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 The Old Poor-Law 
 
 AND 
 
 The New Socialism; 
 
 OR, 
 
 PAUPERISM AND TAXATION. 
 
 BY 
 
 F. C. MONTAGUE. 
 
 CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: 
 
 LO.VDO.V. PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE. 
 1886.
 
 COB DEN CLUB LEAFLETS. 
 
 Supplied in Packets of 100, price is. Those marked * 2s. 
 
 1. The Dog and the Shadow. 
 
 2. What does Reciprocity-Protection propose to do? 
 
 3. The Results of Protection In Germany. 
 
 4. The Rt. Hon. John Bright, M.P., on " Fair Trade." 
 
 5. Mr. Arthur Arnold, M.P., on "Fair Trade." 
 
 6. Bread Tax Once More. From "PUNCH." 
 
 7. A Catechism for "Fair Traders." By the Rt. Hon. W. E. BAXTER 
 
 M.P. 
 
 8. Free Trade and the Working Men. By the Rt. Hon. W. . 
 
 BAXTER, M.P. 
 
 9. 'Fair Trade and Free Trade. By Sir B. SAMUELSON, Bart., M.P. 
 
 10. Free Trade : What It does for England, and How It does It, 
 
 By GEORGE W. MEDLEY. 
 
 11. Facts for Artisans. By GEORGE W. MEDLEY. 
 
 12. Mr. Cobden on " Re-distribution of Seats." 
 
 13. 'Protection in France. 
 
 14. 'Facts for Labourers. By GEORGE W. MEDLEY. 
 
 15. *The Farmers and Protection. By CHARLES WHITEHEAD. 
 
 16. Facts for Farmers. No. i. DEPRESSION IN AGRICULTURE. By GEORGE 
 
 W. MEDLEY. 
 
 17. The Effects of Protection in America. By Sir WILLIAM BOWER 
 
 FORWOOD. 
 
 18. Would Protection remove the present Distress, and Benefit 
 
 the Working Man ? By JOSEPH ARCH. 
 
 19. The Newcastle Weekly Chronicle on the Cobden Club 
 
 Leaflets. 
 
 20. Memorial Verses on Richard Cobden, 1865. 
 
 21. Robbing a Thousand Peters to pay One Paul. By GEORGE 
 
 JACOB HOLYOAKE. 
 
 22. Less Free Trade or More: Which Shall it Be? By J. 
 
 HAMPDEN JACKSON. 
 
 23. *Facts for Farmers. No. II. DEPRESSION IN AGRICULTURE. By 
 
 GEORGE W. MEDLEY. 
 
 24. *Falr Trade: its Impossibility. By SYDNEY BUXTON, M.P. 
 
 25. Reciprocity Explained. By GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKB. 
 
 26. 'Words of Warning to Agricultural Labourers and other 
 
 Working Men. By ALFRED SIMMONS, the Leader of the Kent and 
 Sussex Labourers. 
 
 27. "How they Succeed in Canada. (From the Agricultural Gazette, 
 
 January 5th, 1885.) 
 
 28. Free Trade and Fair Trade: What do the Words Mean? By JAMES 
 
 E. THOROLD ROGERS, M.P. 
 
 29. *Free Trade v. Protection {alias "Reciprocity," alias "Fair Trade"). 
 
 by JOHN NOBLE. 
 
 30. The British Peasant on the Right Hon. J. Lowther's 
 
 Proposition that he should pay "a farthing a week" on his Bread, 
 to benefit the Landed Interest. 
 
 31. The Farmer Of Kent. (From the Suffolk Chronicle of forty years ago.) 
 
 32. Will a Five-Shilling Duty on Corn raise the price of Bread. 
 
 or not? 
 
 33. United States Protection v. British Free Trade. By the Right 
 
 Hon. W. E. BAXTER, M.P. 
 
 34. The Right Hon. John Bright on "The Safety of the Ballot." 
 
 35. 'The Secrecy of the Ballot. 
 
 36. Protection versus Work and Wages. By EDWARD NORTH BUXTON. 
 
 37. The Fair Traders and Reciprocity. By EDWARD NORTH BUXTON. 
 
 38. *The Death Duties. 
 
 39. Fair Trade and Retaliation. By Sir T. H. FARRER, Bart. 
 
 40. Land Law Reform. 
 
 41. The Proposed Tax on Sugar. By ST. LOB STRACHBY. 
 
 42. The Good Old Times. 
 
 43. The Bounty on Raw Sugar. 
 
 44. Who Gave the Agricultural Labourer the Vote? By CHARLES 
 
 COPFACK. 
 
 45. 'Richard Cobden.
 
 THE OLD POOR-LAW 
 
 AND 
 
 THE NEW SOCIALISM.
 
 THE OLD POOR-LAW 
 
 AND 
 
 THE NEW SOCIALISM; 
 
 OR, 
 
 PA UPERISM AND TAXATION. 
 
 F. C. MONTAGUE. 
 
 CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: 
 
 LONDON, />.-U?/S, \1<;\V YOKK &> MELBOURNE. 
 
 1886.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 5* 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE been requested to state in a few words why it 
 has been thought important that the Cobden Club should 
 bring into general notice the gist and substance of the 
 Report of the Poor Law Commissioners of 1832, upon 
 which our present Poor Law is founded. 
 
 Few now alive remember the frightful state of the 
 agricultural districts of England which that report dis- 
 closed ; and it is evident, from various proposals now 
 made for the benefit of the poor, that many of its lessons 
 have been forgotten even by our statesmen. 
 
 The famous statute of Elizabeth was not successful in 
 dealing with pauperism ; but it was after the change made 
 by the statute of the 36th year of the reign of George III. 
 that the evils arising from a bad law, carelessly adminis- 
 tered, began to advance with an extreme rapidity. A 
 reader of Mr. Montague's paper will find in his statement 
 of the operation of the law that "in 1817 a Committee 
 of the House of Commons expressed the fear that the 
 amount of the assessment for the relief of the poor would 
 grow till it had absorbed all the profits of the land on 
 which it was levied ;" that "in 1832 this prophecy seemed 
 to be approaching fulfilment;" that at the same time the 
 system of relief forced the independent labourer to be- 
 come a pauper, bribed the women to unchastity, loosened
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 family ties, and destroyed family affection. In one word, 
 the Poor Law was fast confiscating the rents of owners 
 and the profits of occupiers, whilst utterly demoralising 
 the labouring population. Strange to say, all classes 
 seemed blind to the fact that they were working together 
 to accomplish their common ruin. 
 
 The startling facts disclosed by the Report emboldened 
 the Liberal Ministry of that day to propose the new Poor 
 Law a measure which the Duke of Wellington, then leader 
 of the Conservative party, justly described as one of the 
 most valuable, but also most courageous, measures which 
 he had ever known to be proposed by a Government. 
 
 In the hope that we may profit by the experience, 
 and not repeat the blunders, of our fathers, I moved in 
 the House of Commons the reprinting of the Report of 
 the Poor Law Commissioners, and Mr. Montague has 
 written his very able abridgment of that Report, which is 
 strongly recommended to the careful study of all who are 
 interested in the welfare of the working classes or the 
 security of property. 
 
