POOR-LAWS.

Until very recently, the great interest felt in the body of laws comprehended under the above title, was derived from the consciousness of the danger with which the manner of their administration in England threatened the property of the rich, and the morality of the whole people. As the law continues fundamentally the same as it was before the adoption of an improved administration, that source of interest in these institutions remains; but the present sense of security renders possible a calmer and more dispassionate examination of their merits and demerits than could previously to the year 1834 have been made by the most candid persons acquainted with the rapid progress of the evils of the system.

It was generally, and is now frequently, assumed by English writers, that a legal system of compulsory relief to the poor was peculiar to the polity of England. No assumption could be less justified by the facts, as will presently be shown. Wherever inquiry has been made, it has been found that the same objects as were sought by the institution in England have been sought by means which more strictly resemble those adopted in England, in proportion as the condition of the community resembles that of England in the complexity of its social relations, and the progress of its legal polity.

So general an adoption of analogous institutions amongst independent communities was, of course, not fortuitous, nor the mere result of imitation; and these institutions are everywhere of too distinct and recent an origin to be traceable to any of the primitive laws or customs of those people who have descended from one common race.

On the contrary, it was the development of the like evils in the progress of the civilization of each country which suggested the adoption of the like remedy. The evils, which were sufficient to induce nations to try a remedy so obviously fraught with great dangers both to the givers and to the receivers, and requiring sacrifices so immediate and so incapable of disguise, appear to have been at least as pressing elsewhere as in England. The description of these evils shows that they were and must be of universal prevalence, and that they have their origin in the constitution of mankind, and not in any such incidents as the dissolution of monasteries, or in any other local or temporary incident.

There never was a time or place in which there were not to be found men anxious to avoid labour, and yet to live in ease and enjoyment. There never was a time in which other men were not, from their sympathy, from their superstition, and from their fears, ready with their bounty to assist the necessitous, and liable to be imposed upon and intimidated, according as the beggar was crafty or bold. No community is so poor as not to suffer in some degree from the existence of a body of idle and worthless persons, subsisting profligately on the benevolence, the folly, or the fears of its members.

And as the condition of the people is found to improve, as progress is made in the arts and commodities of life, there is, of course, found a greater disparity in the condition of the people, and destitution more violently contrasted with opulence. Such a state of things, whilst it increases the means at the disposal of the benevolent and fortunate, increases the sympathy with the unfortunate, or those who appear to be so, and at the same time presents wealth in such masses as to serve as a temptation to those who may prefer to live by fraud or violence. Mendicancy and depredation, which are nearly impossible where a population is scattered, and its moveable wealth in small quantity, become easy in the contrary state of things.

It is accordingly found, in the progress of the civilization of every country, that a period arrives when beggary in its many forms, and with its whole train of consequences, appears in an alarming extent, usually even professed by large fraternities having some character of organization; sometimes connected by religious profession, like palmers, pilgrims, and various orders of mendicant friars, faquirs, dervishes; sometimes connected by supposed identity of race, as the people known throughout the continent of Europe, and largely in Asia, as Zingari, Gypseys, Bohemians: these, with the unfortunate and dissolute of all classes, find a means of living by practising various arts of amusement, and more frequently by operating on the superstitious credulity, and often on the fears, of the more wealthy and industrious part of the community. All accounts of such a state of things, wherever it may have prevailed, agree in showing that predatory habits almost invariably accompany, where occasion offers, the habit of mendicancy.

Great as were the evils obviously connected with the existence of such a mass of idlers, impostors, and depredators, there were not wanting motives to the other classes to perpetuate and increase the evil. Individual benevolence, even where accompanied by intelligence and prudence, although its objects may be immediately selected from the really unfortunate, would not withhold its indirect aid to this bad effect, its respectable example seducing many to imitate the act, without using the due precautions.

But a much greater share of the effect must always be attributed to the incautious benevolence of the great mass of those who have the power to give. It requires great knowledge and sagacity to distinguish the cases in which alms can be given without directly encouraging idleness, or [7:18:365]some worse vice; and to direct these qualities effectively to each application would, in the state of things described, require an amount of industry, and an expenditure of time, seldom or never possible. The ignorance and indolence, therefore, of the benevolent, afford the largest encouragements to the idle. Other influences are not wanting, especially ostentation and the love of popularity, which, where many live in idleness, never fail to create dependents and retainers to the full extent of the power or the will to maintain them. Superstition, too, has in all times enforced almsgiving as a virtue, and, operating upon the consciences of great criminals, has throughout the world created and endowed the largest and most magnificent of the so-called charities.

In the above description will be recognised a state of things partially exemplified, either in one set of its details or in another, in every country in Europe, more especially in those in which, like Spain, Naples, the Sardinian states, Ireland, and other countries, no public or well-controlled and systematic provision for the poor has been established.^[1. For a very ample detail of the state of mendicancy and vagrancy of private and public charitable institutions, in the chief countries of Europe and in the United States, the reader is referred to the Appendix (F) of Foreign Communications made to the Poor-Law Commissioners, 1835, and especially to the interesting abstract of and comment upon these communications by Nassau W. Senior, Esq. entitled, “A Statement of the Provision for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes, in a considerable portion of America and Europe 8vo, Fellowes, 1835. ]

These observations will be well instanced in England during the progress of the institutions of which a description is about to be given.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL OBJECTIONS TO PUBLIC RELIEF AND TO PRIVATE ALMS-GIVING.

The fact was adverted to in the beginning of this article, that the existing state of the poor-laws enables us to take a more dispassionate view of the abstract merits and defects of a system of public relief than was formerly possible.

Hitherto the question has been embarrassed by the consciousness of the evils which we were suffering, and of those towards which we were visibly making a rapid progress. On the other hand, the evils of general mendicancy, and the other painful and dangerous circumstances which are everywhere found to prevail where a public law of relief has not been established, are so little known in England, from whence our poor-laws have long excluded them, that little of the good really derived from our poor-laws was acknowledged, whilst the whole of their positive mischief was so apparent as to form almost alone the matter of every discussion of the merits of the system.

Before great accumulations of moveable wealth have taken place in any community, depredation to any large extent is scarcely possible, and mendicancy as a trade cannot be followed in such a community, especially where its population is widely scattered. Alms-giving, in the usual sense of the term, does not exist; but its place is often supplied by hospitality to the stranger and traveller, and by the readiness to share with friends or relatives the means of enjoyment which individuals may possess. But in countries where comparatively great accumulations of wealth have taken place, and where poor-laws have not been introduced, or where, as in Ireland, they have not taken root, alms-giving and begging are either avowedly permitted or connived at. And, for reasons hereafter to be shown, the alternative of a regulated system of public relief, or the practical permission, whether avowed or not, to solicit private alms, appears inevitable.

It would be an evasion of the question to compare a well-devised system of poor-laws with a system in which almsgiving was to be substituted. It is necessary, in order to do full justice to the comparison, to assume a system of poor-laws fraught with all the evils known to be derivable from such a system, and administered with a degree of laxity not less than that of which we have had a practical experience. A system of public relief may be bad in principle, and yet judiciously administered; or it may be good in its principle, and ill administered. For the present purpose, a system shall be assumed, bad in its principle and bad in its administration.

In this view, the law may give a claim to all persons not having means of independent subsistence, to be relieved, without subjecting the claimant to any harsh or disagreeable condition. Such a claim, though never in fact countenanced by the law, was practically allowed for above a quarter of a century in many parts of England. A law of this kind would obviously render all those who by their exertions could at the utmost earn but a bare subsistence, averse to industry, which in such a case would be a sacrifice of ease without any increased advantage. If present industry were rendered useless, so would thrift and forethought become a folly, an abandonment of present enjoyment without an object. Every present indulgence which the law allowed would wisely be enjoyed; good moral habits and bodily skill would have little merit if the law should place those with them and those without them in the enjoyment of the like benefits. What appears desirable for a man’s advantage, it is a virtue in him to do also for his progeny. The paupers’ children would be themselves paupers, and the law would present to them every inducement to beget other paupers, and no inducement to refrain. Such we have seen the English pauper, slothful, thoughtless but of his parish pay, sometimes living to see three generations of his progeny paupers, like to or worse than himself.^[2. See Extracts from evidence received by the Commissioners of Inquiry: “We have cases of three generations of paupers,” p. 204. See at p. 218 an amusing instance of three generations of the same stock contemporaneously relieved, at the rate of L. 100 per year, by a parish; see also pp. 220, 228, 358. ]

But the idle pauper cannot be supported except from those funds which must otherwise employ and reward the industrious. Every pauper, for his support, consumes that which would maintain or nearly maintain an industrious labourer; with this difference, that the consumption of the pauper is never repaid, whilst the value of the labourer’s consumption is always reproduced with a profit, which again affords the means of employing other industry. The pauper, therefore, is constantly drawing those above him into his own rank. The misfortune of those reluctantly becoming paupers produces a sympathy which extends to the voluntary pauper, and the unfortunate and the idle become less and less distinguishable.

If the law increases its bounty with the number of the paupers’ offspring, all these evils are aggravated and accelerated. If the law, like the English bastardy law, renders the reward for having a bastard child greater than the allowance to a legitimate child, another source of immorality is opened, female virtue is at a disadvantage, and unchastity, becoming a source of profit, becomes respectable.^[3. See Extracts from the information received by the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Poor-Laws. A clergyman in Cumberland speaks thus of the practice of that county: “A very different description of women have of late years become the mothers of bastard children. Formerly it was confined to the daughters of cottagers, and girls employed in farm-husbandry; but of late very respectable farmers’ daughters have been in that situation, and have applied to have their offspring taken care of by the parish.” (Captain Pringle’s Report, p. 404.) The next extract is from the evidence of an overseer in the same county. “We at this time, in our parish, are supporting two bastard children, whose mothers have landed property of their own, and would not marry the fathers of their children.” (Ibid.) “ r ihe daughters of some farmers, and even landowners, have bastard children. These farmers and landowners, and children with them, regularly kept back their poor-rate, to meet the parish allowance for their daughter’s bastard.” (íôíd.) “Captain Pringle states, that in the neighbourhood of Carlisle, it was not unusual for the daughters of small farmers, or statesmen as they are here called (men farming their own property), to have bastard children, and to come to the parish for allowance.” (Ibid. p. 403.) ]

If the law takes the yet more insidious course of providing [7:18:366]relief to those who live partly by regular industry, the evils described are enormously increased. In this way the whole industrious population may be destroyed, almost without rendering the recipients conscious of their degradation. In this way the forethought of the industrious man becomes of as little value to him as it is to the pauper, and the whole of the restraints on population are destroyed in the great bulk of the people.

But relief to his workman is in fact for the moment relief to the master; the public undertaking a portion of the maintenance of the servant, saves to that extent the wages of the employer. The corruption of the system thus reaches the master as well as the labourer, and each is equally induced, by his immediate interest, to secure and continue to himself his portion of the benefit, unless we presume them to be more provident than the law itself.

That such bad principles might be involved in a poor-law, is undoubted; for although the English law never, either in letter or spirit, contained all these elements together, yet it at one period or another in succession contained them all, and a loose and in some measure a corrupt administration gave, for a long time, prevalence to all their influences together.

This brings into view the evils of a bad administration of the law. Suppose its execution intrusted to officers who must, in a majority of cases, be necessarily ignorant of its complicate objects, being ignorant of the common rudiments of education;^[4. See as to the illiterateness, general ignorance, and inefficiency of overseers, the volume of Extracts before cited, at the passages referred to in the index, under the title “Overseers.” ∙ ∕ ] and let such officers be in no way distinguished by their interests being made to accord with the interests of the community in a good administration; the obvious consequence must be such as we have seen in England, that the best portions of the law must be badly administered, whilst the bad parts, by such instruments, can scarcely be expected to have these evils softened by a good administration. But a certain consequence would be, that those whose interests were identical with the welfare of the community, would be reluctant to serve the office, which would thus be left to others who could best employ its provisions to their own advantage. Thus in England the overseer was generally found, even when zealous in the discharge of his duty, blindly giving effect to the most pernicious part of the system. When merely weak, without being corrupt, we find him a tool in the hands of those whose object it was to procure labour at a low price, at the expense of the other ratepayers, and at the peril of the gradual though certain deterioration of the labourer and his posterity. Such an overseer was also subject, as a matter of course, to the cajolery or intimidation of the pauper, to the seduction of popularity, readily to be got by the expenditure in mis-called charity of other people’s contributions. But the natural operation of the system was to find or to make its officers corrupt, as it was natural that that class of men should be readiest to execrate the officer, whose circumstances best allowed them to avail themselves, for their own advantage, of the law. In England we found that the more pauperized the district, the more certainly was the overseer an employer of pauper labour, or a supplier to the paupers, on his private account, of the objects of their daily consumption, or the owner of the habitations in which they lived, and for which the parish guaranteed a certain and exorbitant rent.

Even these evils might be aggravated by parcelling the country out into districts too small to allow of the procuring of the necessary means even of an economical administration. In England, few parishes or townships were large enough to afford a workhouse or to contract for the supply of the articles of consumption for the poor. Many were so small, that the cost of purchasing small books of account was considered as an extravagance.

We have another important example of the way in which the administration could be carried to the extreme of badness; namely, by the provision of a control which could by its nature operate only to enforce an improvident administration, and which should have no authority to check it. England, again, affords us an example of such a device in the authority of the justices of the peace. The justice was enabled to enforce the giving of relief where the overseer from any motive had refused it; but the justice of the peace had no authority to interfere when the overseer was profligately allowing relief.

. The effects of such a system, then, would inevitably be the same as we have witnessed in England. Such have been, perhaps, too indiscriminately attributed to poor-laws generally. These effects were, in a former article in this publication, very distinctly and ably described and elucidated. They were described, first, as a disturbance of the natural course of population, which they increased without reference to the means of support; and, indeed, in the inverse direction, inasmuch as every addition to the number of the non-produotive or the partially productive paupers diminished the means of living of the other portions of the community. Secondly, as increasing the very pauperism which it was their object to relieve. Thirdly, as productive of improvidence in the poor, who saw no worse consequence of a dissolute and idle life, than an eventual reliance, in common with millions of their fellow-subjects, upon the parish for their support in sickness or old age, or in the visitation of those calamities against which it is the task of prudence to provide. A fourth effect, much dwelt upon, was the misapprehension caused by these institutions as to the real cause of poverty and distress, and the operation of this misapprehension in producing a discontented spirit in those who encourage the notion that they have a right to relief, but entertain no equally definite notion of their duty to provide for themselves. The fifth evil was the encouragement which the system, as administered, was found to give to every species of immorality: idleness in the day, encouraging depredation, poaching, and smuggling by night, facilitating the resort to the beer-shop again by day: particularly the law of bastardy was observed to be rapidly destroying the virtue of the females, and, by producing ill-assorted marriages, the whole of those domestic virtues, both of parents and children, which depend mainly on a happy home. And it was also remarked, that the law of settlement had a large effect in lowering the character of all who claimed a maintenance from the parish; it being notorious that the most steady, industrious, and moral workmen, upon whom the employer can place his surest reliance, are those who do not legally belong to the parish in which they are living.

Such is the description of an extensive system of poor-laws, framed on a bad principle, and badly administered; and such are their observed effects.
[7:18:367]

But it does not thence follow, that a poor-law well devised and well administered should find no place in the polity of a nation.

There appear to be at least two resources besides that of adopting bad principles in such a law, or adopting a bad constitution of officers for its administration. The first resource is to exclude such an institution altogether.

Some few countries taking their place by common estimation amongst civilized nations, have made no public provision for the poor. Ireland was practically, before the session of 1837-1838, without such a provision. England was in the same condition until the reign of Elizabeth. In all such countries rigorous enactments exist against mendicancy, but everywhere such enactments are defeated by the common co-operation of the whole people. It will be seen, that in England the most ferocious penal enactments were repeated, with every variation that ingenuity could devise, for the purpose of suppressing mendicancy and vagrancy; and yet at every stage of legislation it is avowed that the evil was still increasing. Ireland had, up to the time of Henry VIII. the English laws in this respect; and the sanguinary laws of Henry VIII. are still the laws of Ireland. Until this day, a criminal who evades conviction for some greater offence is occasionally transported under the vagrancy laws; in all other cases the public opinion revolts against the application of the penalty; and the law, though in the statute-book, is without effect.

It appears a preposterous expectation, that any people will generally sympathise or co-operate with the law which, whilst it leaves the unfortunate to perish, pretends to render mendicancy a crime. So common is the sentiment against such an attempt, that many systems of jurisprudence avowedly admit necessity, or the extreme danger of perishing for want, as a legal excuse for some offences, and as a palliation of any offence directly incited by the pressure of such necessity. There appears, therefore, no means of preventing mendicancy, but by a recognised provision of public relief.

