" Expended for the Relief of the Poor," in the township of
Oldham, year ended 25th March' 1836, 2,5161. 14s. ; whereas
the account that I have received says, " Paid to the 'poor
2,194/. Os. 7d. i" that is, $22/, les. ed., or 12 per cent., less