 W. RATH BONE.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE OLD POOR-LAW 9 
 
 II. ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW 13 
 
 [II. OPERATION OF THE LAW AS ADMINISTERED 34 
 
 IV. CHARACTER OF PERSONS wno DISTRIBUTED AND 
 
 AWARDED RELIEF 48 
 
 V. RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSIONERS 54
 
 THE OLD POOR-LAW 
 
 AND 
 
 THE NEW SOCIALISM; 
 
 OR, 
 
 PAUPERISM AND TAXATION, 
 
 I. THE OLD POOR-LAW. 
 
 A LEGISLATION, inspired by just and humane feelings, yet 
 more harmful than many of the worst enactments of selfish 
 power ; a legislation which aimed at assuaging misery, yet 
 chiefly served to make it more inveterate, hereditary, hope- 
 less ; a legislation which, in many instances, proved almost 
 ruinous to the employer, whilst it everywhere depressed the 
 wages of the workman ; a legislation which turned the pea- 
 sant, for whose good it was designed, into a wretched depen- 
 dent, too often into a lawless ruffian ; a legislation directed to 
 save the weak from overwhelming temptation, which filled 
 the country with paupers and prostitutes ; a legislation, 
 carried out by the rich, which surely tended to render all 
 property worthless, in particular the property of the class 
 predominant in the Legislature : such a legislation might 
 seem the wildest paradox of wasted ingenuity, were it not 
 to be traced in the Statute Book of England, had it not left 
 its marks upon the history of our country. In the old laws 
 relating to the relief of the poor, we have a memorable 
 example of the mischief which crude common-sense can do 
 when it assumes a competence to deal with the most delicate 
 of social questions. The study of those laws is full of in-
 
 io THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 struction ; especially at the present time, when there prevails 
 a general desire to improve the condition of the poor. Now, 
 if ever, we need to be reminded that good intentions are 
 not in themselves enough ; that they are no substitute 
 for knowledge or discretion ; that at best they afford a 
 poor excuse for mistakes which may jeopardise the welfare 
 of millions or the very existence of a great State. The 
 lesson has been often repeated in history; but mankind 
 have an admirable gift of forgetfulness. 
 
 The English poor-law has passed through several stages, 
 very clearly distinguishable from one another. The earlier 
 poor-law was harsh ; often brutal in the extreme ; yet it 
 availed as little for the correction of idleness as for the 
 relief of distress. The famous statute of Elizabeth, passed 
 in 1 60 1, placed the poor-law upon a new footing. It pro- 
 vided that the churchwardens and overseers of every parish 
 should take measures for setting to work the able-bodied 
 and for relieving the impotent poor ; and gave them all the 
 necessary powers of raising money for this purpose and for 
 carrying out its other provisions. This Act established the 
 principles, that the impotent poor have a claim to be main- 
 tained at the public expense, and that the able-bodied poor 
 have a claim to be employed by the public : principles 
 recognised down to this day. During the seventeenth and 
 the early part of the eighteenth century the Act appears to 
 have worked tolerably well. There was much pauperism, 
 but it showed no regular tendency to increase. An Act of 
 the ninth year of George I., which empowered parishes, 
 either singly or in combination, to purchase or hire a work- 
 house and to refuse relief to all who would not enter it, 
 appears, in many instances, to have reduced the number of 
 paupers. 
 
 At the close of the last century, the war with France 
 and a series of bad seasons, assisted by other causes, occa- 
 sioned a great rise in the price of necessaries, whilst the 
 law of settlement, which chained the labourer to his parish, 
 the miserable state of popular instruction, and many other 
 causes, hindered wages from rising in proportion, and the 
 distress of the poor was extreme. In order to mitigate
 
 THE OLD POOR-LAW. n 
 
 it, the Legislature granted unlimited relief out of the rates. 
 By the statute of the thirty-sixth year of George III., it 
 repealed the enactment forbidding relief to those who 
 should refuse to enter a workhouse, and empowered any 
 justice of the peace to order relief to be given to the 
 poor at their own homes. The overseers were required 
 to obey such orders. The justices, as a rule, knew nothing 
 of the circumstances of the persons who applied to them, 
 and very little of the condition of the poor in general. 
 They were, for the most part, men of property, anxious to 
 act charitably by their less fortunate neighbours. The 
 overseers, who had more knowledge and more frugality, 
 were mere agents without responsibility. Under these cir- 
 cumstances relief was lavishly given. In every parish a 
 large proportion, in some the larger proportion, of the 
 peasantry came on the parish. It became the common 
 practice to supplement wages out of the rates. 
 
 The English poor-law had always admitted the right of 
 every citizen to be saved by the State from actual starvation. 
 It now went farther, at least its administrators went farther, 
 and acknowledged the right of every citizen to a certain 
 income, irrespective of his own exertions. It guaranteed 
 to every labourer not merely his life, but a living more 
 plentiful than he could obtain in the open labour market. 
 It undertook that his means should increase with the in- 
 crease of his family. It acknowledged the duty of saving 
 him from suffering, irrespective of his own merits or 
 demerits. It gave practically to everybody who asked. 
 It charged not only the weak upon the strong, but the 
 stupid on the skilful, the lazy upon the industrious, the 
 drunken upon the sober, the dissolute upon the chaste, the 
 honest upon the dishonest. When it had been at work for 
 more than a generation, its abuses could no longer be 
 ignored, and in 1832 a Royal Commission was appointed to 
 examine and report upon them. The report drawn up by 
 this Commission* condenses a vast quantity of evidence 
 collected in every part of the kingdom. 
 
 * " Poor-Law Commissioners, First Report of 1834." This report can 
 be purchased, either directly or through any bookseller, from Messrs.
 
 12 THE OLD POOR-LAM' AXD THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 The House of Commons last year marked their sense of 
 the value of this report by ordering it to be reprinted. It 
 is, however, so long and so detailed that, unless abridged, 
 it is not likely to find many readers. The lapse of time, 
 too, has affected very variously the value of its various parts. 
 Some have only gained in practical significance, whilst 
 others have lost all but their historical interest. No sane 
 man is likely, in our time, to propose the restoration of the 
 old law of settlement. The reflections of the Commission 
 upon emigration as a cure for pauperism contain little that 
 exactly applies to our own time. The recommendations of 
 the Commission, most of which have been embodied in our 
 law for many years past, do not need the elaborate expla- 
 nation and illustration which they required whilst yet novel 
 and untried. That which remains of lasting value is the 
 picture of the bad consequences of unscientific legislation 
 and lax administration directed to the best ends. The 
 following pages, written at the request of the Cobden Club, 
 attempt to reproduce the main outlines of this picture. 
 They follow the general arrangement of the report, but do 
 not profess to form a complete compendium thereof, since 
 they exclude all that seems entirely obsolete. 
 
 Hansard, 13, Great Queen Street, W.C., and 32, Abingdon Street, 'West- 
 minster ; Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode, East Harding Street, Fleet 
 Street ; Messrs. Black, Edinburgh ; and Messrs. Alexander Thorn and Co. ; 
 or Messrs. Hodges, Figgis, and Co. , Dublin.
 
 II. ADMINISTRATION OF THE LA\V. 
 
 IN the year 1832, as in our own day, the poor were relieved 
 by the community, partly by means of outdoor and partly 
 by means of indoor relief. Outdoor relief was at that 
 time, however, much more important than it is now. It 
 was granted with equal profusion to those who were and to 
 those who were not able to work ; indeed the principal 
 abuses of the old-fashioned administration of the poor-law 
 concerned the outdoor relief given to the able-bodied. 
 This relief was given either in money or in kind. 
 