Mendicancy is often expressly permitted by law; sometimes it is allowed to particular classes of persons, as discharged soldiers and sailors and their families, poor students, discharged prisoners, and such like. Sometimes a limit is assigned to begging, a given route on the way homewards, or a given district in which a party may have been born or may have become otherwise domiciled. Even in England, both these kinds of license and restriction have, till within these few years, formed part of our statutelaw, and both species are still leading features in the law of Ireland. The effect of such restrictions has nearly everywhere been the same as in our own country, viz. to give authority to mendicancy, without in any way operating to diminish it.

Let us now examine the effects of mendicancy, whether permitted by the law or not; comparing it throughout with the operation of a bad system of poor-laws. In the first place, it, like pauperism, destroys industry, but the mendicant is wholly and entirely idle, with no one responsible to see him set to work, and, being for the most part unknown to those who relieve him, is under no necessity even to affect, like the pauper, a readiness to work. The mendicant’s progeny is like himself in this respect, except that, being early bred to the parent’s habits, industry becomes nearly impossible to them; whilst the occupation of both is such, that even on the supposition that an inclination to adopt a life of industry should be excited, few occupations could be found to which they would be fitted, and still fewer employers who would engage them. In respect of the influences upon industry, therefore, the individual mendicant is under worse influences than the individual pauper relieved by the worst system of poor-laws. So with respect to the general morality of the mendicant. The pauper is under some restraints, owing to his being settled amongst neigh bours upon whose good opinion he is at least in some measure dependent; he must be known to the officers of his parish, and by this alone is kept in contact with and in fear of the law. The local sphere for the exercise of his vices is one of narrow limits. These restraints keep the pauper under considerable subjection, both to law and to opinion. But no such restraints operate upon the mendicant. No irregularity of conduct, no vice, can exclude him more from general society than his daily mode of life already does; even if, amongst his fellows, any vice should be recognised as sufficiently repulsive to exclude him from their companionship, their unsettled life renders it impossible that the reputation or the knowledge of his odious qualities could very closely attend him. Add to this absence of restraint the positive encouragement given by their more various and adventurous life, the zest with which its frauds and its darings are performed, and the glory with which they are recounted; these accompaniments have rendered the beggar’s life popular, as the subject of romance, and occasionally as the object of imitation amongst even the better educated and more fortunate members of society. A pauper was never yet, as the beggar often is, the romantic hero of a ballad or a legend. Here, again, the influences on the individual mendicant arc more pernicious than those on the pauper.

The same disadvantageous comparison exists when we consider the unlimited opportunities afforded by the mendicant’s mode of life for every species of petty theft and depredation, habits which appear invariably to accompany that of vagrancy.

In England we have a difficulty in conceiving the extent to which the habits of mendicancy may be carried on, and the varieties in its practice. It would be comparatively a small evil that a few mendicants should be found to be preeminently vicious characters; and this evil would bear no comparison with the evil of a pauperism spread as widely as that formerly in England. But some estimate may be formed of the extent to which mendicancy may be carried where there are no poor-laws, by a reference to the state of Ireland, in which it is represented that, in a population of eight millions, not less than 200,000 habitua! mendicants and vagrants exist, and where this number is annually reinforced by the accession of the wives and families of those labourers who have left their homes in search of work elsewhere, and which are represented, in the evidence collected by the Commissioners of Poor-Laws Inquiry in Ireland, to exceed a million of persons.

The evil of mendicancy, therefore, may even bear a comparison in the extent and number of those practising it, with the evil of pauperism even under a bad poor-law.

Now, let the operation upon the distributors in both cases be compared. No regular machinery is devised for the supply of the mendicant, but he is let loose upon the whole of society, to procure his living by every means by which the sympathies, the virtues, the follies, the weaknesses, or the vices of man may be attacked. Though much of the relief given to the mendicant is prompted by the benevolence of the giver, much also has its origin in sympathies falsely excited; in folly, and especially in the vanity and ostentation of him who dispenses the alms. Much, too, of the alms given to mendicants, in alms-giving countries, is given with the object of acquiring power over a disorderly and reckless class. In all countries, in times of commotion, we have seen this class unscrupulous instruments in the hands of those who, by their largesses, or by the exciting of expectations, had attached a large number of these classes. An example is seen in Spain, where the merit chiefly professed by the distributors of the alms of enormous charities is that of relieving the wants of armies of mendicants.

No instrument in the hands of ambitious and designing persons has ever been found more effective than that of retaining large classes of ready-formed mendicants, and of [7:18:368]bringing the poorer classes, under specious names, as near as possible to the condition of receivers of alms.

The effects upon the distributors has been equally to the disadvantage of the practice of alms-giving, inasmuch as the appointment of officers to administer the public fund has not been, and cannot be conceived to be, as pernicious as the innumerable institutions and fraternities of idle men brought together for the purpose chiefly of distributing alms. A portion of this operation may be seen and appreciated in the comparison between an ordinary overseer and the trustees who usually have distribution of private charities, the masses of which in England and Wales are shown by the Reports of the Commissioners of Charity to have been diverted from their proposed objects for the benefit of those who had the control in their hands.

Another advantage which a system of poor-laws has over alms-giving is this: Poor-laws are subject to the control of the legislature. Their evils, as discovered, may one by one be pruned away by the power which has created the whole institution; and they can also, at the will of the legislature, if such should appear to be an advisable course, be at any time totally abolished. Mendicancy, on the other hand, and alms-giving, arc beyond the effective control of the law. Where once established by habit, no interference of the legislature can effectively modify them, no prohibition of the legislature can abrogate them. The sole corrective appears to be a retreat from private alms, by the adoption of a system of public relief as a means of discountenancing the mendicant’s claim.

Thus far have been compared bad poor-laws with mendicancy; and it has been attempted to show that, even in this comparison, private alms-giving is exposed to disadvantages greater than those attached to a system of public relief. The comparison thus far with poor-laws has, as an abstract question, become unfair, because it seems possible, and recent experience appears to confirm the conclusion, that a poor-law may be so devised and so administered as to take away all plea for guilt founded upon absolute necessity; to diminish no man’s present motives to labour, and bring up his offspring to industry; to offer the least possible inducements to improvidence, so far as improvidence is involved in neglecting to make accumulations against old age and other calamities. This appears to be rendered possible by the administration of such relief that those capable of working would reject it, as less desirable than independent industry in the time of their health and vigour, and less desirable than provisions secured by prudence for their old age.

CHAPTER II.

HISTORY OF ENGLISH POOR-LAWS TILL THE YEAR 1834.

The most authentic accounts, at least those which prove most incontestibly the prevalence of the habits of mendicancy and vagrancy in England, and give the best evidence of the extent to which their evils were recognised, may be found in the expressions of our early statutes.

It will not be possible to give a detailed description, either of the contents of the series of our statutes, or of their effects. The number of statutes passed for the suppression of vagrancy, mendicancy, and idleness, and for the relief of the poor, amount at the least to a hundred and e ighty-seven 5 those now in force, commencing with the statute 43 Elizabeth, and including only the modifications of that law, amount to a hundred and eighteen, and contain matter of itself about equal to four average volumes of the statutes at large. None, therefore, but the most salient points in the legislation of the last four centuries and a half will be adverted to in the following summary of the progress of legislation upon these subjects.

We first find indications of a general relaxation of the industry of our population in the reign of Richard II. Civil discord had unquestionably its effect in producing the result; but a change in the habits of the population had been produced by the increase of commerce and of communication with other countries, and a large accession had at this time been made to the disposable wealth of the community. The large system of vagabondage, sanctified by the name of pilgrimage, of which the expeditions known as the Crusades were the most salient instance, had begotten a spirit of restlessness and idleness in Europe, infecting even our insular population. It was not so much the habit of beggary, as the desire of change and restlessness of life, that the statute of the 12th Richard II. chap. 7, passed in the year 1388, was intended to repress. This statute, though entirely directed against habits characterized in that day ε,s vagabondage, scarcely recognises beggary as an habitual pursuit. Its main provisions are confined to the object of restraining labourers from changing their abodes. It prohibits any labourer from departing from the hundred, rape, wapentake, city, or borough, where he is dwelling, without a testimonial showing reasonable cause for his going, to be issued under the authority of the justices of peace. Any labourer found wandering without such letter is to be put in the stocks till he find surety to return to the town from whence he came. So far are its enactments from affording any evidence that able-bodied persons of either sex exercised by choice to any large extent the trade of mendicancy, that the only other class besides labourers which it recognises are the impotent. As to impotent persons, it provides that they are to remain in the towns in which they be dwelling at the time of the act; or if the inhabitants are unable or unwilling to support them, they are to withdraw to other towns within the hundred, rape, or wapentake, or to the towns where they were born, and there abide during their lives.

From the earliest periods, but from this time especially, begging was an offence; yet the chief enactments of the two succeeding centuries are rather confined to the object of restraining the movements of labourers than to the restraining of able-bodied beggars. The provisions of the 1 lth Henry VII. chap. 2, however, require beggars not able to work to go to the hundred where last they dwelt, or were best known, or born, without begging out of the hundred. The 19th Henry VII. chap. 12, passed eight years afterwards (in 1504), requires them to go to the town, city, or hundred where they were born, or to the place where they last abode for the space of three years, without begging out of the said city, town, hundred, or place.

The legislation affecting the classes of poor least able to provide for themselves, had thus far been entirely restrictive, and contained that clement of the poor-laws by which they are connected with police, almost to as great an extent as is to be found in our most recent institutions. They also indirectly contain a complete settlement law; for, by confining the labourers, but especially the impotent poor and beggars, to the places in which they dwelt at the time of the act being passed, or in which they had been born, or to the places of their last abode, they directly settled such persons on the places thus defined, and rendered the districts chargeable with the burden, at least to the extent to which the endowments of the church and the benevolence of individuals could be applied to the purpose. At length, especially after all the revenues of the church were diverted from the purpose of maintaining the poor, legislation becomes of a severe penal character, and is more immediately directed against those who practise mendicancy as a trade, viz. “able-bodied, sturdy, and valiant beggars.” At the same time, the distinction becomes more apparent [7:18:369]between the impotent poor and those whom the legislature evidently regarded as voluntary poor, and whom the law now subjects to heavy and even sanguinary penalties. The 22d Henry VII. chap. 12, passed in the year 1531, directs the justices to assign to the impotent poor a limit within which they arc to beg. An impotent person begging out of his limit is to be imprisoned for two days and nights in the stocks, fed on bread and water, and then sworn to return to the place in which he was authorized to beg. An able-bodied beggar is to be whipped, and sworn to return to the place where he was born, or last dwelt for the space of three years, and there put himself to labour.

Thus far restrictions upon vagrancy, whether originating in misfortune or idleness, or more serious vice, had proved unavailable. The evil had not been repressed; it had evidently increased, and at length drove the legislature to the adoption, not only of severer penalties, according to the old policy, but of a new expedient.

With imperfect machinery for giving effect to its intentions, without security that where its intention was carried into effect evils greater than those against which it was intended to provide might not arise, a system was now created which, in all its policy, is identical with that which now exists in England, and is about to be introduced into Ireland. The means employed, and not the policy itself, alone distinguish the legislation of the two periods. In the first place, beggary and vagrancy-are still to be repressed, but no one is to be driven, by absolute destitution, to an infraction of the law; all excuse is to be taken away from the beggar. In the next place, the sympathy of the community with the law is to be secured by a provision at the public expense against the evil consequences of individual destitution. In the last place, the compulsory provision thus made by the community is to be protected by compelling those capable of exertion, and seeking to avail themselves of it, to accept it subject to the condition of working for the maintenance thus secured to them; a condition obviously intended to be as hard or harder than that upon which the independent man obtains his own support, and rendering the alternative of independent industry preferable to that of dependence on the public charity.^[5. With regard to the erroneous impression until recently prevalent in England, that poor-laws were institutions peculiar to this country, it is important to observe, that the system of law for repression of mendicancy and relief of the poor here described, was a direct and palpable imitation of a continental institution. Six years before the enactment of the 27th Henry VIII. (that is, in the year 1530), the magistrates of Ypres, in Belgium, enacted a set of regulations, which, as stated by Mr Hallam, manifestly form the model which was followed a few years afterwards by the legislature of this country. The regulations in question appear to have been adopted in the adjacent provinces of the Netherlands, under the sanction of an edict of Charles V. See a paper by Mr Hallam in the first volume of the Transactions of the Statistical Society. ]

The 27th Henry VIII. chap. 25, passed in the year 1536, recites the act last mentioned, and adds, that no provision is made for the support of the impotent, nor for the setting and keeping in work of valiant beggars; and then enacts, that the land-officers of every city, shire, town, and parish, to which such poor creatures or sturdy vagabonds shall repair, in obedience to that act, shall most charitably receive the same, and shall keep the same poor people by way of voluntary and charitable alms, within the respective cities, shires, towns, hundreds, hamlets, and parishes, by their discretion, so that none of them, of very necessity, shall be compelled to beg openly, and shall compel the said sturdy vagabonds and valiant beggars to be kept to continual labour, in such wise as they may get their own living by the continual labour of their own hands, on pain that every parish making default shall forfeit twenty shillings a month. Almsgiving otherwise than to these common boxes, or common gatherings, or to fellow-parishioners, or prisoners, is prohibited on forfeiture of ten times the amount given. A sturdy beggar is to be whipped the first time, his right ear cropped the second time; and if he again offend, he is to be sent to the next jail till the quarter-sessions, and there to be indicted for wandering, loitering, and idleness; and if con victed, shall suffer execution of death as a felon, and an enemy of the commonwealth.

As far as the policy of the succeeding legislation is concerned, its intention appears to be fully expressed by the terms of this statute. In all the succeeding period, we find a very large variety of means adopted for the purpose still of giving effect to the same policy; sometimes an increase of severity, even beyond the rigour of this statute, against the beggar and vagrant; sometimes an improved machinery for succouring the impotent, especially for the assessment and levying of the funds, and for producing an effective responsibility in the officers charged with this duty; and eventually a more comprehensive system devised for effectuating the whole of the objects clearly contemplated by the statute of Henry, without the adoption of any other than those objects, but intended merely to prevent the evils resulting from the defective means and instruments previously employed for their attainment.

Accordingly we find in the statutes of the reign of Edward V. “the foolish pity and mercy of them which should have seen to the execution of the goodly laws before enacted, and the perverse nature and long-accustomed idleness of persons long given to loitering,” inveighed against in the usual declamatory manner of preambles of that period; but we find indications of the growth of a conviction that the excessive penalties of the previous legislation had defeated the operation of the law. The enactments against vagrancy are therefore rendered somewhat milder; an able-bodied poor person who does not apply himself to some honest labour, or offer to serve, though only for meat and drink, if nothing more is to be obtained, shall be taken for a vagabond, branded on the shoulder with the letter V, and adjudged a slave for two years to any person who shall de^ mand him, to be fed on bread and water and refùse meat, and caused to work by beating and chaining, or otherwise. If he run away within that period, he is to be branded on the cheek with the letter S, and adjudged a slave for life ; if he run away again, he is to suffer death as a felon. If no one demand such loiterer, the place where he is born is to keep him as a slave, and is to see him set to work; and if it fail in this, it is to be mulcted in a penalty, a city forfeiting five pounds, a borough forty shillings.

By this statute the old settlement law had ingrafted on it a law of removal. The taking surety of the impotent poor, that they would repair to the places where they were born, or had dwelt for the last three years, had been found ineffectual; the officers were therefore directed to convey the impotent poor on horseback, in cart, chariot, or otherwise, to the next constable, and so from constable to constable, till they be brought to the place where they were born, or most conversant for the space of three years, there to be kept and nourished of alms.

Gradual improvements were introduced in the detail by several successive statutes. The 3d and 4th Edward VI. provides for the keeping of a book in every city, corporate town, and parish, containing the names of householders, and of the impotent poor. It makes some approach to a special organization of officers for the objects. The minister and churchwardens are to appoint collectors of alms; the alms, however, are voluntary, except to the extent to which they can be enforced by the exhortation of the minister and bishop; it being provided, that if any one able to further this charitable work do obstinately and frowardly refuse to give, or do discourage others, the minister and churchwardens[7:18:370] are to exhort him gently. If he will not be so persuaded, the bishop is to send for him to induce and persuade him by charitable ways and means, and so, according to his discretion, to take order for the reformation thereof. These provisions being made, beggary is still prohibited, upon the pains limited in the previous statutes.