 When given in kind, the outdoor relief of the able- 
 bodied consisted sometimes of grants of food or fuel ; more 
 frequently of clothing and shoes ; oftenest of gratuitous 
 house-room. The expense of providing house-room was 
 sometimes divided between the pauper and the parish; 
 sometimes thrown upon the parish alone. The expense was 
 divided in those very numerous cases in which the occupant 
 of a cottage or apartment was excused from payment of 
 his rates on the ground of poverty. This exemption was 
 granted in almost every instance to labourers who were, and 
 in many instances to labourers who were not, parishioners. 
 By this expedient the burthen of the rates was, in many 
 parishes, thrown almost entirely upon a few tenements 
 occupied by substantial citizens. At Kidderminster, in the 
 year 1830-31, out of 2,826 houses, rated to the relief of 
 the poor, only 525 paid rates; whilst the remaining 2,301 
 houses, amounting in value to one-third of the whole 
 rateable property, were totally exempted from payment. 
 The burthen thus thrown upon the minority who paid rates 
 may well be imagined ; but the relief thus apparently given 
 to poor occupiers was, for the most part, intercepted by
 
 14 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 their landlords, who were enabled to raise the rent to a 
 figure approaching the total to which rent and rates would 
 otherwise have amounted. The exemption of the labourer 
 from rates enriched the owner of cottages at the expense 
 of the other ratepayers, and promoted the building of un- 
 healthy and noisome habitations, since it was only granted 
 to those whose dwellings had some defect or inconveni- 
 ence. 
 
 In many cases the parish also paid the whole rent of 
 the labourer's cottage ; sometimes a higher rent than could 
 have been obtained from the labourer himself. The over- 
 seers often gave written guarantees for payment of the 
 rent by the parish to the landlord ; and in one instance this 
 guarantee was given by the overseer, on behalf of the parish, 
 to himself, as an owner of cottages. In Surrey and in 
 Sussex the practice, although seldom avowed, was almost 
 universal. Even where no item of rent was entered on the 
 parish books, the rent was often paid indirectly and irregu- 
 larly. The tenant, when pressed for his rent, would apply 
 for small sums to the parish officer, and was never refused, 
 since the levying of a distress would have thrown his whole 
 family upon the rates. In other cases the labourer was 
 allowed a shilling a week for his third child, and this was 
 retained by the parish to pay his rent. In a single parish 
 containing fewer than 1,300 inhabitants, the amount of rent 
 entered in the parish books in one year was no less than 
 ^267 us. 6d. It was not uncommon for young couples, 
 who had married without any fair prospect of being able to 
 maintain a family, to demand a house from the overseer. 
 Yet cottage accommodation was probably much scarcer and 
 much worse in 1832 than it is now. The scarcity was in part 
 due to the bad law of settlement which made it the interest 
 of every landowner to prevent strangers from acquiring 
 a settlement within his parish, and therefore to pull down 
 cottages instead of building them. But for the badness of 
 cottages the payment of rent by the parish was a reason. 
 It set a premium upon ill-built or decayed dwellings and 
 upon slovenly, squalid occupiers. Like the payment of 
 rates by the parish, it was an alms granted to those who
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LA a: 15 
 
 seemed most wretched, and so became an encouragement 
 to wretchedness, real or feigned. 
 
 The outdoor relief of the able-bodied was, however, 
 given more largely in money than in kind. The money 
 relief was generally bestowed in one or other of five ways, 
 distinguished by the Commissioners as relief without labour ; 
 the allowance system; the roundsman system; parish em- 
 ployment; and the labour-rate system. Each of these 
 demands a few words of explanation. 
 
 Under the system of relief without labour, the parish, 
 without exacting any labour in return, gave a daily or a 
 weekly sum to those who professed themselves out of em- 
 ployment. In general, the parish allowed such persons 
 rather less than would suffice for a complete maintenance. 
 The parish was supposed to gain the difference, and the 
 pauper was supposed to have a motive for seeking work. 
 But he generally preferred to eke out his allowance and to 
 amuse his leisure by various depredations. He thus became 
 a composite nuisance : two parts sluggard and one part thief. 
 In other cases the parish gave each pauper a sum sufficient 
 tc maintain him, and in return obliged him to give up part 
 of his time. He was required to spend so many hours in a 
 gravel pit, or in a sitting posture, or to attend a roll-call 
 several times a day, or otherwise to waste his time in a 
 vexatious manner. Such contrivances might seem those of 
 a cruel idiot ; but they were necessary checks upon a vicious 
 system. 
 
 Under the allowance system, the parish allowed its 
 labourers, employed by individuals, relief in aid of their 
 wages. In some places allowance was 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. In other 
 places each member of a family received a certain weekly 
 sum or the price of a certain quantity of flour or bread. In 
 several counties scales of allowances were settled by the 
 magistrates and published as a law for the guidance of 
 parish officers. The following is a table of scales for the 
 county of Cambridge, promulgated in the December of the 
 year 1821 :
 
 1 6 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW 
 
 "COUNTY 01- 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 bread, namely : 
 
 " A single woman the price of 3 quartern loaves per week. 
 
 A single man 4 
 
 A man and his wife 
 
 , and one child 
 
 and two children 
 and three 
 
 9 
 ii 
 
 " Man, wife, four children and upwards at the price of two quartern 
 loaves per head per week. 
 
 " It will be necessary to add to the above income in all cases of 
 sickness or other kinds 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 Shire Hall, 
 Cambridge, I5th December, 1821. 
 
 " ROBERT GEE, Clerk to the Magistrates." 
 
 The apparent reasonableness and humanity of the allow- 
 ance system made it popular. At a time when food was 
 dear and wages were low, it seemed only fair to insure to 
 everybody a minimum income, and to distinguish by par- 
 ticular liberality the upright and industrious. It also seemed 
 prudence and frugality in the public not to undertake the 
 maintenance of the labourer, but to supplement his earn- 
 ings. In most parishes at least a pretence was made of 
 ascertaining the sum earned weekly by those who applied 
 for relief, and of limiting the relief given to the difference 
 between that sum and the sum allowed by the scales. But 
 accurately to ascertain the earnings of an applicant was a 
 very difficult and very unpopular task. Even if it had 
 been accomplished, the least efficient labourer obtained 
 the most liberal relief, and the fear of discouraging merit 
 acted as a new motive for asking no questions. Thus the 
 rule of paying only the difference between the actual and 
 the ideal earnings of the labourer became nugatory. The 
 Commissioners found that in one parish that of Old
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW. 17 
 
 Swinford men who were known to earn i6s. or i8s. a week 
 were habitually in receipt of relief, and that allowance was 
 refused only in cases in which it was shown that the weekly 
 earnings of the family amounted to 255. 
 
 Both employer and employed regarded the parish allow- 
 ance as part of the remuneration of labour. The employers 
 acted upon this view. Thus we read that in the borough 
 of Arundel, at a meeting of the inhabitants, held on the 
 i gth of November, 1830, "the masters agreed to give able- 
 bodied men 25. per day, wet and dry, and an allowance of 
 is. 6d. per week for every child (above two) under fourteen 
 years of age." The large farmers who employed most labour 
 in rural districts favoured the system because, it transferred 
 to others part of the burthen of wages. Upon those who 
 did not employ labour nor receive parish relief the practice 
 bore very heavily. In the parish of Kettlewell, in Craven, 
 the overseer, calling upon the little farmers for their rates, 
 would sometimes find that they had neither money nor 
 provisions ; whilst he was often obliged to pay allowances 
 to men who could easily have maintained themselves by 
 their own labour. The labourers generally regarded allow- 
 ances from the parish as their inalienable right. A remark- 
 able instance of this feeling was mentioned by Mr. Stuart, 
 one of the Assistant-Commissioners : 
 
 " A case was mentioned to me of nine men who had 
 been able to earn 155. each by taskwork in three days, and 
 who came to the parish for the other three days of the week, 
 during which they had no employment. The overseer, aware 
 of the profitable work in which they had been engaged, 
 offered is. a day for the lost days, instead of is. 6d. a day, 
 which would have been their allowance according to the 
 scale. This the men rejected, left the work which they 
 then had, and went to a magistrate to complain. The 
 magistrate sent an open note by the complainants, appeal- 
 ing to the humanity of the overseer. The men, aware of 
 the contents of the note, backed the recommendation of 
 the magistrate by threats, which induced the overseer to 
 comply." (Report, p. 19.) 
 