As might be expected, the gentle askings of the collectors, and the exhortations of the minister, the charitable ways and means of the bishop, appear to have been without effect in persuading the parishioners to intrust to the collectors the distribution of their alms. We find, therefore, twelve years afterwards (5th Elizabeth, chap. 3, passed in 1563), an attempt made to give additional effect to these provisions, by enabling the bishop to bind any person to appear at the next sessions, if his froward and wilful mind should obstinately refuse to give weekly relief to the poor according to his ability. Here the justices are to come in to the aid of the bishop, and are charitably and gently to persuade and move the said obstinate person to extend his charity. If he will not be persuaded, the justices with the churchwardens may tax the obstinate person according to their discretion; and on his refusal to pay, the justices, on the complaint of the churchwardens, are to commit him to jail until he does pay the sum taxed, and arrears. Thus was created a compulsory tax, though at first only as an alternative where voluntary contributions were refused.

The important statute, 14th Elizabeth, represents in its recitals, that “all parts of this realm of England and Wales be presently with rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars exceedingly pestered, by means whereof daily happeneth in the same realm horrible murders, thefts, and other great outrage.” The sense of these evils seems to have dictated a resort to a new variety of punishments; all persons defined in the act as rogues and vagabonds, or sturdy beggars, are for the first offence to be grievously whipped and burned to the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron, of the compass of an inch about; for the second, they are to be deemed felons; for the third, to suffer death as felons, without benefit of clergy. But now chiefly is to be observed the improvements in assessing the burthen; the justices having power to settle the poor for their abidings, and to set down what portion the weekly charge towards the relief and sustentation of the poor people would amount unto, and that done, shall by their good discretions tax and assess all the inhabitants dwelling within the divisions limited for the settling of the poor.

This statute contained, like some of its predecessors, an enactment giving a limited license for begging, provided that the poor people ask relief of victualling only in the same parish where they do dwell, so the same be at the time and in the manner directed by the churchwardens and overseers of the poor. This license has been extended, modified, and restrained, but still kept in existence, especially in the case of discharged soldiers and prisoners, up to recent times.

So far we have seen the gradual accumulation of all the elements contained in the poor-laws up to the time of the last amendment in the system made in the reign of the late King William IV. The statute, which permanently fixed all these elements in one system was passed in the last year of the reign of Elizabeth, the celebrated statute the 43d Elizabeth, chap. 2. In this statute we find extreme severity abandoned, and its place supplied with a reasonable test of destitution of such as may be presumed to be voluntary beggars or idlers. The able-bodied, married or unmarried, are to be set to work; children may be apprenticed; only the “lame, impotent, old, blind, and such others among them, being poor and not able to work,” are to have “necessary relief,” without being set to work. For the latter class of poor, habitations may be provided at the expense of the parish, on the waste or common; and for the support of these, but not of any who are able to work, natural relations, that is, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and children, may be compelled to contribute.

The voluntary contribution, and the co-operation of the minister and bishop, are abandoned. A tax upon the inhabitants, and upon the occupiers of property, strictly defined, and upon the parson or vicar, is directed to be levied in every parish; effectual means are given for the assessment, collection, and levy of the tax; for appeal for remedy against its unjust assessment; for the contribution of adjoining parishes and hundreds, where the means of the single parish failed; above all, a special authority is created for giving effect to the provisions of the law. Overseers, not less than two, nor more than four, are to be appointed in every parish yearly, in Easter week, to act with the churchwardens, subject to the orders of the justices, and liable to penalties for neglect of their office.

Such was the system in operation for above two centuries and a quarter, from 1601 to 1834, without material modification: its whole provisions were extended in the reign of Charles II. to town-lands; the law of settlement was also extended and refined, in the same and subsequent reigns; and the provision for setting the able-bodied to work was rendered more effectuai by the 9th George I. chap. 7, which enabled every parish to provide a workhouse, or, if too small or too poor, to combine with others for the purpose of maintaining a workhouse, and which rendered the offer of relief in a workhouse a sufficient bar to the claim to any other relief.

These statutes, aided by all those other causes which operated upon the morals and the general prosperity of the people, had produced the effect intended by their authors; and whatever may have been the portion attributable to any of the several causes in operation, the result unquestionably was, that vagabondage and idleness were found in the last half of the last century to prevail in England to a less extent than in any of the larger states of Europe, with the single exception of Holland. As the extremity of the evil had formerly produced severity in the law, so the disappearance of the evil produced a disastrous relaxation in the restrictions of which the experience and prudence of the previous times had discovered the necessity.

About the middle of the last century, there began to be indicated in the acts of the legislature a growing opinion, that the severity of the tests applied to the recipients of public charity required to be diminished. In the 7th year of the reign of George IIL, guardians were especially appointed in the city of London, the city of Westminster, the bills of mortality, the liberties of the Tower, not with any administrative or executive powers, but “to guard against the dangerous consequences which may arise from the false parsimony, negligence, inadvertency, or the annual change of parish officers.” These guardians were to protect the poor children of the metropolitan districts’to which the act applied, by visiting the places in which they were kept, reporting on their condition, and calling on the assistance of the magistracy where it might seem necessary.

Throughout the whole of the reign of George III. the example thus set was followed by constantly succeeding and increasing relaxations of the rigour of the old law; some of the most conspicuous instances of which are to be found in Gilbert’s act, passed in the twenty-second year of that reign, 1782, which, instead of rendering the workhouse a means of testing voluntary pauperism, by employing the able-bodied, thereby deterring them from habits of pauperism, by rendering their state less eligible than one of independence, reverses this principle entirely. It confines the use of the workhouse to that of a mere receptacle for the aged, impotent, and infant poor; and provides, that the able-bodied shall not be required to enter it; and proceeds to the absurd extent in favour of the able-bodied pauper, of compelling[7:18:371] the guardians appointed under the act to find work near their own houses, for all applicants able and professing to be willing to work, but unable to get employment; and to make up atry supposed deficiency of wages out of the poor-rates.

The evils of able-bodied pauperism were now proceeding with alarming rapidity. The consummation of the false policy of the legislature during this reign was attained in East’s act, 55 Geo. III. chap. 137 (passed 1815). It consists of a complete abrogation of almost all the salutary portions of the 9th Geo. I. chap. 7. The relief was no longer required to be received in the workhouse, it was to be paid to any poor person or persons at his or her or their home or homes, house or houses. Justices were empowered to order this relief for any time they might be pleased to define, not exceeding three months; and two justices might make subsequent orders for relief for a period not exceeding six months. The preambles and recitals in this statute consist, as might have been anticipated from the previous course of legislation, of descriptions of the grossest disorders on the part of those maintained by the public charity.

The insolence andgeneral demoralization of the pauper, the most alarming deterioration in the industry of the labouring classes, especially the agricultural labourers ∩f the south of England, the unscrupulous interference of the employers with the wages and the mode of remuneration of the employed, were abundantly shown by the committees of both houses of parliament, appointed to inquire into the progress of the poor-laws, especially by that appointed on the motion of Mr Sturges Bourne (in 1817), and upon the report of which the act known as Sturges Bourne’s act, passed in the last year but one of this reign (the 59th Geo. III. c. 12), was founded. This act does not entirely abandon the views which dictated the dangerous provisions of East’s act. Generally, however, it was a salutary measure, providing for the election of bodies of persons called select vestries, who were to supersede the’overseers, and, in some measure, the justices, more effectually to avoid the evils consequent upon the administration being intrusted to annual and unpaid officers. It made provision also for the performance of the overseers’ duties, by paid and permanent assistant overseers.

From the end of George III.’s reign to the year 1834, though legislative changes were not unfrequent, they were confined to matters of detail, involving neither the abandonment nor the adoption of any important principle.

CHAPTER III.

EFFECTS OF POOR-LAWS IN ENGLAND.

Commission of Inquiry.

In the course of the foregoing description of some of the principal statutes, the useful or injurious principles involved in them have been shortly referred to; the effects operated by the working out of those principles have been less remarked upon. In the main, the good effects had consisted in reclaiming from a vagrant and profligate course of life a large proportion of the population. The settlement laws especially had been instrumental in this; for we find that the creation of the claim to relief from the parish funds had so far attracted the idle and dissolute from the practice of common begging, that, in the reign of Charles II., after a period of great commotions, when many disbanded soldiers and sailors, and others, who, in a period of turmoil, are either forced upon or voluntarily resort to an unsettled life, had much swelled the mass of those who in previous times would have been found in the ranks of sturdy and valiant beggars, the same order of people were now found to be systematic though rapacious paupers, making the parish fund the means of levying their contributions on society.

We find in a statute of Charles II. in the second year of the Restoration (13 and 14 Car. II. cap. 12), a multifarious law of settlement created, upon reasons thus expressed in the recital: “Whereas, by reason of some defects in the law, poor people are not restrained from going from one parish to another, and therefore do endeavour to settle themselves in those parishes where there is the best stock, the largest commons or wastes to build cottages, and the most woods for them to bum and destroy; and when they have consumed it, then to another parish; and at last become rogues and vagabonds, to the great discouragement of parishioners to provide stocks, where it is liable to be devoured by strangers.” From this period the whole of the efforts of the legislation are incessantly made to prevent the too easy settling of the poor upon the parish; but they all equally prove that settled pauperism had more and more taken the place of vagrant mendicancy.

If to the poor-laws can be attributed this good effect, they must also necessarily have the credit of preventing that train of evils which follows upon the existence of a large mass of mendicants and vagrants in any community. The corruption, the demoralization, the inevitable bodily misery, to the mendicant himself, his connections, and his offspring; the extortion, depredation, and the more violent crime which such a class have almost unlimited opportunity and frequent temptation to commit; next the deterioration in the feelings and habits of those whom circumstances may bring ι in contact with them; the refuge which they afford to all who are inclined or tempted to fall off from the more steady and respectable occupations of life, many of whom are even tempted by the mere spirit of adventure to become recruits; add to these the alarm and practical annoyance, which renders the industry and morality of all other classes less a security for enjoyment; and we have some idea of the train of evils the prevention of which was cut off when vagrancy on the great scale was at length, in England, successfully suppressed, though to be replaced in a great measure by voluntary and resolute pauperism.

The bad effects, as they arose in detail, usually led to the successive modifications which we find the law in its progress undergoing from time to time. Many of the evils temporarily and partially felt might even now be described with advantage, and as warnings to future legislators; but generally their interest would at present be greater to the historian and antiquary than in a practical point of view. At no period had these laws attained such an influence on the interests of the community of England and Wales, as about the years 1831 and 1832, when the effects of the whole system had reached a greater height than had ever yet been attained.

In these years many of the anticipations of those who had seen the evil tendency of the poor-laws, and had prophesied that the results of the system must be disastrous, were realized in such a way as to produce a conviction in the most supine, that either a remedy must be applied, or a wide-spread ruin be submitted to. In an article in this work, written in the year 1823, by one of the most humane and enlightened men who had ever given their attention to the subject, it was shown that a crisis was impending, and could not be far removed; that, as the law then stood, the poor-rates were increasing in the same ratio in which the prudence and forethought of the receivers of relief were being destroyed. It was shown, that “whenever the charge upon the land in support of those who do not add enough to the annual produce of the country to support themselves is so great that the land can be no longer cultivated with profit, then of course it will be thrown up.” In 1832 was seen the phenomenon of whole parishes of fertile land being abandoned, “the landlords giving up their rents, the farmers their tenancy, the clergyman his glebe and the tithes.” We find the paupers assembled and refusing to accept of the offer [7:18:372]of the whole land of the parish, avowing that “they liked the present system better.”^[6. See, as to the parish of Cholesbury in Berkshire, the Report from his Majesty’s Commissioners for Inquiring into the'Ad ministration and Practical Oueration of the Poor-Laws, 8vo Fellowes, 1834. See also instances in Warwickshire, in Mr Villiers’s Report, in Appendix (A). ]

In the article referred to, it had been shown that the system then in operation was fraught with the danger of discontented turbulence. “Every one is brought up with the belief that the state is bound to provide him with employment and support. When, therefore, the employment assigned him is such as he does not approve, and the recompense awarded him falls bclow his expectations (and when the employment is a loss to the public, the recompense must often be below even reasonable expectations), he becomes an irritated and uneasy subject; and, unless he is restrained by the fear of detection, or by the better influence of moral principles, he vents his spleen by any mischief that is in his power, and the burning of stackyards, or the destruction of machinery, results from an unsatisfactory interview with the overseer, or an ineffectual appeal to the bench of magistrates.”

In the winter of 1831-1832 we find the practical exemplification of these remarks. In a period of great general prosperity, we find that portion of England in which the poor-laws had had their greatest operation, and in which by much the largest expenditure of poor-rates had been made, the scene of daily riot and nightly incendiarism; and we discover a state of things which, in the sober language of statistics, is thus described: “Of ninety-three parishes in four ill-administered counties, the population is 113,147, and the expenditure L.81,978, or fourteen and fivepence per head; and of eighty parishes in three well-administered counties, the population is 105,728, and the expenditure L.30,820, or five and ninepence per head; and those counties in which the expenditure is large are those in which the industry and skill of the labourers are passing away, the connection between the master and servant has become precarious, the unmarried are defrauded of their fair earnings, and riots and incendiarism have prevailed. The three counties in which it is comparatively small are those in which scarcely any instance of fire or tumult appears to have occurred; in which mutual attachment exists between the workman and his employer; in which wages depend not on marriage, but on ability, and the diligence and skill of the labourers are unimpaired or increased.”

The danger had become too real to be neglected if a remedy could be found; but parliamentary inquiries, both in the upper and lower house, had repeatedly taken place comparatively without result, the largest effect produced by any committee of either house being that of the committee appointed in 1817, which in the year 1819 produced Sturges Bourne’s act; an act, as events proved, almost wholly unproductive of effect in checking the course of pauperism.

An effort of another kind was now felt to be necessary, and was accordingly made. A Commission of Inquiry was appointed, consisting of individuals remarkable alike for their interest in the subject and their knowledge of its principles and details; its powers, though only those of ordinary commissioners of inquiry, far exceeding, for useful purposes, those of a parliamentary committee. Its labours were continued incessantly for two years, uninterrupted by the vacation or recess. Nor were these confined alone to the examination of witnesses summoned from different parts of the country. The commission were enabled to examine the locality itself, the documentary evidence, the living witnesses, and the actual operation of the system on the spot, and this by the members of their own body, as well as by assistant-commissioners appointed to visit and examine all parts of the country, some of whom extended their inquiries into Scotland, France, Flanders, and Guernsey, whilst they also collected a vast mass of interesting evidence from our ambassadors and diplomatic agents in different countries of Europe and America.

The result was a scrutinizing and minute inquiry; which was followed by the suggestion of amendments in the law, the practical deductions from the experience, yet so systematic, that their operation could be calculated almost with certainty, and which were, therefore, proportionally to be relied upon. As the success in inquiring had been great, so was the confidence of the legislature readily given; and the most important statute upon the subject passed since the statute of Elizabeth was carried through both houses by large and confident majorities.

A description of the evils found in operation at the time of the inquiry, of the remedies proposed for those evils, and of the enactments actually adopted, will afford the most complete and consistent view of the present system of English poor-laws. The statement of the operation of the previous law, and of the remedies proposed, will be condensed from the Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry; that of the enactments passed, from the Act for the Amendment and better Administration of the Laws relating to the Poor in England and Wales, being 4 and 5 William IV. cap. 76.

The poor entitled to relief consist, first, of those who are impotent through old age or bodily infirmity, through infancy, through accident, or through mental infirmity; and, secondly, of the able-bodied poor.

I. RELIEF OF THE ABLE-BODIED.

It was in the relief of the able-bodied that the greatest pecuniary expenditure, and, above all, that the greatest moral evils, were incurred. The relief granted was in a great measure unconditional; in many districts it had superseded the necessity of practising even the thrift and husbandry necessary in expending the funds placed at the pauper’s disposal.

The great source of abuse was found to be the out-door relief afforded to the able-bodied on their own account, or on that of their families. This was given either in kind or in money.

1. Out-Door Relief of the Able-Bodied in Kind.

The out-door relief of the able-bodied, when given in kind, was found to consist rarely of food, rather less unfrequently of fuel, and still less unfrequently of clothes, particularly shoes; but its most usual form was that of relieving the applicants, either wholly or partially, from the expense of obtaining house-room. This last mode of relief was extensively prevalent, and productive of important consequences, both direct and indirect.

Partial relief from the expense of obtaining house-room was given, or professed to be given, whenever the occupant of a cottage or an apartment was exempted on the ground of poverty from the payment of rates. In a great number of cases the labourer, if a parishioner, was not only exempted from rates, but his rent was paid out of the parish funds.

2. Out-Door Relief of the Able-Bodied in Money.

The out-door relief afforded in money to the able-bodied on their own account or on that of their families was found to be still more prevalent. This was generally effected by one or other of the five following expedients, which may be concisely designated as, first, relief without labour; secondly, the allowance system; thirdly, the roundsman system; fourthly, parish employment; and, fifthly, the labour-rate system.

Relief without Labour. — By the parish giving to those who [7:18:373]were or professed to be without employment, a daily or a weekly sum, without requiring from the applicant any labour.