 Yet those who received allowances were the greatest
 
 1 8 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 losers by them. In the first place, the labourer lost by the 
 fall of wages the larger part of that which he received in 
 allowances. In the second place, being assured of an 
 income plentiful, according to his ideas of plenty, he ceased 
 to care about finding work or doing his work well ; he 
 became less industrious, less intelligent, less thrifty. Thus 
 in a certain parish situated in the Bedford Level, where the 
 fertile land lately reclaimed could employ more labour than 
 the inhabitants could give, a labourer's family could earn on 
 an average from ^60 to ^70 a year; yet during frosts, and 
 generally from November to March, almost all the labourers 
 came upon the parish. A resident magistrate, when re- 
 monstrated with, replied, " Why, what are we to do? They 
 spend it all, and then come and say they are starving ; and 
 you must relieve them." In the third place, the allowance 
 system assured the largest income to the largest family, 
 made it lucrative to beget children, and artificially stimu- 
 lated the natural growth of population ; thus again glutting 
 the market for labour. Lastly, it failed to keep the paupers 
 out of mischief. Many insulted and menaced the very 
 officers who paid them, and agrarian outrage was incom- 
 parably more frequent than it has ever been since the 
 passing of the new poor-law. 
 
 Under the roundsman system the parish paid the occu- 
 piers of property to employ applicants for relief at a rate 
 of wages fixed by the parish, and depending not on the 
 services, but on the wants, of the employed. The employer 
 was repaid by the parish all that he advanced beyond a 
 certain sum. Sometimes the parish would sell to a farmer 
 the labour of one or more paupers at a certain price, and 
 make up to the pauper the difference between that price 
 and the allowance to which he would be entitled by the 
 scales. In other cases the parish would contract with an 
 individual to have work done for him by the paupers at a 
 given price, the parish paying the wages. In other cases 
 there was a regular auction of pauper labour. In one parish 
 all the unemployed were put up to sale weekly, and ten men 
 were knocked down to one farmer for 55. But whatever 
 the details of the system, as applied in various places, its
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW. 19 
 
 principle was everywhere the same, and its results were 
 tolerably uniform. 
 
 The roundsman system, like that of allowance, equalised 
 the bad labourer with the good ; for it ensured to the 
 idle or dishonest as high wages as could be earned by 
 the upright and industrious. In the parish of Goudhurst, 
 in Kent, every man with a wife and three children was 
 entitled to have his wages made up to i2S. a week, and to 
 receive is. 6d. for every additional child. Thus, a labourer 
 with a wife and seven children would have been entitled 
 to 1 8s. a week. It is pretty certain that in Kent half a 
 century ago the best labourer could not have earned a 
 higher wage for himself. Again, labour under these circum- 
 stances had no tendency to go from places in which it 
 was superabundant to places in which it was scarce. Thus, 
 the pauper took away work from the independent poor. 
 In another parish of Kent an attempt was made to protect 
 the independent labourer by pledging the employer to set 
 the pauper labourer to no necessary or essential occupa- 
 tion. But it was impossible to constrain the employer to 
 fulfil so ruinous an engagement. Moreover, the number of 
 applicants for relief was ever on the increase ; and not only 
 labourers, but even small tradesmen often threw themselves 
 upon the parish. Every evil which had been produced by 
 the allowance system followed upon the roundsman system, 
 and the really humane intentions of those who administered 
 the poor-law were altogether defeated. 
 
 Yet another system of giving outdoor relief was the 
 system of parish employment. Of all the methods then in 
 force this was, perhaps, the least objectionable. It was also 
 the least frequently employed. In the course of the year 
 ending on the 25th of March, 1832, out of ^7,036,968 
 spent in the relief of the poor, less than ,354,000 about 
 one-twentieth of the whole was paid for work done by 
 paupers, including the work done by them on the roads and 
 in the workhouses. For this apparent perversity the Com- 
 missioners gave the following reasons : To require work in 
 return for relief is more laborious than to give relief for 
 nothing. Wherever work is to be paid for, there must be 
 p, 2
 
 20 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 superintendence ; but much more superintendence is needed 
 by the pauper labourer than by any other. In ordinary 
 cases, all that the superintendent inquires is, whether the 
 workman has performed an average day's work ; and, in 
 respect of piece-work, he need not make even that inquiry. 
 The practice of the trade then fixes the market price of the 
 work. But the superintendent of pauper labour has to 
 ascertain, not what is the average day's work, or what is the 
 market price of a given service, but what is a fair day's 
 work for a given individual, his strength and habits con- 
 sidered ; at what rate of pay for that work, the number of 
 his family considered, he would be able to earn the sum 
 sufficient for his and their subsistence ; and, lastly, whether 
 he has done all the work which, under all the circumstances, 
 he ought to have performed. Calculations of this kind are 
 obviously very difficult, and, on any extended scale, impossible. 
 It is their impossibility which makes impossible national 
 workshops, giving regular employment at high wages to all 
 comers, even if such workshops could be organised and 
 governed without fear or favour. The paupers were col- 
 lected in gangs for the performance of their work ; and 
 association with the worst of their class was found to corrupt 
 them even more than parish pay, drawn without doing any- 
 thing in return for it. Besides, the employment of labourers 
 by the parish was not a source of gain to any individual. 
 The other systems by which employers could partially shift 
 to the public the burthen of paying their workmen were 
 preferred by them. 
 
 The results of this system depended entirely upon the 
 way in which it was administered. In the very few parishes 
 in which the pauper was required to give as good a day's 
 labour as any other workman would have given, and for a 
 smaller remuneration, there were few who applied for out- 
 door relief. In most parishes no effectual means were taken 
 to exact a full day's labour. There was little supervision ; 
 nor, indeed, was it always safe to supervise. In the parish 
 of Rancliffe, where a man was appointed to look after the 
 work of the outdoor paupers, he had to withdraw because 
 they threatened to drown him. Often it was regarded by
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 the paupers as a matter of course tl 
 as long or as hard as the other labc 
 known to appeal to the magistrates 
 
 attempt to put them on that footing.^^fiP^mirCplaces it 
 was the practice to limit say to 23. 6d. the sum which 
 could be earned in a week of parish employment. It 
 was intended to give the outdoor paupers a motive for 
 seeking a regular livelihood. But the result commonly was 
 that they spent their long leisure in poaching, stealing, and 
 otherwise misbehaving themselves, until they had earned so 
 bad a character that nobody would employ them. In many 
 places, however, the outdoor pauper was better paid than 
 any other labourer. In the parish of Eastbourne, in Sussex, 
 the private employer would give only 125. for a week's hard 
 work, whilst the parish would give i6s. for a week's nominal 
 labour. Two families alone received ^92 43. out of the 
 rates in one year ; and the wives of independent labourers 
 very naturally regretted that their husbands had not come 
 upon the parish. Those who came upon the parish were 
 spoiled. They contracted the habit of idleness, and all the 
 other bad habits natural to men without knowledge or 
 ambition who find that they are sure of a subsistence, 
 however little they do to provide it. 
 
 The last of the systems of administering outdoor relief 
 to the able-bodied was the labour-rate system. Whenever 
 the ratepayers adopted this system, they agreed among 
 themselves that each should employ a certain number of 
 labourers settled in the parish a number determined not by 
 his real demand for labour, but by his rental, his contribu- 
 tion to the rates, the number of horses kept for tillage, or of 
 acres cultivated by him, or some such other standard.* The 
 agreement was usually enforced by means of an additional 
 rate upon those who did not employ their full proportion. 
 