Sometimes relief, to an amount insufficient for a complete subsistence, was afforded, without imposing any further condition than that the applicant should shift, as it was called, for himself, and give the parish no further trouble. In a still greater number of instances the relief was found to have been given on the plea that the applicant had not been able to obtain work, that he had lost a day or a longer period’, and was entitled, therefore, to receive from the unlimited resources of the parish what he had not been able to obtain from a private employer.

Allowance. — By the parish allowing to labourers who were employed by individuals, relief in aid of wages.

In some places allowance was found to have been given only occasionally, or to meet occasional wants; to buy, for instance, a coat or a pair of shoes, or to pay the rent of a cottage or an apartment. In others, it was considered that a weekly sum, or more frequently the value of a certain quantity of flour or bread, was to be received by each member of a family.

The latter practice was found to have been sometimes matured into a system, forming the law of a whole district, sanctioned and enforced by the magistrates, and promulgated in the form of local statutes. 1 The allowance fixed by these scales was usually called bread-money. Of this kind of relief it was observed, that

“No attention was paid to either the character of the applicant or the causes of his distress. In fact, he was considered as entitled to it without pleading any distress.

“The bread-money was hardly looked upon by the labourers in the light of parish relief. They considered it as much their right as the wages they received from their employers, and, in their own minds, made a wide distinction between ‘ taking their bread-money ^[7. “ Το -oen of Cambridge — The churchwardens and overseers of the poor are requested to regulate the incomes of such persons as may apply to them for relief or employment, according to the price of fine bread, namely, “A single woman, the price of...3⅜ quartern loaves per week. “A man and his wife and one child...9∣ quartern loaves per week. “A single man 4∣ ... ditto. “Ditto ditto and two children 11 ... ditto. “A man and his wife 8 ... ditto. “Ditto ditto and three ditto 13 ... ditto. “Man, wife, four children and upwards, at the price of 2⅞ quartern loaves per head per week. “It will be necessary to add to the above income in all cases of sickness or other kind of distress, and particularly of such persons or families who deserve encouragement by their good behaviour, whom parish-officers should mark both by commendation and reward. “By order of the magistrates assembled at the town-hall, Cambridge,—A Chevell, clerk to the magistrates— -Nov. 27, 1829.” (Report, p. 22.) ] and ‘ going on the parish·’”

It was further to be observed, that even in those parishes in which the amount of allowance was supposed to depend upon that of the applicant’s earnings, the inquiry as to the amount of those earnings was never carried back further than the current or the previous week or fortnight. The consequence was, that many of those who at particular periods of the year received wages far exceeding the average amount of the earnings of the most industrious labourer, received also large allowances from the parish.^[8. Mr Bishop found a parish in the Bedford Level, in which a recently drained tract of fertile land requires more labour than the settled inhabitants can provide, and the average yearly earnings of a labourer’s family are from L.60 to L.7θi but during a frost, and generally from November to March, almost every labourer comes on the parish. When they commented on these facts in their conversation with a resident magistrate, his answer was, “Why, what are we to do? they spend it all, and then come and say they are starving; and you must relieve them.” “In our vestry,” says Mr Russell, “which meets every Monday, the calculation is confined to the earnings of the past fortnight. No further retrospect is ever taken either for or against the claimant. In some parishes I believe the account is settled once a week instead of once a fortnight.” Sometimes the inquiry does not go back even to the beginning of the week at the end of which the claim is made. (Ibid. p. 29.) ]

Again, there were other parishes in which no sort of inquiry whatever was made respecting earnings; but the birth of a child endowed the parent with an allowance, whatever might have been his previous income.^[9. In the northern division of Devonshire, says Mr Villiers, “The practice of granting allowance for children is so general and confirmed, that the pauper is in the habit of giving formal notice to the overseer of the pregnancy of his wife. Should the overseer refuse the application for the fixed sum allowed for the second, third, or fourth child, the magistrates’ single inquiry, on his appearance before them under a summons, would have been as to the custom of the parish or the hundred. ‘ At what number does allowance begin with you ?’ was the common mode of putting the question, as I was repeatedly assured by overseers. The previous or present earnings of the pauper, or of any of his family, were never mentioned.” (Ibid. p. 31.) ] It was to be observed, also, that under the scale system a child was very soon considered as an independent claimant for relief, and entitled to it, though residing with his parents, and though they might have been at full work on high wages.^[10. At Friston, Suffolk, Mr Stuart states that “a child is entitled to relief at the rate of three shillings a week on his own account from the age of fourteen.” “At Bottisham, Cambridge,” says Mr Power, “a boy of sixteen receives two shillings and sixpence for the week; he lives at home with his father; the family consists of his father, mother, brother, and himself. Seventeen is the age at which a young man is considered entitled to separate relief as an unemployed labourer; his pay then is three shillings and sixpence. The allowance to our single young men out of employ used to be two shillings and tenpence; according to scale, four quartern loaves, present price eightpence-halfpenny. Last November they came to the sessions in a body to complain of the insufficiency, and it was then raised to three shillings and sixpence. This sum they receive when above a certain age, although residing with their families.” (Ibid. p. 31.) ] The Roundsman System. —By the parish paying the occupiers of property to employ the applicants for relief at a rate of wages fixed by the parish, and depending not on the services but on the wants of the applicants, the employer being repaid out of the poor-rate all that he had advanced in wages beyond a certain sum. This was the houserow, or roundsman, or billet, or ticket, or stem, system.

According to this plan, the parish in general made some agreement with a farmer to sell to him the labour of one or more paupers at a certain price, and paid to the pauper out of the parish funds the difference between that price and the allowance which the scale, according to the price of bread and the number of his family, awarded to him. It had received the name of the billet or ticket system, from a ticket signed by the overseer, which the pauper in general carried to the farmer as a warrant for his being employed, and took back to the overseer, signed by the farmer, as a proof that he had fulfilled the conditions of relief. In other cases the parish contracted with some individual to have some work performed for him by the paupers at a given price, the parish paying the paupers. In many places the roundsman system was effected by means of an auction.^[11. Mr Richardson states that, “in Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, the old and infirm are sold at the monthly meeting to the best bidder, at prices varying, according to the time of the year, from one shilling and sixpence a week to three shillings; that at Yardley-Hastings, all the unemployed men are put up to sale weekly; and that the clergyman of the parish told him that he had seen ten men the last week knocked down to one of the farmers for five shillings, and that there were at that time about seventy men let out in this manner out of a body of 170.” (Ibid. p. 28.) ] Parish Employment. — By the parish employing and paying the applicants for relief.

The 43d Elizabeth does not authorize relief to be afforded to any but the impotent, except in return for work. And [7:18:374]much as this part of the statute had been neglected, its validity was still recognised by the judges. In the King v. Collett, 2, Barnewell and Cresswell, 324, Lord Tenterden decided it to be the duty of overseers to provide work, if possible, before they afforded relief. And whatever might have been the difficulty of finding profitable work, one could scarcely suppose the existence of a parish in which it would not be possible to provide some work, were it merely to dig holes and fill them again. But though such was the law, it appears, from the parliamentary returns, that payment for work was the most unusual form in which relief was administered. The poor-rate returns for the year ended the 25th of March 1832 state, that out of L.7,036,968 expended in that year for the relief of the poor, less than L.354,000, or scarcely more than one twentieth part, was paid for work, including work on the roads and in the workhouses. This might easily be accounted for.

In the first place, to afford relief gratuitously proved less troublesome to the parochial authorities than to require work in return for it. Wherever work was to be paid for, there must have been superintendence; but where paupers were the work-people, much more than the average degree of superintendence was necessary. In ordinary cases, all that the superintendent inquired was, whether the workmen had performed an average day’s work; and where the work was piece-work, he needed not make even that inquiry. The practice of his trade fixed the market-price of the work, and he paid it without asking whether the workman had been one hour or one day in performing it, or whether it exceeded or fell below his wants. But the superintendent of pauper labourers had to ascertain, not what was an average day’s work, or what was the market-price of a given service, but what was a fair day’s work for a given individual, his strength and habits considered; at what rate of pay for that work, the number of his family considered, he would be able to earn the sum necessary for his and their subsistence; and, lastly, whether he had in fact performed the amount which, after taking all these elements into calculation, it appeared that he ought to have performed. It will easily be anticipated that this superintendence was very rarely given; and that in far the greater number of instances in which work was professedly required from paupers, in fact no work was done. In the second place, collecting the paupers in gangs for the performance of parish work was found to be more immediately injurious to their conduct than even allowance or relief without requiring any work at all. Whatever might have been the general character of the parish labourers, all the worst of the inhabitants were sure to be amongst the number; and it is well known that the effect of such an association is always to degrade the good, not to elevate the bad. It was amongst these gangs, who had scarcely any other employment or amusement than to collect in groups, and talk over their grievances, that the riots of 1830 appear to have originated. And, thirdly, parish employment did not afford direct profit to any individual. Under the greatest part of the other systems of relief, the immediate employers of labour could throw on the parish a part of the wages of their labourers. They preferred, therefore, those modes of relief which they could turn to their own account, and out of which they could extract profit under the mask of charity.^[12. “Either the work was completed by two or three o’clock, and the rest of the day spent in idleness, or the men consumed the whole day in the lazy performance of the work of a portion of the day.”...“In Pollington, Yorkshire, they send many of them upon the highways, but they only work fοιιr hours per day. This is because there is not employment sufficient in that way; they sleep more than they work, and if any but the surveyor found them sleeping, they would laugh at them. In l∙ancliffe they employed a man in the winter of 1830-1831 to look over them; but they threatened to drown him, and he was obliged to withdraw.”...“In the parish of Mancetter, in the county of Warwick, the overseer stated that young able men received two shillings and sixpence a week, and the magistrates would not allow the parish to employ them more than three days in the week, in order that they might get work for themselves. Upon inquiry, it appeared that their characters soon became so infamous, that no person would employ them, having devoted their spare time to thieving and poaching. In the township of Atherstone, Mr Wellday, a manufacturer, impatient of contributing his property to the encouragement of vice and idleness by paying men without exacting labour, purchased some water-carts himself for the purpose of giving employment to paupers. The magistrates refused to allow them to be used after twelve o’clock in the day, in order that these men might procure work for themselves. They were also described as becoming the most worthless characters in the town.” (Report, p. 37, 38.) ]

In some of the agricultural districts, the prevalent mismanagement in this respect had created in the minds of the paupers a notion that it was their right to be exempted from the same degree of labour as independent labourers. But in many places, whilst the labour required by the parish was trifling, the pay equalled or exceeded that of the independent labourer.^[13. Eastbourne, in Sussex, was a striking example. In that place, in which the average wages earned from individuals by hard work are twelve shillings a week, the parish pays for nominal labour as much as sixteen shillings a week. Two families alone received from it, in the year ended Lady∙day 1832, L.92. 4s.; and the wives of the few independent labourers regret that their husbands are not paupers. (Ibid. p. 39.) ] The Labour-Rate System. — By an agreement amongst the rate-payers, that each of them should employ and pay out of his own money a certain number of the labourers who had settlements in the parish, in proportion, not to his real demand for labour, but according to his rental or to his contribution to the rates, or to the number of horses that he kept for tillage, or to the number of acres that he occupied, or according to some other scale.

II. OUT-DOOR RELIEF OF THE IMPOTENT.

The out-door relief to the impotent, using that word as comprehending all except the able-bodied and their families, was subject to less abuse. The great source of poor-law mal-administration was the desire of many of those who regulated the distribution of the parochial funds, to extract from it a profit to themselves. The out-door relief to the able-bodied, and all relief which was administered in the workhouse, afforded ample opportunities for effecting this purpose; but no use could be made of the labour of the aged and sick, and there was little room for jobbing if their pensions were paid in money. Accordingly, it was found that even in places distinguished in general by the most wanton parochial profusion, the allowances to the aged and infirm were moderate.

General Remarks on Out-door Relief.

We have dwelt at some length on out-door relief because it appears to be the relief which was most extensively given, and because it appears to have contained in itself the elements of an almost indefinite extension; of an extension, in short, which might ultimately have absorbed the whole fund out of which it arose. Amongst the elements of extension were the constantly diminishing reluctance to claim an apparent benefit, the receipt of which imposed no sacrifice, except a sensation of shame, quickly obliterated by habit, even if not prevented by example; the difficulty, often amounting to impossibility, on the part of those who administered and awarded relief, of ascertaining whether any and what necessity for it existed; and the existence in many cases of positive motives on their parts to grant it when unnecessary, or themselves to create the necessity.

From the evidence collected by the Commissioners, it will be seen how zealous must be the agency, and how intense[7:18:375] the vigilance, to prevent fraudulent claims from crowding in under such a system of relief. But it would require still greater vigilance to prevent the bona fide claimants from degenerating into impostors; and it was an aphorism amongst the active parish-officers, that “cases which are good today are bad to-morrow, unless they are incessantly watched.” A person obtained relief upon the ground of sickness; but when he became capable of returning to moderate work, he was tempted, by the enjoyment of subsistence without labour, to conceal his convalescence, and fraudulently extend the period of relief. When it really depended upon the receivers whether the relief should cease with its occasion, it was too much to expect of their virtue that they should, in any considerable number of instances, voluntarily forego the pension.

Another evil connected with out-door relief, and arising from its undefined character, was the natural tendency to award to the deserving more than was necessary, or, where more than necessary relief was afforded to all, to distinguish the deserving by extra allowances. The scale which we have already referred to, promulgated by the magistrates for the town of Cambridge, as well as several others, all directed the parish-officers to reward or encourage the deserving. The whole evidence showed the danger of such an attempt. It appeared that such endeavours to constitute the distributors of relief into a tribunal for the reward of merit, out of the property of others, had not only failed in effecting the benevolent intentions of their promoters, but had become sources of fraud on the part of the distributors, and of discontent and violence on the part of the claimants.

A common consequence was, that to satisfy the clamours of the undeserving, the general scale of relief was raised; but the ultimate result of such a proceeding appears always to have been to augment the distress which it was intended to mitigate, and to render still more fierce the discontent which it was intended to appease. Profuse allowances excited the most extravagant expectations on the part of the claimants, who conceived that an inexhaustible fund, was devoted to their use, and that they were wronged to the extent of whatever fell short of their claims. Such relief partook of the nature of indiscriminate alms-giving in its effects, as a bounty on indolence and vice; but the apparently legal sanction to this parochial alms-giving rendered the discontent on denial the most intense. Wherever, indeed, public charities are profusely administered, we hear, from those who are engaged in their administration, complaints of the discontent and disorders introduced.

It appeared from all the Commissioners’ returns, that in every district the discontent of the labouring classes was proportioned to the money disbursed in poor-rates or in voluntary charities. The able-bodied unmarried labourers were discontented, from being put to a disadvantage as compared with the married. The paupers were discontented, from their expectations being raised by the ordinary administration of the system, beyond any means of satisfying them.^[14. “They, as well as the independent labourers, to whom the term poor is equally applied, are instructed,” says Mr Chadwick, “that they have a right to ‘ a reasonable subsistence,’ or ‘ ⅛fair subsistence,’ or ‘au adequate subsistence.’ When I have asked of the rate-distributors what l fair,' or ‘ reasonable,' or ‘ adequate' meant, I have in every instance been answered differently; some stating they thought it meant such as would give a good allowance of ‘ meat every day,’ which no poor man (meaning a pauper) should be without; although a large proportion of the rate-payers do go without it.” It is abundantly shown in the course of this inquiry, that where the terms used by the public authorities are vague, they are always filled up by the desires of the claimants, and the desires ≡s wait on the imagination, which is the worst regulated and the most vivid in the most ignorant of the people. In Newbury and ing, the money dispensed in poor-rates and charity is as great as could be desired by the warmest advocate either of compulsory or of voluntary relief; and yet, during the agricultural riots, many of the inhabitants in both towns were under strong apprehensions of the rising of the very people amongst whom the poor-rates and charities are so profusely distributed. The violence of most of the mobs seems to have arisen from an idea that all their privations arose from the cupidity or fraud of those intrusted with the management of the fund provided for the poor. (Report, p. 50.) ]

Those who worked, though receiving good wages, being denominated poor, and classed with the really indigent, thought themselves entitled to a share of the “poor funds.” Whatever addition was made to allowances under these circumstances excited the expectation of still further allowances, increased the conception of the extent of the right, and insured proportionate disappointment and hatred if that expectation were not satisfied. On the other hand, wherever the objects of expectation had been made definite, where wages, upon the performance of work, had been substituted for eleemosynary aid, and those wageshad been allowed tore-main matter of contract, employment had again produced content, and kindness became once more a source of gratitude.