 Of the various plans adopted in different parishes forgiving 
 effect to the agreement, three claimed the special notice of 
 the Commissioners. The first and commonest of these was 
 
 * Agreements of this nature were binding ufon every ratepayer, if 
 adopted by a three-fourths majority, ami approved by a majority of the 
 justices in petty sessions assembled.
 
 22 TUF, OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 that each ratepayer should employ labourers in proportion to 
 his assessment to the poor-rate. Under this plan either the 
 farmers who, in proportion to their assessment, require more 
 labour than do other employers, reaped an exclusive advan- 
 tage from the common charity, or else the farmers who cul- 
 tivated large farms, or farms especially arable, profited at 
 the expense of those who held grass farms requiring com- 
 paratively little labour, or small farms for which the labour of 
 the tenants and their families was almost sufficient. Thus in 
 one Essex parish a tradesman upon examination complained 
 that by this system his contribution to the relief of the poor 
 was raised from us. 6d. to i8s. 6d. in the pound, whilst the 
 neighbouring farmers profited by working out the labour- 
 rate. Small farmers made similar complaints. 
 
 The second plan was that the occupiers of land should 
 share among themselves the whole of the labour of the 
 parish. This plan proved equally partial in its operation, 
 although the tradespeople did not suffer. As the distribu- 
 tion of labour between occupiers was still determined by 
 their assessment, which depended on the rent they paid, 
 the occupiers of grass farms, paying less in wages and more 
 in rent than did the occupiers of arable farms, contributed 
 more than their fair proportion to the labour-rate. The 
 small farmers suffered under the second as under the first 
 plan. 
 
 The third, and fairest, plan was that the occupiers of 
 land should be compelled to employ a fixed number of 
 labourers, according to acreage or rental ; and then, in 
 common with the tradesmen and other ratepayers, to em- 
 ploy, according to their respective rental, a share of the 
 surplus labourers. This plan the Commissioners found to 
 prevail in only five parishes. Where the acreage afforded 
 a standard, the grass farmer, as before, had his grievance ; 
 and if the standard was derived from the rental, the small 
 farmer also had matter of complaint. Where the system was 
 worked by men of unusual fairness and discretion, it was 
 accepted without much murmuring. But it admitted of 
 extreme injustice. One farmer hired a strong, healthy 
 labourer at IDS. a week, and a few days later the over-
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LA\V. 23 
 
 seer sent him a little, infirm man instead. The tenants 
 of large farms were commonly the strongest faction in the 
 vestry, the body which had power to adopt the labour-rate 
 in any form ; and over and above their desire to shift every 
 burthen on to the other ratepayers, they were quite willing 
 to raise the poor-rate, since high rates commonly involved 
 low rents. In one instance the farmers voted that they and 
 their sons had performed the labour necessary to qualify 
 them as agricultural labourers, and should count in dis- 
 charge of the labour-rate. The consequence was that many 
 strapping young fellows in the yeomanry who shot and 
 hunted like gentlemen were accounted as paupers having 
 allowances. 
 
 On the other hand, the labourers employed under the 
 labour-rate appear to have been more industrious, peaceable, 
 and happy than those employed directly by the parish. 
 They were employed on useful work ; they were better paid ; 
 and they were not collected in gangs, in which the bad 
 usually corrupt the good. But this system, more completely 
 than any other, destroyed the distinction between pauper 
 and the independent poor. For under it relief partook of 
 the nature of wages ; and wages partook of the nature of 
 relief. The labourer was employed not because he was a 
 good workman, but because he was a parishioner. His 
 wages were determined not by the value of his work, but 
 by an order of the vestry. Once the labour-rate was intro- 
 duced into a parish, the farmers no longer wanted so many 
 regular labourers as before ; and the labourers in excess 
 were forced to seek poor-relief. When they had done this, 
 their pride was broken ; they formed associations with other 
 paupers ; and too often becoming altogether idle and vicious, 
 permanently burthened the parish with a worthless popula- 
 tion. We have seen that the labour-rate pressed most 
 severely upon those poor but industrious ratepayers who 
 maintained themselves upon the verge of independence. 
 
 Such, then, were in the year 1832 the chief modes of 
 giving outdoor relief to the able-bodied. But no sketch of 
 this subject would be complete without a mention of the 
 bastardy law then in force, under which women having ille-
 
 24 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 gitimate children were certain of especially liberal relief. It 
 was provided that if any single woman should declare herself 
 pregnant, and charge any person with being the father, it 
 should be lawful for a justice, on the application of the 
 overseers, to issue a warrant for the apprehension of the 
 person so charged and to commit him to gaol unless he 
 should give security to indemnify the parish. The pro- 
 ceedings might be altogether ex parte. The magistrate had 
 no power to examine into the merits of the case. Conse- 
 quently women of bad character would father their bastards 
 upon any person whom they thought proper. 
 
 The magistrate upon the appearance of the reputed father 
 made an order that he and the mother should each pay to 
 the parish a weekly sum for the child's maintenance. The 
 sum charged on the woman was scarcely ever exacted, as 
 she was supposed to earn it by nursing the child. The 
 sum received from the man was paid over to the woman 
 by the parish, and in almost every case the parish made 
 good to her the man's default. The average weekly sum 
 so received was about 25. 6d. for each bastard a sum 
 larger than was allowed to a widow for her legitimate 
 child. Thus one bastard fully covered its own expenses, 
 and several allowed the mother a substantial profit. An 
 unmarried girl, 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." Nor was it long before this exemplary young 
 person presented the parish with a fifth baby. Women 
 with bastards, having an assured income, were preferred as 
 wives by men of no particular delicacy. At worst they 
 could force somebody to marry them, for fear of being 
 treated as a father and forced to pay. Under these cir- 
 cumstances female unchastity became almost universal 
 among the poor of certain districts. In a Cumberland 
 parish the clergyman in one year baptized nine bastards to 
 seven legitimate children. In some parishes nineteen out 
 of twenty of the women who came to be married were far
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW. 25 
 
 advanced in pregnancy. The bastardy laws were the re- 
 duction to absurdity of the principle of indiscriminate out- 
 door relief. 
 
 Compared with the outdoor relief given to the able- 
 bodied, the outdoor relief given to the infirm was far more 
 frugally administered. As the Commissioners observed, a 
 prime source of maladministration of the poor-law was the 
 desire of the administrators to secure their private advantage. 
 In the business of relieving the aged and the sick, there 
 were few opportunities for jobbery. In the very parishes 
 in which the public charity was most lavished upon men 
 and women well able for work, there was an austere 
 economy in the allowances made to the old and impotent. 
 
 The remarks in which the Commissioners sum up their 
 investigation into the system of outdoor relief then preva- 
 lent are not less worthy of attention now than when they 
 were written. "We have dwelt," they say, "at some length 
 on outdoor relief, because it appears to be the relief which 
 is now most extensively given, and because it appears to 
 contain in itself the elements of an almost indefinite ex- 
 tension ; of an extension, in short, which may ultimately 
 absorb the whole fund out of which it arises. Among the 
 elements of extension are the constantly diminishing re- 
 luctance to claim an apparent benefit, the receipt of which 
 imposes 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 administer and award relief, of ascertaining 
 whether any and what necessity for it exists ; and the 
 existence in many cases of positive motives on their parts 
 to grant it when unnecessary, or themselves to create the 
 necessity." (Report, p. 28.) 
 
 The difficulty of ascertaining the necessity for relief is 
 well illustrated by the evidence given by the assistant-over- 
 seer of the parish of St. George's, Southwark, one of those 
 large and populous parishes in which it is most extreme. 
 