III. IN-DOORS RELIEF.

In-doors relief, that which was given within the walls of the poor-house, or, as it was usually, but very seldom properly, denominated, the workhouse, was also subject to great mal-administration. But in by far the greater number of cases it was a large alms-house, in which the young were trained in idleness, and ignorance, and vice; the able-bodied maintained in sluggish and sensual indolence; the aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery incident to dwelling in such a society, without government or classification; and the whole body of inmates subsisting on food far exceeding, both in kind and in amount, not merely the diet of the independent labourer, but that of the majority of the persons who contributed to their support.

The progress of pauperism, as far as it can be inferred from the progress of expenditure, had been such as is exhibited in the following table; to which the prices of wheat, and the quantities which might have been purchased by the total sums expended, are added, for the purpose of checking, in some measure, the misapprehension which might otherwise arise as to the true value of the sums expended through the fluctuating values of money during the interval to which the table extends.
[table]
[7:18:376]

The following represents the results of the above table at the periods of the decennial census.
[table]

The foregoing table, however, can by no means be adopted as indicating with any accuracy the real progress of the evil. In the first place, the progress in the amount expended only indicates an increased proportion of pauperism, inasmuch as the increase in the sums expended exceeds the increase in the population. Thus, from the year 1803 to the year 1823, the population increased from nine to twelve millions, whilst the sums expended for relief of the poor increased from four to five and three-fourth millions. This indicates but a small increase in pauperism relatively to the increase of population, and the number of paupers in every hundred persons might have been nearly the same at the two periods compared. We find, however, that the increase in the value of the money expended, as reckoned in the wheat purchaseable by it, was as fourteen to twenty-two, that is, an increase in pauperism which would have exceeded the progress of the population in the proportion of twenty per cent.; and in this period it is to be supposed, either that the numbers of paupers may have increased in the proportion of twenty per cent., or that the effective relief, that is, the quantity of commodities given on the one side and received on the other, had at least. increased in the proportion of twenty per cent. But, during all this period, other necessaries and commodities of life had diminished in price in a still greater proportion. Thus it is calculated by Mr Porter,^[16. See the Progress of the Nation, by G. R. Porter, Esq. small 8vo, 183G, p. 83. ] from the extensive data contained in his tables, that the sum of nine shillings and ninepence, the amount of relief per head, in the year 1831, would have purchased as much as seventeen shillings would have bought in 1801.

The sums returned as expended in poor-rates, though, since 1834 and at present, they represent the whole amount of the burthen, did, in fact, up to the year 1834, include but a small part of the whole charge. Of the various modes in which relief was given to the able-bodied labourer, or rather extorted from a portion of the parishioners, two of those above described, viz. relief on the roundsman system, and that on the labour-rate system, were means of casting the burthen of a man’s support upon a parishioner, without the levying or expending of any rate. No means exist to enable us to calculate the amount of the burthen thus incurred by the occupiers; and of course the means of calcu lating the sacrifices of landlords, who made deductions of rate in regard of these charges, are equally wanting. We however find, that amongst the most conspicuous instances in which the rents of a parish had been nearly or entirely absorbed in the relief afforded by these two systems, very small rates had been levied upon the occupiers in money. The Commissioners’ evidence, particularly their Appendix

(D), is full of instances of this source of indirect and unrecorded loss.^[17. Mr Cowell’s Report contains the examination of a large farmer and proprietor at Great Shelford, who, on 500 acres, situated in that parish, pays ten shillings peracre poor-rate, or L.250 a year. In addition, though he requires for his farm only sixteen regular labourers, he constantly employs twenty or twenty-one. The wages of these supernumerary labourers amount to L.150 a year, and he calculates the value of what they produce at L.50 a year; so that his real contribution to the relief of the poor is not L.250, the sum which would appear in the parliamentary returns, but L.350. In the same Report is to be found a letter from Mr Wedd of Royston, containing the following passages: “An occupier of land near this place told me to-day that he pays L.100 for poor-rates, and is compelled to employ fourteen men and six boys, and requires the labour of only ten men and three boys. His extra labour at ten shillings a week, which is the current rate for men, and half as much for boys, is L.130. “Another occupier stated yesterday that he held 165 acres of land, of which half was pasture. He was compelled to employ twelve men and boys, and his farm required the labour of only five. He is about to give notice that he will quit. Every useless labourer is calculated to add five shillings an acre to the rent of a farm of 100 acres.” It contains also a letter from Mr Nash of Royston, the occupier of a farm in a neighbouring parish, stating that “The overseer, on the plea that he could no longer collect the money for the poor-rates without resorting to coercive measures, and that the unemployed poι.r must be apportioned amongst the occupiers of land in proportion to their respective quantities, had required him to take two more men. Mr Nash was consequently obliged to displace two excellent labourers, and of the two men sent in their stead one wa ≡ a married man with a family sickly, and not much inclined to work; the other a single man addicted to drinking.” The subsequent history of these two men appears in Mr Power’s Report. One killed a favourite blood mare of Mr Nash’s, and the other he was obliged to prosecute for stealing his corn. (Report, p. 55.) ]

It must also be borne in mind, that in proportion as these modes of relief to the able-bodied were extended, and as the real amount of the burthen was thus concealed, the deterioration of the labourer’s habits of industry, involving, not a loss of the particular year, but a permanent destruction of his utility as a labourer, as well as of his prudence and morality, were proceeding in a ratio even more rapid than the progress of these insidious forms of relief.

It might have been hoped, that, under such circumstances, a general feeling would have arisen that these abuses were intolerable, and must be put an end to at any risk or at any sacrifice. But many who acknowledged the evil seemed to expect the cure of an inveterate disease without exposing the patient to any suffering, or even discomfort. They exclaimed against the burthen as intolerable, but objected to any amendment, if it appeared that it must be, or might be, attended with any inconvenience. And amongst all parties, labourers, employers of labourers, and owners of property, many were to be found who thought that they would suffer some immediate injury from any change which should tend to throw the labouring classes on their own resources.

The labourer felt that the existing system, though it generally gave him low wages, always gave him easy work. It gave him likewise, strange as it may appear, what he valued more, a sort of independence. He needed not bestir himself to seek work, he needed not study to please his master, he needed not put any restraint upon his temper, he needed not ask relief as a favour. He had all a slave’s security Tor subsistence, without his liability to punishment. As a single man, indeed, his income did not exceed a bare subsistence; but he had only to marry, and it increased. Even then it was unequal to the support of a family, but it rose on the birth of every child. If his family were numerous, the parish became his principal paymaster; for, small as the usual allowance of two shillings a-head might be, yet, when there were more than three children, it generally exceeded the average wages given in a pauperised district. A man with a wife and six children, entitled, according to the scale, to have his wages made up to sixteen shillings a week, in a parish where the usual wages paid by individuals did not exceed ten shillings or twelve shillings, was almost an irresponsible being. All other classes of society were exposed[7:18:377] to the vicissitudes of hope and fear; he alone had nothing to lose or gain.^[18. Even in Barnard Castle, in Durham, Mr Wilson states, that if any remonstrance is made on account of the applicant’s bad character, the reply of the magistrate commonly is, “the children must not suffer for it.” The following answers are specimens of the feeling and conduct in the southern districts :—“The answer given by the magistrates, when a man’s bad conduct is urged by the overseer against his relief, is, ‘ We cannot help that; his wife and family are not to suffer because the man has done wrong.’” “Too frequently petty thieving, drunkenness, or impertinence to a master, throw able-bodied labourers, perhaps with large families, on the parish funds, when relief is demanded as a right, and, if refused, enforced by a magistrate’s order, without reference to the cause which has produced his distress, viz. his own misconduct, which remains as a barrier to his obtaining any fresh situation, and leaves him a dead weight upon the honesty and industry of his parish.” Mr Stuart states, that in Suffolk, children deserted by their parents are in general well taken care of, and that the crime of deserting them is largely encouraged by the certainty that the parish must support the family. Even the inconvenience which might fall on the husband by the punishment of his wife for theft, is made the subject of pecuniary compensation at the expense of the injured parish. Under what other system could there be a judicial instrument concluding thus;— “And whereas it appears to us that the wife of the said Robert Reed is now confined in the house of correction at Cambridge, and that he is put to considerable expense in providing a person to look after his said five children, we do therefore order the churchwardens and overseers of the poor of the said parish, or such of them to whom these presents shall come, to pay unto the said Robert Reed the sum of eleven shillings weekly and every week, for and towards the support and maintenance of himself and family, for one ìnonth from the day of the date hereof. Given under our hands and seals this twentieth day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-three.” (Report, p. 59.) ]

It appeared to the pauper, that the government had undertaken to repeal, in his favour, the ordinary laws of nature; to enact that the children should not suffer for the misconduct of their parents, the wife for that of the husband, or the husband for that of the wife; that no one should lose the means of comfortable subsistence, whatever might be his indolence, prodigality, or vice; in short, that the penalty which, after all, must be paid by some one for idleness and improvidence, should fall, not on the guilty person, or on his family, but on the proprietors of the lands and houses encumbered by his settlement. Can we wonder if the uneducated were seduced into approving a system which aimed its allurements at all the weakest parts of our nature, which offered marriage to the young, security to the anxious, ease to the lazy, and impunity to the profligate?

The employers of paupers were attached to a system which enabled them to dismiss and resume their labourers according to their daily or even hourly want of them, to reduce wages to the minimum of what would support an unmarried man, and to throw upon others the payment of a part, frequently of the greater part, and sometimes almost the whole, of the wages actually received by their labourers. And even if they paid in rates what they would otherwise pay in wages, they preferred the payment of rates, which occurred at intervals, and the payment of which might from time to time be put off, to the weekly readymoney expenditure of wages. High rates, too, were a ground for demanding an abatement from rent; but high wages w ere not.^[19. In Air Richardson’s instructive statement of the reforms effected by Air Litchfield, in Farthingoe, Northamptonshire, we find that Air Litchfield has been opposed, not only by the labourers, but by the farmers; first, because they grudged giving the labourer with no children eight shillings a week; secondly, because they were afraid to displease the labourer who had two children, and preferred head-money; and, thirdly, because they were fearful lest, if the rates were lowered, their rents would be raised; and that they encouraged the labourers, at first openly, and afterwards covertly, in their attempts to deter Air Litchfield by menaces and insult. “When a valuer,” says Mr Cowell, “values a farm to an in∙coming tenant, or fixes the rent from time to time (in these parts they have no leases), he savs, ‘ What are your poor-rates ?’ If the tenant answer, ‘ Rates are low, but wages are high, the valuer says, ‘ I have nothing to do with wages, that is your affair; but rates are a positive thing, and I allow for them. This Mr Ellman considers as a bad custom, as it holds out an inducement to the farmer to prefer low wages and high rates. Tenants at will, says Air Cogshill, too often think, the more poor-rates the less rent Confidence between landlord and tenant seems quite lost. I have witnessed a good deal of this.” The following replies to question 36 of the Commissioners’ Rural Queries are further testimonies to the same effect. “I think the poor-laws have not diminished the capital, but rather the rent of the landlord, as the tenant considers rents and rates as payment for the farm, and one can only be increased at the expense of the other.” “The farmers are aware that, excepting in cases of long tenures and very sudden augmentation of rates, the burden does not at all affect them. It is a rent paid to the parish instead of the landowner.” “It should be understood that poor-rates are deducted in all calculations for rent; and that landlords pay them, and not the farmers.” « Capital is decreasing, from the loose manner in which the laws are administered, and the tenants feeling that they αo not in effect pay the rates, but the landlord. I cannot otherwise account for Jhe apathy with which they view, and the tenacity with which, in many instances, they defend abuses.” (Report, pp. 60, 61, 62.) ]

The owners of rateable property might, at least, have been expected to be favourable to any change which should avert their impending ruin. But of the property liable to poor-rates, there is a portion, and a portion of considerable importance, less from its value, than from the number of rate-payers amongst whom it is divided, and their influence in vestries, which not only is, in practice, exempted from contributing to the parochial fund, but derives its principal value from the mal-administration of that fund. This property consists of cottages or apartments inhabited by the poor. In almost all places the dwellings of the poor, or at least of the settled poor, were exempted from rates, and, besides, the rent was, in a very large proportion, paid by the parish. The former practice enabled the proprietor often to in - crease the rent by the amount of rate remitted, and always to be an owner of real property, and yet escape the principal burdens to which such property was subjected. The latter practice gave him a solvent tenant, and, if he had influence with the vestry or with the overseer, a liberal one.

Of the higher classes of landlords, those who reside in towns seldom took much part in parochial government, or had any distinct ideas as to the extent or the effects of its mismanagement; and the majority of those who had become familiarized with the abuses of the villages seem to have acquired habits of thinking and feeling and acting which unfitted them to originate any real and extensive amendment, or even to understand the principles upon which it ought to be based. To suppose that the poor are the proper managers of their own concerns; that a man’s wages ought to depend on his services, not on his wants; that the earnings of an ordinary labourer are naturally equal to the support of an ordinary family; that the welfare of that family naturally depends on his conduct; that he is bound to exercise any sort of prudence or economy; that anything is to be hoped from voluntary charity; are views which many of those who have long resided in pauperised rural districts seem to have rejected as too absurd for formal refutation.
[7:18:378]

Yet were the effects of the system such, that it might reasonably have been expected that any plan affording a reasonable prospect of a remedy would have been welcomed by all classes. The proprietors, who had been mulcted 1 every year of a larger and larger portion of their income, were not only deprived of the benefits to their property naturally dependent on a constant increase of the population and in the consumption of produce, each such increase bringing with it an accumulating charge of pauperism. Instances of the total abandonment of the land had not yet become numerous, but the approach towards it was in many cases imminent, and in all certain and rapid;^[20. See the Commissioners’ Report, page 65, where instances like the following are given from all parts of the country. The present is taken from Leicestershire, a county not within the range of the extreme operation of pauperism. “Mr Pilkington’s description of several places in Leicestershire is equally alarming. In Hinckley he found the poor-rate exceeding one pound an acre, and rapidly increasing, and a general opinion that the day is not distant when rent must cease altogether. On visiting Wigston Magna, in November 1832, he was informed that the value of property had fallen one half since 1820, and was not saleable even at that reduction. It does not appear, indeed, that it ought to have sold for more than two or three years’ purchase, the net rental not amounting to L.4000 a year, and the poor-rate expenditure growing at the rate of L∙1000 increase in a single year. And on his return to that neighbourhood, three months afterwards, the statement made to him was, that property in land was gone; that even the rates could not be collected without regular summons and judicial sales; and that the present system must insure, and very shortly, the total ruin of every individual of any property in the parish. We cannot wonder, after this, at the statement of an eminent solicitor at Loughborough, that it is now scarcely possible to effect a sale of property in that neighbourhood at any price.” The following answers, taken from a multitude of others of a similar nature, contained in Appendix (B), are to the same effect:— “Annual value of the real property, as assessed April 1815, L.3390; annual value of the real property, as assessed November 1829, L.1959. 5s. It has undoubtedly fallen in value since the last valuation, i. e. in the last two years; and the population has been more than trebled in thirty years—1801, 306; 1811, 707; 1821, 897; 1831, 938; and that in sp’te of an emigration of considerable amount, at the parish expense, in 1829. The eighteen-penny children will eat up this parish in ten years more, unless some relief be afforded us.” (Report, pp. 65, 66.) ] l whilst every diminution of cultivation was seen to have a double effect in increasing the rate on the remaining cultivation, the number of unemployed labourers being increased at the same instant as the fund for payment of rates was diminished; and the abandonment of property once begun, gave induced cause to proceed at an accelerated ratio.

The employers found the services of their labourers deteriorated both by the loss of industry, skill, and intelligence, which can only be secured by a recognition, on the part of the labourer, of the value to himself of such qualities; and they had to contend with many other habits of insolence and insubordination, the natural results of the labourer’s ceasing to depend upon his good character.