 " In such a parish as ours, where we administer relief 
 to upwards of 2,000 outdoor poor, it is utterly impossible to 
 prevent considerable fraud, whatever vigilance is exercised.
 
 26 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 One man to every twenty would be required to watch the 
 paupers living out of the parish, and one man to watch 
 every hundred living within the parish, which is an expense 
 of inspection which could not be borne. Suppose you go 
 to a man's house as a visitor ; you ask where is Smith (the 
 pauper)? You see his wife or children, who say they do 
 not know where he is, but that they believe he is gone in 
 search of work. How are you to tell in such a case 
 whether he is at work or not ? It could only be by follow- 
 ing him in the morning ; and you must do that every day, 
 because he may be in work one day and not another. 
 Suppose you have a shoemaker who demands relief of you, 
 and you give it to him on his declaring that he is out of 
 work. You visit his place, and find him in work ; you say 
 to him, as I have said to one of our own paupers, ' Why, 
 Edwards, I thought you said you had no work ? ' and he 
 will answer, ' Neither had I any ; and I have only got a 
 little job for the day.' He will also say, directly, ' I 
 owe for my rent ; I have not paid my chandler's shop 
 score ; I have been summoned, and I expect an execution 
 out against me, and if you stop my relief, I must come 
 home' (that is, he must go into the workhouse). The 
 overseer is immediately frightened by this, and says, ' What 
 a family that man has got ! It will not do to stop his relief.' 
 So that, unless you have a considerable number of men to 
 watch every pauper every day, you are sure to be cheated. 7 ' 
 
 Where fraud was so easy, it was natural that the number 
 of the fraudulent should have gone on growing. The same 
 witness deposed as follows : 
 
 " Indeed the malady of pauperism has not only got 
 among respectable mechanics, but we find even persons 
 who may be considered of the middle classes, such as 
 petty masters, small master bricklayers, and other such 
 persons, who have never before been seen making applica- 
 tion to parish officers, now applying. My opinion is that 
 they apply in consequence of having witnessed the ease 
 with which others who might have provided for themselves 
 obtained relief. They naturally say, ' Why should we be 
 content with half a loaf when we might have a whole one ? '
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW. 27 
 
 A few days ago a man applied for relief, stating that he 
 was in great distress. On inquiry it was found that he held 
 a situation as packer, and actually received wages of the 
 amount of 2os. per week at the time he made the applica- 
 tion, and had been in the receipt of them for some time 
 previous. We found that one woman had received relief 
 from us for two years, whilst she was receiving from the 
 East India Company a pension of ,70 per annum. In 
 one instance we discovered that a man named James 
 Peaton was receiving relief of six different parishes ; he 
 belonged to our parish, and he had picked out five other 
 parishes, which gave relief on the five other days. He 
 made it his entire business to live on parish pensions, and 
 he received one week's pension every day. 
 
 " Since the inquiry has been made, I have stationed 
 persons at well-known gin-shops to observe the number of 
 paupers who came, and the money they spend ; and from 
 all their statements, I have drawn the conclusion that ^30 
 out of every ^100 of the money given as outdoor relief is 
 spent in the gin-shops during the same day." (Report, 
 pp. 28, 29.) 
 
 As it was well expressed by another parish officer, " It is 
 the study of bad paupers to deceive you all they can, and as 
 they study more their own cases than any inquirer can study 
 each of the whole mass of different cases which he has to 
 inquire into, they are sure to be successful in a great many 
 instances. The only protection for the parish is to make the 
 parish the hardest taskmaster and the worst paymaster that 
 can be applied to." (Report, p. 30.) 
 
 It was customary, we have seen, to distinguish the de- 
 serving by a more liberal allowance. " It appears," say the 
 Commissioners, " that such endeavours to constitute the 
 distributors of relief into a tribunal for the reward of 
 merit, out of the property of others, have not only failed 
 in effecting the benevolent intentions of their promoters, 
 but have become sources of fraud on the part of the dis- 
 tributors, and of discontent and violence on the part of the 
 claimants." Thus, in the parish of St. Matthew, Bethnal 
 Green, according to a witness of great experience :
 
 28 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 " The system of expenditure was bad, in the favouritism 
 exercised as to the parties to whom relief was given. Many 
 of the landlords of the smaller tenements have always 
 mustered their friends on the days of election, to get them 
 appointed governors or guardians of the poor. When 
 parties came to be relieved who were tenants of the 
 governors who sat at the board, the governors have given 
 testimony to their meritorious characters, and urged that 
 they might have relief. I have been present when it has 
 been proposed that is. 6d. should be given, when the land- 
 lord would say, ' Oh, he is a very good man ; give him 33.,' 
 and the 35. has been awarded. The working of this system 
 would naturally be that, when one man's tenants were thus 
 favoured, he would favour the tenants of the others in turn 
 when they came to demand relief. Another consequence is, 
 that the landlord or his collector, when they collect the 
 rent, are well aware that the tenant has money which will 
 pay it." (Report, p. 30.) 
 
 Even when an honest attempt was made to distinguish 
 the worthy poor, it usually failed for want of proper means 
 of information, and often aroused the indignation of those 
 who were placed on a lower footing. Then, in order to 
 appease the clamours of the discontented, the scale of relief 
 would be raised all round. But as the relief became more 
 and more profuse, the distress became deeper and more 
 inveterate ; the expectations of the sufferers grew more 
 extravagant ; and the disappointment of those expectations 
 bred new disorders more formidable than the old. 
 
 " It appears from all our returns," say the Commis- 
 sioners, " that in every district the discontentment of the 
 labouring classes is proportioned to the money dispensed in 
 poor-rates or in voluntary charities. The able-bodied un- 
 married labourers are discontented, from being put to a dis- 
 advantage as compared with the married. The paupers are 
 discontented from their expectations being raised by the 
 ordinary administration of the system beyond any means of 
 satisfying them. '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 reawn.jble
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW. 29 
 
 subsistence, or a fair subsistence, or an adequate subsistence. 
 When I have asked of the rate distributors what fair, or 
 reasonable, or adeqitate 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 ratepayers 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 always wait on the imagination, 
 which is the worst regulated and the most vivid in the most 
 ignorant of the people. In Newbury and Reading, the 
 money dispensed in poor-rates and charity is as great as 
 could be desired by the warmest advocate, either of com- 
 pulsory or of voluntary relief ; and yet during the agricultural 
 riots many of the inhabitants of 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 entrusted with the manage- 
 ment of the fund provided for the poor. Those who work, 
 though receiving good wages, being called ' poor ' and 
 classed with the really indigent, think themselves entitled to 
 a share of the ' poor funds.' Whatever addition is made to 
 allowances under these circumstances excites the expectation 
 of still further allowances, increases the conception of the 
 extent of the right, and ensures proportionate disappoint- 
 ment and hatred if that expectation is not satisfied. On the 
 other hand, wherever the objects of expectation have been 
 made definite, where wages upon the performance of work 
 have been substituted for eleemosynary aid, and those wages 
 have been allowed to remain matter of contract, employment 
 has again produced content, and kindness become again a 
 source of gratitude." (Report, p. 32.) 
 
 Such were the conclusions to which the Commissioners 
 of 1832 were led by their examination of outdoor relief as 
 then administered. Indoor relief at that time formed a far
 
 30 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 less important branch of public charity than it does now. 
 The abuses in this department were as flagrant as in the 
 other, but they were of a class less likely to be revived in 
 our generation. Some workhouses were large, clean, airy, 
 and plentifully supplied with necessaries ; but in few or none 
 was there any classification of the inmates, any regular dis- 
 cipline, any enforced industry. The indoor paupers were 
 even more effectually corrupted than those without doors. 
 " In by far the greater number of cases," say the Commis- 
 sioners, " the workhouse is a large almshouse, in which the 
 young are trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice; the able- 
 bodied maintained in sluggish, sensual indolence ; the aged 
 and more respectable exposed to all the misery that is incident 
 to dwelling in such a society, without government or classi- 
 fication ; and the whole body of inmates subsisted on food 
 far exceeding both in kind and in amount not merely the 
 diet of the independent labourer, but that of the majority of 
 persons who contribute to their support." (Report, p. 34.) 
 
 The cost of such a system of relieving the poor was not 
 to be computed merely by the annual expenditure out of 
 the rates, which at that time exceeded ^7, 000,000 a year. 
 The sum at present so spent is greater, although the number 
 of recipients is less and the management incomparably more 
 economical and intelligent. But under the old system, a 
 vast expense was incurred by the purchase of unprofitable 
 labour which it enforced. Where the ratepayers were the 
 immediate employers of workpeople, they often kept down 
 the rates, either by employing more labourers than they 
 actually wanted or by employing parishioners where better 
 labourers might have been obtained. The progressive 
 deterioration of labourers in the pauperised districts, and the 
 increasing anxiety of the principal ratepayers as their burthen 
 grew heavier to shift it either upon neighbouring parishes or 
 upon their fellow-parishioners, tended to augment this in- 
 direct and unrecorded loss. A single large farmer, who upon 
 500 acres of land paid ^250 per annum in poor-rates, con- 
 stantly employed twenty or twenty-one labourers, although he 
 had only work for sixteen, thus incurring a further charge, 
 which he reckoned at ^100 per annum. Another farmer
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW. 31 
 
 who paid ,100 a year in poor-rates, was compelled to 
 employ fourteen men and six boys, although he required 
 the labour of only ten men and three boys. Many more 
 instances of the same kind came to the knowledge of the 
 Commissioners. The labourers thus forced upon the 
 farmer were usually idle, often quite unskilled, and not 
 seldom scoundrels capable of any mischief. Such labourers 
 would have been costly had their labour been given for 
 nothing. 
 
 It might have been supposed that these abuses would 
 provoke a general indignation. But this was not the case. 
 The labourer, the employer, and the owner of property, 
 each imagined that he himself, at any rate, was a gainer by 
 the abuses of the poor-law. The labourer felt that the poor- 
 law, whilst it gave him low Avages, gave him easy work. 
 He needed not to look for work, to satisfy his employer, to 
 bridle his temper, or to ask, as a favour, that relief which 
 he could claim as a right. He had a slave's security for 
 existence without a slave's liability to punishment. As a 
 single man, indeed, he had barely wherewithal to maintain 
 himself; but he had only to marry, and his income increased, 
 and continued to increase with the birth of every child. As 
 soon as he had more than three children, his parish pay was 
 more than he could have earned in the open market. Nor 
 was he in any way molested by the anxieties usually inci- 
 dental to having a family. He was certain that if he deserted 
 his children they would be well cared for by the parish : 
 upon the maxim, often since repeated, that a "man's family 
 are not to suffer because he has done wrong." As the 
 children were not allowed to suffer for the father, neither 
 was the husband allowed to suffer for the wife. Witness 
 the following order, under the hands and seals of the 
 magistrates for Hertfordshire : 
 
 "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
 
 32 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 presents shall come, to pay unto the said Robert Reed the 
 sum of us. weekly, and every week, for and towards the 
 support and maintenance of himself and family, for one 
 month from the date hereof." 
 
 It is easy to understand the prejudice of the labourer in 
 favour of such a system. It is less easy to understand a like 
 prejudice on the part of his master. Yet the employer was 
 often attached to a system which enabled him to dismiss 
 and recall his men according to his daily or even hourly 
 want of them, to reduce wages to the lowest level, and to 
 throw upon others the payment of a portion, varying, but 
 always considerable, even of those low wages. Employers 
 told the Commissioners that they did not see the justice of 
 forcing the farmer to pay to the unmarried wages equal to 
 those of the married ; that such a change must establish a 
 rate of wages ruinous to the farmers, whilst exempting tithe- 
 owners and others who employed little labour from a just 
 and reasonable burthen. Besides they feared that if the 
 rates were lowered the rents would be raised, since it was 
 the custom of landowners in letting land to make allowance 
 for high rates, but not for high wages. 
 
 The owners of real property, again, were not united 
 against the abuses of the poor-law. Those who owned 
 chiefly cottages were, we have seen, gainers by these abuses. 
 The more considerable proprietors usually acquiesced 
 in them. " 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 reject as too absurd for formal refuta- 
 tion." (Report, p. 39.) 
 
 So unwise is it to imagine that if the Legislature once 
 enter upon a course of unreflecting benevolence its mischiefs 
 will be soon discerned, exclaimed against, and arrested. On
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LA\V. 33 
 
 the contrary, a vicious system of expending the public revenue 
 is sure, in time, to gather many adherents far more zealous 
 and determined than the opponents who may be arrayed 
 against it. By the working of such a system many gain, 
 and more imagine that they gain, definite advantages ; whilst 
 those who lose, although always more numerous, are habitu- 
 ated to the loss by its very continuance and generality. The 
 interested discover and the careless accept arguments to 
 show that every seeming abuse is a mysterious blessing ; the 
 dangers of reformation grow with every hour of delay ; and 
 timid statesmen pronounce that the very virulence of the 
 disease makes a remedy impossible.
 
 III. OPERATION OF THE LAW AS 
 ADMINISTERED. 
 
 THE effects of the system of poor relief, described in the 
 last chapter, may be considered under three heads, accord- 
 ingly as it affected (i) Owners of property, (2) Employers of 
 labour, and (3) Labourers. 
 
 i. It is obvious that the burthen of rates,* in the last 
 resort, must come upon the landowner. It is equally 
 obvious that, with such a method of administering poor 
 relief as above described, the poor-rate tended to a constant 
 and rapid increase. In the year 1817 a Committee of the 
 House of Commons expressed the fear that the amount of 
 the assessment for the relief of the poor would grow until 
 it had absorbed all the profits of the land on which it was 
 levied. In the year 1832 there were instances in which 
 this apprehension had been fulfilled. One of the most re- 
 markable was afforded by the parish of Cholesbury, in 
 Bucks. This parish, in the year 1832, contained a popu- 
 lation of about one hundred and thirty persons. The oldest 
 parishioners living could remember a time when there was 
 only one person who received relief. In the year 1803 the 
 sum raised for the relief of the poor amounted only to 
 ^36 igs. But in the year 1816 it reached ^99 43. ; in the 
 year 1827, ^"180 i6s. ; and in the year 1832, ^367. Three- 
 fourths of the inhabitants were paupers. At this point 
 the pressure became intolerable. The landlords gave up 
 their rents, the tenants their farms, the clergyman his glebe 
 
 * The same observation applies to the local indebtedness now so rapidly 
 increasing, and contains a strong argument for the direct rating and repre- 
 sentation of owners.
 
 OPERATION OF THE LAW AS ADMINISTERED. 35 
 
 and tithes. As property had become worthless, no rate 
 could be raised ; the parish officers threw up their books, 
 and the poor assembled before the parson's door, asking for 
 food and advice. Partly by his charity and that of the 
 neighbours, partly by rates in aid, imposed upon the ad- 
 joining parishes, they were supported for some time; but 
 the parson could think of no effectual remedy except that of 
 giving up to the able-bodied poor all the land in the parish, 
 and calculated that even then they must be supported by 
 charity for two years to come, whilst the aged and impotent 
 would remain a lasting burthen on the community. Yet in 
 this little nest of paupers there were two public-houses. 
 