But by far the severest, sufferers were those for whose benefit the system was supposed to have been introduced and perpetuated; we mean the labourers and their families. Amongst these, the effects were not confined to those actually relieved. Instances were everywhere found in which the prudence and forethought of a labourer became his punishment instead of a reward. So onerous was the entire support of a man with a large family, and entirely destitute, that the rate-payers in agricultural parishes were generally agreed in employing such a one, so as to keep his family off the rates, in preference to another who had not married, or who had no family, or who had the means, by greater prudence or by any good fortune, for a while to support himself.^[21. See striking evidences of these influences in the Report, page 78· t ic Will it be believed that such is not merely the cruelty, but the folly, of the rate-payers in many places, that they prohibit this conduct (the anxiety of an independent labourer to make provisions for his family by his own exertions)—that they conspire to deny the man who, in defiance of the examples of all around him, has dared to save, and attempts to keep his savings, the permission to work fur his bread? Such a statement appears so monstrous, that we will substantiate it by some extracts from our evidence.” Sir Harry Verney, in a communication which will be found in Appendix (C), says, “In the hundred of Buckingham, in which I act as a magistrate, many instances occur where labourers are unable to obtain employment, because they have property of their own. For instance, in the parish of Steeple Claydon, John Lines, formerly a soldier, a very good workman, is’ refused employment because he receives a pension. The farmers say that they cannot afford to employ those for whom they are not bound by law to provide.” “The effect of allowance,” says Mr Stuart, “is to weaken, if not to destroy, all the ties of affection between parent and child. Whenever a lad comes to earn wages, or to receive parish relief on his own account” (and this we must recollect is at the age of fourteen), “although he may continue"to lodge with his parents, he does not throw his money into a common purse, and board with them, but buys his own loaf and piece of bacon, which he devours alone. The most disgraceful quarrels arise from mutual accusations of theft; and as the child knows that he has been nurtured at the expense of the parish, he has no filial attachment to his parents. The circumstances of the pauper stand in an inverted relation to those of every other rank in society. Instead of a family being a source of care, anxiety, and expense, for which he hopes to be rewarded by the filial return of assistance and support when they grow up, there is no period in his life in which he tastes less of solicitude, or in which he has the means of obtaining all the necessaries of life in greater abundance; but as he is alwavs sure of maintenance, it is in general the practice to enjoy life when he can, and no thought is taken for the morrow. Those parents who are thoroughly degraded and demoralized by the effects of ‘ allowance,’ not only take no means to train up their children to habits of industry, but do their utmost to prevent their obtaining employment, lest it should come to the knowledge of the parish-officers, and be laid hold of for the purpose of taking away the allowance.” “At Princes Risborough, we turned over the minute-book of the Select Vestry, and found the following entries: “ ‘ Samuel Simmons’s wife applied to be allowed something for looking after her mother, who is confined to her bed; the mother now receives 3s. Cd. weekly. To be allowed an additional 6d. for a few weeks.’ “ ‘ David Walker’s wife applied to be allowed something for looking after her father and mother (old Stevens and his wife), now ill, who receive Cs. weekly. To be allowed 1 s. weekly.’ “ ‘ Mary Lacy applies for something for waiting on her mother, now ill. Left to the governor.* , ' “ ‘ Elizabeth Prime applies to have something allowed for her sister looking after her father, now ill. Left to the governor.’ “ (Report, pp. 96, 97∙) - ] The system, in short, was this.

Piece-work was refused to the single man, or to the married man, if he had any property, because they could exist upon day-wages; it was refused to the active and intelligent labourer, because he could earn too much. The enterprising man, who had fled from the tyranny and pauperism of his parish to some place where there was a demand and a reward for his services, was driven from a situation which suited him, and an employer to whom he was attached, by a labour-rate or some other device against non-parishioners, and forced back to his settlement to receive as alms a portion only of what he was obtaining by his own exertions. He was driven from a place where he was earning, as a free labourer, twelve or fourteen shillings a week, and was offered road-work as a pauper, at sixpence a day, or perhaps to be put up by the parish authorities to auction, and sold to the farmer who would take him at the lowest allowance.

Can we wonder, then, if the labourer abandoned virtues of which this was the reward; if he gave up the economy in return for which he had been proscribed, the diligence for which he had been condemned to involuntary idleness, and the prudence, if it can be called such, which diminished his means just as much as it diminished his wants? Can we wonder if, smarting under these oppressions, he considered the law, and all who administered the law, as his enemies, the fair objects of his fraud or his violence? Can we wonder if, to increase his income, and to revenge himself on the parish, he married, and thus helped to increase that local excess of population which was gradually eating away the fund out of which he and all the other labourers of the parish were to be maintained?

But though the injustice perpetrated upon the man who struggled, as far as he could struggle, against the oppression of the system, who refused, as íàr as he could refuse, to be its accomplice, was at first sight the most revolting, the severest sufferers were those that had become callous to their own degradation, who valued parish support as their privilege, and demanded it as their right, and complained only that it was limited in amount, or that some sort of labour or confinement was exacted in return. No man’s principles can be corrupted without injury to society in general; but the person most injured is the person whose principles have been corrupted. The constant war which the pauper had to wage with all who employed or paid him, was destructive of his honesty and his temper; as his subsistence did not depend on his exertions, he lost all that sweetens labour, its association with reward, and got through his work, such as it was, with the reluctance of a slave. His pay, earned by importunity or fraud, or even violence, was not husbanded with the carefulness which would be given to the results of industry, but wasted in the intemperance to which his ample leisure invited him. The ground upon which relief was ordered to the idle and dissolute was, that the wife and children must not suffer for the vices of the head of the family; but as that relief was almost always [7:18:379]given into the hands of the vicious husband or parent, this excuse was obviously absurd. It appears from the evidence that the great supporters of the beer-shops were the paupers.

The worst of results, however, are still to be mentioned. In all ranks of society, the great sources of happiness and virtue were the domestic affections, and this was particularly the case amongst those who had so few resources as the labouring classes. Now pauperism seems to have become an engine for the purpose of disconnecting each member of a family from all the others, and of reducing all to the state .of domesticated animals, fed, lodged, and provided for by the parish, without mutual dependence or mutual interest. 1

CHAPTER IV.

REMEDIAL MEASURES PROPOSED AND ADOPTED.

It has been a frequent subject of public remark, that the remedial measures proposed by the Commissioners of Inquiry were the result of a process more deliberately and completely inductive than was to be found in any other instance of English, or indeed of any legislation. It is impossible to give any impression of the extent and value of the evidence upon which their conclusions were supported, otherwise than by a repetition of nearly the whole of the Report in which their remedial measures were detailed. This is impossible in the space allotted to this article; but to those interested, not only in the present question, but in acquainting themselves with a most masterly example of legislative investigation, no greater service can be done than to refer them to the document itself, which has been characterized by one of the most eminent, candid, and experienced of our statesmen, as one of the ablest state-papers he ever read.

The following description will exhibit a mere summary of the remedies proposed and adopted, with little more than hints of the reasonings upon which they were founded.

The Commissioners by no means adopted the opinion that a poor-law could, in a community like ours, be dispensed with. They found that the most pressing of the evils of the poor-laws were those connected with the relief of the able-bodied, and to these they suggested their first remedies. They assumed as their principle of administration, that the public is warranted in imposing such conditions on the individual relieved, as are conducive to the comfort either of the.individual himself, or of the country at large at whose expense he is relieved.

' They proposed, then, as the first and most essential of all conditions of relief, that the situation of the pauper, upon the whole, should not be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class. It was shown throughout the evidence, that as the condition of the pauper class was elevated, the condition of the independent class was depressed, their industry impaired, their employment rendered unsteady, and its remuneration diminished. Sueh persons, therefore, were under the strongest inducements to quit the less eligible class of labourers, and enter the more eligible class of paupers. The Commissioners maintained that the converse would be, and was found to be, the effect of placing the pauper class in its proper position below the condition of the independent labourer. They found, on a large examination of the eases of strict administration of relief on the principle of letting the labourer find in the parish the hardest taskmaster and the worst paymaster he can have, that the parish had always become his last, and not his first, resource; and they found largely exemplified those specific results which invariably ensue from such an administration.

The first and immediate effect, was the conversion of the able-bodied paupers into independent labourers. The second result, indeed a corollary of the first, was the reduction of the parochial expenditure, constituting an increase of the fund for the employment of independent labourers. The third effect, closely connected with and following the absorption of able-bodied paupers, and their conversion into independent labourers, was the rise in .wages. The fourth class of the observed specific effects was the diminution, not only of pauper-marriages, but of those imprudent marriages contracted with the knowledge and confidence that the worst result to be apprehended was an eventual dependence upon the poor-rate. The fifth and last specific effect dwelt upon by the Commissioners, and illustrated by their evidence, was the diminution of crime, and the contentment of the labourers increasing with their industry.

The Commissioners, in endeavouring to obtain thegeneral adoption of this principle, cautiously avoided the recommendation of speculative remedies; they dwelt anxiously and emphatically upon the necessity and the safety of adopting a course of legislation which may be considered as wholly experimental. They propose, therefore, no changes in the principle of the law, but confine their recommendations to this, that the means which have been found the most effective in practice, should be applied wherever it was found applicable with the prospect of a beneficial result.

To secure this operation, they recommend the adoption of a new and more responsible agency to co-operate with and control that which had been found for the most part inefficient, or greatly efficient for mischief. Some excrescences in the law they propose to lop off, but no additions beyond the improvement of the agency were proposed to be introduced in the principle of the statute of Elizabeth, and the succeeding legislation. They recommend, therefore, “that those modes of administering relief which have been [7:18:380]tried and found beneficial, be generally enforced” (Report, p. 261); and “that the practice of giving relief in well-regulated workhouses, and the abolition of partial relief to the able-bodied, having been tried and found beneficial, be extended to all places.” (Ibid. p. 262.)

The first and chief specific measure recommended by them was thus described :—“First, That, except as to medical attendance, and subject to the exception respecting apprenticeship hereinafter stated, all relief whatever to able-bodied persons, or to their families, otherwise than in well-regulated workhouses (i. e. places where they may be set to work according to the spirit and intention of the 43d of Elizabeth), shall be declared unlawful, and shall cease, in manner and at periods hereafter specified; and that all relief afforded in respect of children under the age of sixteen shall be considered as afforded to their parents.” (Ibid. p. 262.)

This adoption of the workhouse and its restrictions as the condition upon which relief was to be administered, was advised, because it would operate, in the first place, as a self-acting test of the claim of the applicant, it being urged “That it is demoralizing and ruinous to offer to the able-bodied of the best characters more than a simple subsistence. The person of bad character, if he be allowed anything, could not be allowed less. By the means which we propose, the line between those who do, and those who do not, need relief, is drawn, and drawn perfectly. If the claimant does not comply with the terms on which relief is given to the destitute, he gets nothing; and if he does comply, the compliance proves the truth of the claim, namely, his destitution. If, then, regulations were established and enforced with the degree of strictness that has been attained in the dispauper - ised parishes, the workhouse doors might be thrown open to all who would enter them, and conform to the regulations. Not only would no agency for contending against fraudulent rapacity and perjury, no stages of appeals (vexatious to the appellants and painful to the magistrates), be requisite to keep the able-bodied from the parish; but the intentions of the statute of Elizabeth, in setting the idle to work, might be accomplished, and vagrants and mendicants actually forced on the parish, that is, forced into a condition of salutary restriction and labour. It would be found that they might be supported much cheaper under proper regulations than when living at large by mendicity or depredation.” (Ibid. p. 264.)

In the second place, it was observed by the Commissioners, that “Little need be said on the next effect of the abolition of partial relief (even independently of workhouse regulations), in drawing a broad line of distinction between the paupers and the independent labourers. Experience has shown, that k it will induce many of those whose wants arise from their idleness, to earn the means of subsistence; repress the fraudulent claims of those who have now adequate means of independent support; and obtain for others assistance from their friends, who are willing to see their relations pensioners, but would exert themselves to prevent their being inmates of a workhouse.” (Ibid. p. 276.)

In the third place, it was relied on to remove much of the evil arising from the situation of the distributors of relief, who, having many modes of relief at their disposal, were rendered liable to odium and revenge when they chose a more strict mode of administration, and were liable to be seduced by all the motives which the love of popularity, fear, or the cajolery, importunity, or mènaces of the applicant presented, to adopt a lax administration.

These reasons appear to have entirely prevailed with the legislature, who accordingly adopted them in principle, only modifying them thus far in their form. Combining the effect of this recommendation with the one subsequently to be described, the institution of a central board, the legislature—not fixing any determinate period, but bearing in mind the magnitude of the amount of the existing out-door relief to able-bodied men and their families, with the possibility that the means might not suffice at the periods to be specified, for affording all the workhouse relief that might be required upon a sudden cessation of all other relief—adopted the plan of leaving the determination of the period at which out-door relief should cease, and relief in the workhouse become the invariable rule, to the judgment of the central board; that board having power to adopt a different course in different districts, to adopt the workhouse relief entirely and at once where the means existed, and in others to prepare the way by procuring workhouses, and the gradual substitution of relief in kind for relief in money, and by other intermediate and preparatory operations. (See the Act, sect. 52.) As a consequence of adopting this course, all restrictions imposed by previous acts upon officers, with a view of preventing them from applying the workhouse to able-bodied men, are repealed (sect. 53); and authority to direct the purchase, the furnishing, and the management of workhouses is given to the central board.

The legislature adopted, without change, except by way of addition, so much of this recommendation as has the effect of identifying the relief to an unemancipated child with the relief to the parent; the intended effect being to render the parent as responsible for providing for his children as for himself, and subject to the same consequences of neglect in either case, so that he cannot seek relief for his child, without submitting to the condition upon which alone he could obtain it for himself, or otherwise. The legislature adopted with this recommendation these expansions and additions: Relief of the wife is made relief to the husband; of the child, to the parent, to the father if living, or otherwise to the widow (sect. 56); and of the bastard child, to the mother (sect. 71). Moreover, a man marrying since the act, is made liable to maintain the children which his wife has at the time of her marriage, until they attain the age of sixteen, or until her death (sect. 57); this last provision being made with the view that the man is liable to all the civil obligations of his wife existing at the time of her marriage, excepting this obligation, which must commonly have been of all her obligations the most notorious. As the law stood, a woman’s family, legitimate or illegitimate, was, by her marriage, cast on the parish for support, and the allowances made to them constituted an annuity to the married couple, forming an inducement of extraordinary frequency to marriages in all other respects the most improvident.

The Commissioners’ second specific measure was thus proposed :—“We recommend, therefore, the appointment of a central board to control the administration of the poor-laws, with such assistant commissioners as may be found requisite; and that the commissioners be empowered and directed to frame and enforce regulations for the government of workhouses, and as to the nature and amount of the relief to be given and the labour to be exacted in them; and that such regulations shall, as far as may be practicable, be uniform throughout the country.” (Report, p. 296.)

The reasons for the establishment of this agency are eloquently and most instructively stated in the Report; especially the reasons for relying rather upon a constantly acting agency, with the means of judging at every moment of the extent to which its measures would then apply, in preference to relying upon a mere legislative enactment, however valuable the principle involved, or stringent its provisions might be. Instances of the most striking kind are given, not only of the failure of such enactments, but of their conversion to purposes directly contrary to their object, where no authority was erected responsible for conducting their operations. The other grounds for this recommendation were chiefly the impossibility of choosing a succession of overseers or other annual officers with appropriate[7:18:381] knowledge, still less with the enlarged experience of the means to be used, or an enlightened appreciation of the objects to be attained; next, the short duration of the office, which, even where able officers are occasionally found, prevents the continued application of their experience, precisely at the time when their efficiency has become the greatest; next, the division of the districts for which they served, preventing co-operation or the dispersion of the knowledge obtained on one spot over the others to which it might be applicable. Scarcely an instance was found of a parish being dispauperised, the example of which was followed even by a single adjoining parish. Reference was also made to the inadequacy of the motives of any officer to support a sound administration: his responsibility little or none,—his gain no more than that of every other rate-payer occupying as largely as himself,—the loss of time and of energy,—the danger of misapprehension by those he sought to serve, and of failure in the whole object, great,—the certainty of odium from the pauper and from the prejudiced amongst his fellow-parishioners, and ofjealousy from rival officers, being inevitable,—whilst, on the other hand, the strength of the interests in abusive administration, by which one man may make to himself a gain of the losses of many, whilst by the best administration he can only save himself from the loss falling to the share of one,—the confederacy of those who recognise their interest in such corrupt gain,—the popularity to be acquired by liberality in the disposal of funds contributed by others,—form some few of the motives to uphold the prevailing abusive administration. In these views the Commissioners adopted the conclusion, that whatever might be the intentions of the legislature, they would be best carried out by a permanent authority, accumulating experience in itself, independent of local control, uninterested in favour of local abuse, but responsible for carrying into effect the law which it was appointed to execute. This recommendation was adopted by the legislature, according to the spirit in which it was made. A board of three commissioners was to be appointed by the king (sects. 1 to 11), themselves appointing assistant commissioners, capable of receiving the powers of the commission by delegation (sects. 8 to 13); the commission having power to direct and control the whole administration of relief throughout England and Wales, and especially the government of workhouses, and it being left to them to determine the extent to which the measures to be carried out should be rendered uniform.

But the districts for the administration of relief, that is, parishes by the statute of Elizabeth, and town-lands by the 13th and Í4th Charles II., had been fortuitously created, sometimes containing but one householder, sometimes containing a population exceeding 100,000. There were in 1831, in England and Wales, fifty-six parishes containing less than ten persons, and which may be therefore calculated, one with the other, to contain but two adult λ males; a hundred and forty-eight parishes containing but from ten to twenty persons, the largest of these on the average containing five adult males; and five hundred and thirty-three parishes containing from twenty to fifty persons, the largest of which would give less than twelve adult males per parish. Taking into consideration the small number of our adult male population who can read and write, a conception may be formed of the absurdity of the expectation, that every parish can adequately supply a constant succession of annual officers competent to perform the very complicate and difficult duties of the levier and collector of rates, and distributor of relief.

The evidence shows a large proportion of the overseers exercising these functions, though unable otherwise to sign their accounts than by their mark, attested by the justice’s clerk. But if it was difficult to find a supply of officers for these districts, it would have been preposterous to expect that each district should supply itself withan efficient workhouse, however indispensable that should be as a means of protection to its population. It was found, on an examination of the largest, of the smallest, and of the intermediate parishes, in the seven first counties in England, taken in alphabetical order, that the largest districts gave the lowest cost per head, the smallest gave the greatest cost per head, and those of intermediate size an intermediate cost. The results are thus stated in the Report: The sixty-seven largest parishes gave 9s. 0∣d. per head in population; the sixty-six intermediate gave 14s. 4d. per head in population; the sixty-seven least gave 14s. 11^d. per head in population; whilst, if we take all England, there are the still more striking results, viz. the hundred absolutely largest parishes, containing a population of 3,196,064, gave 6s. 7d. per head; the hundred intermediate parishes, containing a population of 19,841, gave 15s. per head; the hundred least parishes from which poor-rate returns are made, with a population of 1708, gave L.l. Ils. H½d. per head.

Such are the results as tested by the cost of administration in the larger and in the smaller districts; but the moral effects in producing pauperism were as disastrous in the smaller districts. The Commissioners observe, that they “have no recent returns of proportions of paupers in the parishes referred to in the preceding statement; but on referring to the parliamentary returns of the number of paupers in each parish in the years 1803 and 1813, it appears that the number of persons relieved in the large and small parishes bore some proportion to their relative amount of rates. In the three hundred parishes of which the comparative amount of the poor’s rates on the population has been stated, the average number of persons relieved was, in the hundred largest parishes, in 1803, 1 in 16, or 6½ per cent.; in 1813, 1 in 13, or 7∣ per cent.: in the hundred intermediate ditto, in 1803, 1 in 10, or 10 per cent.; in 1813, 1 in 8, or 12∣ per cent.; and in the hundred smallest ditto, in 1803, 1 in 6, or 16∣ per cent.; in 1813, 1 in 4, or 25 per cent.” And the progress of the disaster was shown to be most rapid in the smallest districts: thus, “the increase of pauperism on population, from 1803 to 1813, was, in the hundred largest parishes, l½ per cent.; in the hundred intermediate ditto, 2½ per cent.; and in the hundred smallest ditto, 8½ per cent.” The economy of extended management was thus experimentally proved in every possible direction, and the moral interests were shown to be the same with the pecuniary.

The Commissioners entered largely into the examination of this subject in all its bearings, and ended by recommending “that the central board be empowered to cause any number of parishes which they may think convenient, to be incorporated for the purpose of workhouse management, and for providing new workhouses where necessary; to declare their workhouses to be the common workhouses of the incorporated district, and to assign to those workhouses separate classes of poor, though composed of the poor of distinct parishes, each distinct parish paying to the support of the permanent workhouse establishment, in proportion to the average amount of the expense incurred for the relief of its poor for the three previous years, and paying separately for the food and clothing of its own paupers.” This recommendation was adopted by the legislature in all points. The common workhouses are provided for by sections 23, 24, 26; the maintenance of the workhouse and establishment charges is fixed in the proportion of the average expenditure of the three previous years by section 28, with the power of taking future averages; the cost of the maintenance of its individual paupers being borne by each parish, under section 26.

The necessity of providing for a clear and uniform system of accounts was shown in an extraordinary manner in the inquiries of the Commission; but it is too obvious to re[7:18:382]quire further remark, and the previous observations show in some measure the difficulty of obtaining efficient parochial officers, and the necessity of resorting to further means to attain the object.

The Commissioners recommended “that the central board be empowered and required to take measures for the general adoption of a complete, clear, and, as far as may be practicable, uniform system of accounts.” This recommendation was also adopted in full by the legislature, the Commissioners’ powers being given by section 15, the audit being provided for by sections 46 and 89.

Upon the subject of officers, the Commissioners recommend, “that the central board be empowered to incorporate, for the purpose of appointing and paying permanent officers, and for the execution of works of public labour ;” and “that the central board be directed to state the general qualifications which shall be necessary to candidates for paid offices connected with the relief of the poor, to recommend to parishes and incorporations proper persons to act .as paid officers, and to remove any paid officers whom they shall think unfit for their situations.”

This also is adopted in the 46th section of the act, except that the Commissioners have no power to recommend the persons to act as paid officers, but have ample powers to determine, by regulation, the qualification and remo- .val of all paid officers. The chief remaining recommendation affecting the general administration of the law by the Commissioners was, “that the board be required to submit a report annually to one of your majesty’s principal secretaries of state, containing, 1. an account of their proceedings; 2. any further amendments which they may think it advisable to suggest; 3. the evidence on which the suggestions are founded; 4. bills carrying those amendments, if any, into effect, which bills the board shall be empowered to prepare with professional assistance.”

This is also adopted, as far as the annual report is concerned, without, however, any definition in the act of the subjects upon which the Commissioners are to report, that being left to their discretion and to the condition of affairs to determine, section 5; they are to make a current record of their proceedings, section 4; and they are bound to give any information respecting their proceedings which the secretary of state may at any time call for, section 6.

The remaining recommendations of the Commissioners relate chiefly to the law of settlement and that of bastardy. These subjects were more important when all who could gain a settlement might claim the benefit of that settlement, without any check. The improved administration, especially the inducements which now act as restraints upon the applications for relief, have diminished the motives to the voluntary pauper to fix his settlement in a good parish, and have proportionally diminished the danger to parishes, both from the attempts of the pauper, and from the exertions of the officers of other parishes to shift their burthens, by giving to their own poor the means to acquire a new settlement elsewhere. The most important change in the settlement law recommended and adopted, was that which repealed the settlement by hiring and service; a settlement which impeded the free circulation, the effects of which in restraining labourers to their parishes, and creating a reliance on their parishes, was shown to constitute the great plague-spot of the poor-law system as it then existed.^[22. “The Reverend 11. It. Bailey, chaplain to the Tower, who has had extensive opportunities of observing the operation of the Îioor-laws in the rural districts, was asked,— ς Can you give any instances within your own knowledge, of the operation of the existing aw of settlement? I was requested by Colonel Bogson, Kesgrove House, to furnish him with a farming bailiff’. I found a man in all respects qualified for his situation; he was working at nine shillings a week in the parish where I lived. The man was not encumbered by a family, and he thankfully accepted my offer; the situation was, in point of emolument, and comfort, and station, a considerable advance; his advantages would have been doubled. In about a week he altered his mind, and declined the situation, in consequence, as I understood, of his fearing to remove from what was considered a good parish to a bad one, the parish to which it was proposed to remove him being connected with a hundred house, in which there is more strict management. I was requested by a poor man, whom I respected, to find a situation for his son in London. The son was a strong young man, working at that time at about eight shillings a week. I eventually succeeded in getting him a good situation of one guinea per week in London, where his . labour would have been much less than it was in the country; but when the period arrived at which he was expected in London, he was not forthcoming. It appeared he had altered his mind, and determined not to take the place; as I understood, his reason for refusing to accept it arose from a reluctance to endanger his settlement in his parish. Such are the instances which are continually presented to my observation with respect to the operation of the present system of settlement.’ “Among our present modes of conferring a settlement,” says Mr Russell, in the replies to which we have already adverted, “that by hiring and service is incomparably the most pernicious; it tells the poor man that he shall encounter a prohibitory duty .in every market in which he attempts to dispose of the only commodity he must live by selling; it shuts the door against the most respectable and advantageous employment in which a servant can engage; by abridging the term, it impairs the strength of the connection between him and his master; and it not only drives the servant from his place, but often betrays him, during the interval between his being discharged from one house and hired at another, into bad company, dissipation, and vice. (Report, p. 155-G.) ] This law of settlement was repealed by the 64th and 65th sections, as were the settlement by occupation of a tenement without payment of poor-rates by the 66th, and that by apprenticeship to the sea-service by the 67th; and improvements in the whole law of removal, by which great wrong had been mutually done by parishes one to the other, were introduced by the 79th and following sections.

The bastardy law, which had made it a more prudent speculation for a woman to have a family of bastard children than to have an equal number of legitimate children, by enabling her to cast off the burthen of the children, which the widow could not do, and thus to enforce from the parish, and through the parish from whomsoever she charged as the father, such a contribution as would induce her to keep them. This law, also, by subjecting the person charged as the father, and who could not give security to pay, to imprisonment, was a means of terror by which a woman was often enabled to compel a marriage; a means to which recourse was had to an extent almost incredible.^[23. The following is an instance of the testimony as to the operation of the act, given in a letter from the overseer of Llanasa, in the county of Flint, m answer to an inquiry from the board, “Why the bastards in the parish are so few now? I can only observe, that, in the first place, we never force the putative father to marry the mother; and we compel the mother, as well as the father, to pay her quota towards the maintenance of the child. This was our simple mode of treating the business. One thing I must observe, and it tells well for the new poor-law act, that in our parish we have from fifteen to twenty weddings in the year, and it seldom happened that at the ceremony the bride did not think it decent and requisite (I am now speaking of the lower order of persons) to conceal her shape under a cloak. But in the eighteen marriages which we have had since last August, all the ladies, except one, retained their virgin shape, and appeared without the mantle.” (First Annual Report, pp. 57, 58.) “An unmarried girl, upon leaving the workhouse after her fourth confinement, said to the master, ‘ Well, if I have the good luck to have another child, I shall draw a good sum from the parish; and, with what I can earn myself, shall be better off than any married woman in the parish and the master added, that she had met with the good luck she hoped for, as she told him, a short time before 1 was at Uclbeach, that she was five months gone with child; I asked him what she. had for each child? He answered, two shillings; and that women in that neighbourhood could easily earn five shillings a week all the year through. Thus she will have fifteen shillings a week.” (Ibid. p. 172.) “At Nuneaton, the solicitor to the parish, Mr Greenaway, stated, that his house looked into the churchyard; that he was in the habit purposely of watching the persons resorting to the church for marriage, and that he could confidently say, that seventeen out of every twenty of the female poor who went there to be married were far advanced in pregnancy.” (Ibid. 173.) ]

These demoralizing influences the legislature, by the recommendation[7:18:383] of the Commissioners, deprived of further effect, first , by rendering the mother of a bastard liable for its maintenance, in the like manner as a widow for the maintenance of her legitimate children, section 71; secondly, by rendering it unlawful to pay to her any sums which the putative father might be compelled to contribute for the reimbursement of the parish; and, thirdly, by rendering it necessary that evidence additional to that of the mother should be required to corroborate her charge against the person accused of being the father.

Such, in the main, were the recommendations of the Commissioners, the views with which they were urged, and those with which they were adopted by the legislature. Other provisions were also adopted, necessary, indeed, to give effect to these more important purposes, but not of sufficient importance, or sufficiently characteristic of any great principle, to require remark here.

CHAPTER V.

EFFECTS OF THE AMENDED SYSTEM.

It has been seen that one of the duties with which the Commissioners were charged was that of reporting annually to the secretary of state. The Commissioners having superintended the administration for four years from August 1834, have made four Reports, and have circulated them largely. From them our chief information must be drawn; for although much discussion has taken place with respect both to the principle of the measure and the mode in which effect has been given to it, no enlarged examination of its working has, with but one exception, been made. This exception is found in the inquiry by the committees of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into certain charges made against the administration of the Commissioners. The evidence of these committees, taken during the two sessions of 1836-37 and 1837-38, and the Report made by the last, though they contain much valuable matter, and especially a very detailed account of the operation of the measure upon the morals and the condition of the labouring poor, are in the main corroborative of the Commissioners’ own Report, and in disaffirmance of the charges made against the principle of the act, and the manner of its execution. This evidence, therefore, has also the effect of referring us again for information to the Reports of the Commissioners, f It appears from the Reports of the Commissioners, that in four years they have succeeded in uniting 14,811 parishes, which they have arranged in 565 unions; and in placing thirteen parishes under boards of governors, organized and acting in a like manner as in unions. Of these, a hundred and eleven were declared and organized in the first year, two hundred and fifty-two in the second, two hundred and five in the third year, and seventeen in the fourth year. These unions have since become the districts of administration of the act for the registration of births, deaths, and marriages. The presidency of the boards of guardians has been taken by the nobility and leading gentry in their respective unions.^[24. See List of Officers, &c. in the Fourth Annual Report, Appendix (C), No. 2, pp. 209, el supra. ] Each union is administered by a board of guardians, one guardian at least being elected for each parish or town-land. This board meets in most cases weekly; but many instances exist where, by improved skill in the performance of their functions, and by diminished pauperism, they are enabled to perform their duties efficiently by meeting once a fortnight. Three hundred and twenty-eight unions have workhouses completed and in operation; a hundred and forty-one have workhouses building or in course of alteration. Of the remaining unions, thirty-eight boards of governors have taken no steps for providing themselves with this requisite for good management. Each union is provided with the following officers: A clerk, usually a professional man, auditor, chaplain, medical officers, relieving officers, master and matron of the workhouse, schoolmaster and schooloustress, and porter.

These arrangements involve a large expenditure, but are indispensable to secure the advantages of an improved administration, and of the vastly preponderating saving derivable only from a better system. Before the Poor-Law Amendment Act was passed, the Commission of Inquiry had excited universal attention to the abuses in the poor-laws. The dispersion of their searching inquiries throughout the kingdom; the visits of their assistant Commissioners; above all, the startling picture of abuse contained in the extracts from their information, and the inviting account contained in the same extracts, of the effects, pecuniary and moral, resulting in Cookham, Uley, Southwell, Bingham, Swallowfield, Hatfield, and some few other dispauperised parishes; had produced a wide-spread inclination, a sanguine hope, and in many places a vigorous effort, to reduce the abuses everywhere recognised as now prevailing. The magistracy and clergy especially aided this movement. We find, therefore, the effects of the inquiry developing themselves before the act was passed, and in some measure in the very way in which the act itself was intended to operate. The years 1833 and 1834 thus presentareduction below the previous years, as will be seen in the table at page 375, which is here repeated, and completed up to the present year.
[table]
[7:18:384]

To complete the view here given, the cost per head, calculating the population of the year 1838 as 15,423,718, being at the average rate of increase ascertained by the last census, will give this result, in which, for the purposes of comparison, the portion before given is here repeated.
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For a connected view of the progress of expenditure, so far as it can now be obtained, previously to the year of inquiry, 1832, during that of the succeeding year, being that of the enactment of the Poor-Law Amendment Act, and thenceforward to the present time, reference may be had to the following table, the details of which for each county may be found at pp. 324, 325, 326, 327, of the Third Annual Report.
[table]

This table shows, that, in comparison with the parochial year ended March 1834, the savings in expenditure were—
[table]

making a total saving during the period the act has been in operation of L.6,856,626, as compared with the year ended March 1834.

The two following statements will show the amount of money expended for the relief and maintenance of the poor during the years ended Easter 1803, and 25th March 1818 and 1837, respectively, specifying the amount, rate per cent., and rate per head, of decrease in 1837, as compared with the years 1803 and 1818 respectively; the former being the year in which the smallest, and the latter the year in which the largest sum of money was expended for the relief of the poor, for which authentic parliamentary returns have been received:

Population in 1801, 8,872,980; expended for relief, &c. of the poor during the year ended Easter 1803, L.4,077, 891.

Population in 1821, 11,978,875; expended for relief, &c. of the poor during the vcar ended 25th of March 1818, L.7,870,801.

Population in 1831, 13,897,187; expended for relief, &c. of the poor during the year ended 25th of March 1837, L.4,044,741.

From this statement of the population and the expenditure at the periods described, the following results were obtained. The tables show, what is a striking exemplification of the operation of the new system, that the amount expended in 1837 was one percent, less than that of the lowest year for which any official returns exist, apparently the lowest year in the present century. But when the increase of population is considered, this comparison becomes vastly more favourable to the improved administration. The expenditure in the year 1803, in comparison with the population of 1801, was as nine shillings and twopence per head, whilst that of 1837 was, with comparison of the population of 1831, only five shillings and tenpence.

Amount of decrease in the year ended 25th of March 1837, compared with 1803, L.33,150; ditto compared with 1818, L.3,826,060.

Decrease per cent, in 1837. compared with 1803, one; ditto compared with 1818, forty-nine.

Expenditure per head in 1803, with reference to population in 1801, nine shillings and twopence; ditto in 1818, with reference to population in 1821, thirteen shillings and twopence; ditto in 1837, with reference to population in 1831, five shillings and tenpence.

Decrease per head in 1837, compared with 1803, three shillings and fourpence; ditto compared with 1818, seven shillings and fourpence.

This, however, is still a very unfavourable view of the operations of the new system, as it does not allow for the great increase of population between the years 1831 and 1837. Estimating the population between the years 1801 and 1803 as increasing at the same rate per cent, as the increase shown in the census taken in 1811, and estimating in like manner the increase between 1831 and 1837, in accordance with the rate of increase as shown at the census of 1831, we have these results.
[table]

The means of comparison between the state of the pauper and of the labouring population in the two periods preceding and succeeding the passing of the act, are not by any means so abundant as those of making the comparison of expenditure. It is nevertheless clearly apparent, that in proportion as the expenditure is diminished, the number of paupers maintained has diminished; and that the reliance on the rate, the idleness which it rendered possible, and the indulgence which it afforded, must have been on the whole proportionally diminished. We have full evidence that the diminution in enjoyment has not been at the expense of the aged, the infirm, or the impotent. The restrictive rules applied by the Commissioners (see Appendix to their First Report, p. 85) to various classes of able-bodied paupers, with various degrees of strictness, carefully preserved to the aged and impotent the benefits of the relief, such as might have been given them under the old system, but which, as shown by the Commissioners of Inquiry’, was refused to them, and lavished on the insolent and reckless of the able-bodied. Now the returns show, that precisely in the places where able-bodied pauperism most prevailed, there, at the same time, the relief of the aged was least cared for; and they equally [7:18:385]show, that with the diminution of relief to the able-bodied, that to the aged and infirm has become more liberal. (See Appendix to the Second Annual Report, p. 309, 311, 416.)^[26. Mr Raper, clerk of the Westhampnett Union, gave much valuable evidence on the beneficial working of the amended system before the committee of the House of Commons in session I83G-37, from which we make the following extracts: “With reference to the aged and infirm, have you been in the habit of giving them relief out of the house? Certainly. “Have you ordered them into the house on any occasions, refusing them relief out of it ?—The order to an aged or infirm person to come into the house has been an exception; the general rule has been to give the relief out. “What was the state of things in that respect before the new poor-law came into operation ?—The allowances to the aged and infirm have been, generally speaking, increased since the union. u With regard to going into the house or not?—I think there have been less aged and infirm ordered into the house since the union than previously.” (3165-G8.) In the parish of Graff ham, in the same union, the payments made to aged persons under the old law are stated by Mr Sadler to have been as follows :— “By reference to the poor-book I will describe the former payments; the former allowance to this same couple, who now receive five shillings a week, was two shillings a week; the widow woman who now receives two shillings and sixpence a week used to receive one shilling a week; and the single man who now receives two shillings and sixpence, used to receive two shillings. “Then in the parish of Graff’ham the payment to the aged appears to have increased?—Doubled, exactly.” (17,503—4.) The extracts from the evidence of Mr Ellis, Mr Butt, and Mr Ford, each of whom is unfavourable to the regulations of the amended system, all relate to the Petworth Union :— “How has it (the new law) affected the aged and infirm?—The aged are taken care of now in their own parish, the same as they were before the union. “Have many of the aged and infirm been removed into the workhouses?—Very few; not more than we had before the union.” (349; Mr Ford.) “Upon the aged and infirm paupers what do you think has been the effect of the act ?—I should think that they are full as well off, and perhaps better, than they were before. “Do they receive out-door relief?—Yes, mostly; and if I might be allowed to say, that is one of the arguments that I make use of when I ask that we may have the discretion with respect to the labourers with large families. We have the discretion with respect to the aged, and therefore have used it, and enabled them to receive that comfort under this poor-law that they had before, or perhaps more.” (1490-1.) “You have stated that you consider the condition of the aged poor to be improved; in what respect? I hardly stated that they were improved; I said that they were as well off, if not better. In the case of aged persons, we give them the choice whether they will live out at a certain allowance, about two shillings and sixpence a week, or come into the old poor-house. If they have a child to live with, or any other person, they generally take the two shillings and sixpence instead of coming into the poor-house. “Was not that the condition of the poor before the poor-law came into operation ?—Yes, the same. “Then in what way is their condition improved ?—L think that our allowance was rather more than was siven by the uarishes.” (1629-31; Mr Ellis.) b J i “Have the aged and infirm received the same amount of comforts, or a greater amount of comforts? Greater; more liberal. “Has there been any severity exercised towards widows or children, or single women ?—Not in our Union; auite the reverse.” (2664-5; Mr Butt.) H ]

The evidence as to the improvement of the labourer is too abundant to allow us even to refer the reader to all the passages in the Commissioners’ Reports; but conclusive evidence will-be found in the passages referred to under the title “Labourers” in the index of the Second Annual Report. These show a great improvement in the general conduct of labourers when made dependent upon the good opinion or good will of their employers; a manifest improvement in the labour of workmen when wages were substituted for relief, and, what might be expected, a parallel increased demand for the improved labour. Equally strong is the evidence of the decrease of crime, and particularly of those petty offences, such as poaching, snaring, and the smaller kinds of depredation, for which tire former unsteady occupation of the farm-labourer afforded him facilities. The illustration of these subjects will be found most abundant, and in greatest detail, in the evidence given before the Select Committees of the House of Commons in the sessions 1836-37 and 1837-38. There will also be found evidence of the diminution of improvident habits generally; the increase of benefit clubs, and of deposits in savings’ banks, though shown here, is made even more manifest by the returns collected and observed upon by Nir Tufnell in the Appendix to the Fourth Annual Report (p. 220-222), extracts from which are here given.

“With so many circumstances tending to retard the prosperity of the labouring classes, it is gratifying to have to observe, that, so far as can be collected from statistical documents (and to figures, as being less capable of error, I am always desirous of referring), their welfare seems to have been upon the whole in a state of steady advancement since the enforcement of the regulations of the new poor-law. As one proof of this I beg to refer to the following table, which shows the deposits during the last seven years in the savings’ banks in the two counties of Kent and Sussex, from friendly societies, and from the depositors of sums under L.20. I have selected these two classes of depositors, as amongst them, more than in any other class, the labouring population are chiefly to be found.
[table]

“The three years previous to the passing of the Poor-Law Amendment Act were by no means unprosperous ones as respects those natural circumstances that affect the condition of the labourers. Yet it will be perceived how slowly the [7:18:386] “Summary of what Sussex Pauperism was under the Old System, and what it is, after little more than One Year’s experiment, under the New.
[table]

deposits increased in comparison to what they have done since the passing of the poor-law, and that in 1832 there was a large diminution.

“The following table, showing the increase of the various classes of depositors in the Tunbridge Wells savings’ banks between 1831 and 1837, presents gratifying proof of the greater prevalence of a spirit of providence, especially amongst the poorer classes :—
[table]

“The increase of forethought in the labourers is perhaps still more strikingly manifested by the increase of members in friendly societies, which are now far more generally established on principles calculated to secure a certain provision in sickness and old age, instead of those injurious institutions, hitherto so prevalent, which seem intended only to minister to the profit of publicans, and which are usually founded on principles that must inevitably cause their dissolution when old age overtakes the members, and consequently when the utility of such societies would be most apparent, and their benefits most needed.

“I have received the numbers that have annually belonged to three benefit societies, and these I give below. The first is a friendly society in the county of Sussex.

“Number of members in 1831, 84; in 1832, 64; in

1833, 56; in 1834, 48 ;-in 1835, 49; in 1836, 64; in 1837, 98.

“The following are the returns from two Kentish friendly societies :—

“Number of members in 1832, 378; in 1833, 363; in 1834, 356; in 1835, 353; in 1836, 420; in 1837, 478.

“Number of members in 1831,461; in 1832,477; in 1833, 519; in 1834, 533; in 1835, 609; in 1836, 611; in 1837, 770.

“It will be perceived that these figures indicate either a very slow increase or an actual diminution previous to the passing of the new law, and a rapid advancement since.

“These contrasts, however, are far less favourable to the present system than they would appear, had not the failure of the crops and the hardness of the seasons during the last year and a half pressed with peculiar severity on the labouring classes of this district. Every natural circumstance seems to have combined to test to the utmost the soundness of the principles of the poor-laws, and put their efficacy to the proof. In the two counties of Kent and Sussex referred to in the above table of the deposits in savings’ banks, upwards of a million of money has been subtracted from the poor-rates since the regulations of the Poor-Laio Amendment Act came into opeiation ; and if, in the face of this large reduction, and of many adverse circumstances, we are enabled to refer, not to obscure deductions and conjectures, but to the unimpeachable testimony of facts like the above, are we not entitled to assume that the effect of the measure has not been hurtful to the interests of the labourers or of society in general, and that the apprehensions entertained of it are not justified by the result ?”

The most impressive proof that strong motives must have been given to the able-bodied to resume the habits of honest and independent industry, may be found in a return of the operation of the law in the county of Sussex, a county in which able-bodied pauperism appeared to have had the firmest root, and the circumstances of which county afforded, at the passing of the act, the least hope of eradicating this evil. It will be seen in the table, that almost in proportion as the rate of savings in the year are large, is the effect most strikingly shown upon the able-bodied paupers.
[7:18:387]

One of the moral effects most to be desired was the rendering marriage no longer a consideration of policy as regarded the chances of the couple to relief, or as a means of obtaining an annuity with a family of ante-nuptial children; an effect sought by the recommendations of the Commissioners and the enactments described, and one which appears to have been abundantly realised in the operation of the measure-Dr Kay, assistant poor-law commissioner, in his examination before the Committee of the House of Commons in the last session, gave some valuable evidence relative to the decrease, in the number of marriages in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, the counties under his superintendence, from which we have made some extracts.

“Have you any return relative to marriages which have taken place in Norfolk and Suffolk ?—Last spring I instructed the relieving officers of a great number of unions to apply for returns of the marriages which occurred in the parishes in their districts in the years 1833, 1834, 1835, and 1836. A considerable difficulty was experienced in procuring those returns. Where they were procured they were given by the clergymen of the parishes very kindly, as a favour to the relieving officers; but they did not comprise, in consequence of certain difficulties which were experienced, every parish in every officer’s district, but only certain of the parishes; but in every case in which the return was obtained from any parishes, it included all those years.

“From the return do you find that the number of marriages has increased or decreased in the period ?—I find in this return that the marriages in the year 1833, in the districts to which it relates, were 762; in 1834 they were 771; in 1835, 663; and in 1836, 549; which I believe may be taken as evidence that there has been a considerable diminution of improvident marriages in these districts.”

Unfortunately the question of pauper-marriage was too much connected with the operation of the law of bastardy (marriages sometimes brought about by the bribe of the allowance to a family of such children, sometimes by the threat of the jail directed against the man accused of being the father) to allow the effects of the law in diminishing marriages and in diminishing bastardy to be separated or clearly distinguished; but the direct operation of the law in checking unchastity will be seen in the extracts from the Commissioners’ Second Annual Report, as inserted below.^[27. “The Rev. Thomas Pitman, minister of Eastbourne, says, ‘ Among the labouring classes there is a decided and progressive alteration. Even the farmers themselves have observed to me, that there is in the general conduct of the agricultural labourers a civility of manner, and attention to their masters’ wishes, which of late years has been little perceptible. Perhaps the most marked difference in the lower orders, observable by us as clergymen, is the almost total cessation of early and improvident marriages. I should not forget also to mention, that, as far as I can form a judgment, there is also a decided improvement in the marriages that do take place. The altar is not now, as heretofore, disgraced by the appearance of a woman, to take upon her the solemn obligation of matrimony, in the last stage of pregnancy; a fact which, I think, goes far to show, that the morals of the people are undergoing.a change for the better, and promises that ere long we may hope for all that domestic happiness among our poorer neighbours which results from a match of pure affection, in the place of all that wretchedness, discord, and misery which are the too sure produce of a marriage commenced in sin, and fostered only by a hope of procuring a means from the parish of carrying on from time to time sinful indulgences.’ “Reverend John Austin, minister of Pulborough, states that ‘ We now begin to look for moral and religious improvement, as the hard-working men engaged in industry are become civil and attentive to their masters. Only two marriages have been solem, nized since December last, the yearly average being fifteen; and only one bastard has been christened between July 12, 1835, and May 17, 1836. (The population of this parish is 1976, according to the census of 1831.)’ “It is satisfactory to us to observe, that the practice, which was at one time almost universal, of dealing with the mothers of bastard children differently from other paupers, is rapidly giving way; and the sounder course of giving them relief only according to the measure and character of their wants is more generally adopted. “The information which we have received on the subject of the clauses in the new act, with relation to bastardy, is confirmatory of the facts and conclusions stated upon the subject in our last Annual Report. From the returns which we have received, it appears that the whole number of bastards chargeable to the parishes of England and Wales was, in the year 1835, 71,298; the number chargeable in the year 1836 was 61,826; being a decrease of 9472, or of thirteen per cent. “But the progressive operation of the bill appears in the numbers affiliated during the two years, which numbers were, in 1835, 12,381; in 1836, 7686; being a decrease of 4695, or of thirty-eight per cent. “We endeavoured to obtain an account of the numbers born during those years chiefly, as shown in the baptismal registers; but our respondents declare that these returns are extremely imperfect, and are so much at variance with other testimony, that no reliance can be placed upon them for accuracy. In some parishes very many of the bastard children are never baptized; and in many other parishes, where they have not been accustomed to baptize them before the passing of the act, children have been baptized subsequently, in consequence of the fact of a woman being known to have had a bastard not rendering her liable to the interference of the parish-officer where she does not claim relief. “The evidence of midwives and parish-officers, and other witnesses, speaking upon their own knowledge of their respective parishes, would prove that the diminution of the number of births was considerable. “The number returned as born in the year 1835, was 17,036; and in the year ended 25th March 1836, was 17,578. This variation between the two years is attributed to the more full registration in the last year. “According to the population returns, the number of bastards boru in the year 1831 was 20,039, which, if allowance were made for the increase of population since that year, would show a decrease of between 4000 and 5000 born in the last year.” (Second Annual Report, pp. 17, 18, 19.) ]

An important indication of the improved working of the law, proving also an increased cordiality and recognition of common interests between parishes, and showing still more incontestably the benefit of the improvements in the settlement laws, is to be found in the rapid decrease of law-expenses. The sums expended in law-charges and the removal of paupers amounted in the years ended 25th March 1834 to L.258,604, in 1835 to L.202,527, in 1836 to L.172,482, in 1837 to L.126,951, and in 1838 to L.93,982.

This, however, does by no means give a sufficiently favourable view of the effect of the law; for as the amount stated includes all law-expenses, it comprises the expenditure, which has since the passing of the act been very large, in the preparation and execution of contracts, and more particularly of the conveyancing expenses connected with the purchase and hire of lands for workhouses, and with the sales of parish property, which have taken place to a large extent, but which cannot be repeated.

It has often been asserted that the diminished cost and improved administration were owing, not so much to the enactment of the Poor-Law Amendment Act, and the new' organization introduced by it, as to other general causes; a general improvement in intelligence being sometimes assigned, the increase of certain modes of employment of the people at other times, and innumerable other causes, according to the views of the person offering the explanation. The Fourth Report of the Commissioners affords a very convincing instance of the fact, that where the improved organization has not been effected, all the causes which formerly operated to render the administration stationary, or to make it retrograde, still operate with full effect. Birmingham and Aston are adjoining parishes, with populations of the same habits, and equally participating in -every element of prosperity or decline. The year 1837 severely tried the operation of the act. A great failure in many branches of trade and commerce, and two severe winters, had contributed to render the distress of the poor more urgent and [7:18:388] more general than at any period since the passing of the act. The high price of provisions during a very large part of the period enhanced these effects. The result has been, that although on the entire operations of the last year every reason appears for entertaining the belief that the improvements in the administration had not been less progressive than in preceding years, the saving in money is, upon the whole, very little greater than that of the year ending March 1837. B irmingham has not yet been placed under the control of the Commissioners’ regulations. Aston has been placed under a beard of guardians, and is governed under the Commissioners’ regulations. It is difficult to suppose that Birmingham has not had its full share of any advantage derivable from increased intelligence or increased prosperity; at all events, it is difficult to suppose that Aston, usually regarded as a part of Birmingham, can have the advantage of any such general influence, and Birmingham be deprived of it. The account shows that, under the trial of circumstances to which each has been equally subjected, the parish of Birmingham has been driven to an increased expenditure of forty-one per cent., while the parish of Aston has successfully withstood the operation of the like circumstances, and has effected a diminution upon its previous expenditure of thirty-five per cent. The comparison, the whole of the details of which are given in the Commissioners’ Fourth Annual Report, pp. 362-64, stands thus :— Eirmingham Parish.
[table]

Aston Parish.
[table]

A better proof can scarcely be found of the efficiency of the amendments to protect the country against a return to the state of things from which the law has so recently extricated us. ( a . a. a. a. a.)