 The instance of Cholesbury is particularly striking ; but 
 there were others only less remarkable. In the parish of 
 Lenham, in Kent, a farm of 420 acres, tithe-free, well 
 situated and fertile, was thrown up on account of the poor- 
 rate, which had risen to ^300 a year. In Cambridgeshire 
 it had become almost impossible to find substantial men 
 who would take farms, even at the lowest assignable rents, 
 such as 55. an acre. At Soham and at Great Shelford, in 
 the same county, the general belief was that in twelve or 
 fourteen years the whole value of the land would be absorbed 
 by the poor-rate. In the parish of Hinkley, in Leicester- 
 shire, the poor-rate already exceeded ^i an acre. In 
 Wigston Magna property had fallen in value one-half between 
 1820 and 1832, and could not be sold even at this reduc- 
 tion. The net rental of the parish did not exceed ,4,000 
 a year, whilst the outlay upon the relief of the poor increased 
 as much as ^"1,000 in one year. A little later on the value 
 of property had vanished ; and rates could be collected only 
 by regular summons and judicial sales. In Sussex, the 
 parish of Westfield was hardly better off. There the popu- 
 lation had trebled in the first thirty years of the century ; 
 yet the annual value of real property had fallen from 
 ,3,390 in the April of 1815 to 1,960 in the November 
 of 1829. As was quaintly deposed by a witness: "The 
 eighteenpenny children will eat up this parish in ten years 
 more, unless some relief be afforded us." Many other in- 
 stances of the same kind were brought to the notice of the 
 c 2
 
 36 THE OLD POOR-LAW AXD THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 Commissioners. The process which ended so disastrously 
 was ever becoming more rapid. The instant that the poor- 
 rate on a given farm exceeded the amount which in the 
 absence of rates would have been paid as rent, its cultiva- 
 tion necessarily brought not profit, but loss. As farm after 
 farm was abandoned, more and more labourers came upon 
 the parish, whilst the fund for their relief was diminished. 
 So swift was the spread of mischief in its last stage that in 
 the case of Cholesbury scarcely one year elapsed between 
 the first abandonment of land and the abandonment of all 
 except sixteen acres. 
 
 2. As regarded employers of labour, the effects of the 
 old system of poor relief varied greatly in various cases. 
 The town employer and the country employer were dif- 
 ferently affected. The country employer was usually a 
 farmer, and the farmer, who seemed to gain most, was, 
 perhaps, the greatest loser by the substitution of relief for 
 wages. 
 
 Although rents might be lower where rates were higher, 
 yet this diminution of rent was only possible where profits 
 had been much impaired. A sudden rise of rates in times 
 of exceptional distress must have been felt by the occupier. 
 But it was by destroying the manhood and uprightness of 
 the peasantry that the substitution of relief for wages did 
 most injury to the farmer. 
 
 The services of the labourer are by far the most im- 
 portant of all the instruments used in agriculture. In the 
 management of live and dead stock much must be left to 
 his judgment. Only a portion of the results of his ordinary 
 labour can be immediately valued so as to be paid by the 
 piece. The whole farm is the farmer's workshop and store- 
 house ; he is frequently obliged to leave it, and has no 
 partner on whom to devolve its care during his absence, 
 whilst its extent will not often allow him constantly to stand 
 over all the labourers employed on it. His property is 
 scattered over every part, almost without defence against 
 theft or injury. If, therefore, his labourers want the intelli- 
 gence and skill necessary to enable them to execute those 
 details for which no general and unvarying rules can be laid
 
 OPERATION OF THE LAW AS ADMINISTERED. 37 
 
 down ; if they have not the diligence necessary to keep 
 them steadily at work when their master's eye is off; if they 
 have not sufficient honesty to resist the temptation to 
 plunder when the act is easy and the detection difficult, it 
 follows that neither the farmer's command of capital, nor his 
 skill, nor his industry, nor his economy, can save him from 
 loss, perhaps from ruin. 
 
 Now, it is obvious that the tendency of the allowance 
 system was to impair all the good qualities of the labourer. 
 What motive to make himself useful could act upon the 
 man who was to receive ics. every Saturday, not because 
 that was the price of his labour, but because his family con- 
 sisted of five persons ; who knew that his income would be 
 increased by nothing but by an increase of his family, and 
 diminished by nothing but a diminution of his family? that 
 it has no reference to his skill, his honesty, or his diligence ? 
 Abundant evidence showed that the results of the allowance 
 system were such as might have been expected, and that the 
 labourers, altogether degenerate from what they had been, 
 became not merely idle, ignorant, and dishonest, but posi- 
 tively hostile to the farmers. In many parishes they pre- 
 ferred to corne on the rates, and as the dull season ap- 
 proached, would dispose of any little property, such as a 
 cow or a pig, in order to qualify themselves for parish pay. 
 Sometimes they made up their allowances, if insufficient, 
 by robbing and stealing. 
 
 The farmer, therefore, lost by a system which gave him 
 bad labourers at low wages. But the last economic truth 
 which most men perceive is that a necessary article, if bad, 
 is dear at any price ; if good, is always cheap enough. It 
 was some time before the abuses of the poor-law destroyed 
 in any particular district the virtues of the peasantry, and 
 in the meantime wages fell, and of the wages a part was 
 paid by others : the principal outgoing of the farm was re- 
 duced, and until the produce began to fall off at no further 
 cost to the farmer than that of a heavier poor-rate. The 
 tenant-at-will might lose by an increase of rent, but the 
 leaseholder for a short term shared in the apparent gain ; 
 and we have seen that high rates often went with low rents.
 
 38 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 The injury inflicted by extravagance or jobbery upon the 
 landowner was more obvious, because his land was a fixture, 
 and might be rendered valueless by the growth of pauperism. 
 Accordingly, we find that an owner was commonly a prime 
 agent in the few instances of good administration under the 
 old poor-law. 
 
 The effects of the abuse of poor relief upon employers 
 in towns were somewhat different. Of these manufacturers 
 are the most important ; and most of these use machinery 
 to an extent which confines the workman to a narrow 
 routine of toil. Thus they depend somewhat less than 
 does the farmer upon the intelligence, industry, and honesty 
 of the individual workman. Yet in the long run the same 
 effects which were so obvious on the farm must have shown 
 themselves in the factory. The manufacturer must have 
 lost by the degradation of his hands. It is said that the 
 English workman is the best in the world, but we may be 
 sure that he would not now be such had there been no 
 reform of the poor-law. In seeming, however, the allow- 
 ance system did more to lower the wages than to abate the 
 efficiency of town labour, and such employers as lived in 
 towns where the poor-law was properly administered were 
 placed at a disadvantage, for having no supply of pauper 
 workmen they were forced to pay much higher wages. 
 
 3. The effect of the system upon the labourers them- 
 selves remains to be considered. This was different, as 
 respected, firstly, those not actually relieved ; and, secondly, 
 those actually relieved. The effect upon those not actually 
 relieved is easy to imagine. In many places a larger in- 
 come could be derived from the bounty of the parish than 
 could be earned by unremitting industry. Even in those 
 cases in which the relief given vas equal or little inferior to 
 the average rate of wages, it was better worth having, 
 because the idle need less expensive food and clothing 
 than do the industrious. But this was not all. If a 
 labourer was led by honest pride to prefer independence, to 
 make ends meet and even to save, it was almost impossible 
 for him to get employment. The farmers said that they 
 could not afford to employ those whom the law did not
 
 OPERATION OF THE LAW AS ADMINISTERED. 39 
 
 bind them to maintain. Thus one good workman was 
 refused employment because he had a pension earned by 
 military service, and another because he had received a 
 legacy. Instances of hardship still more extraordinary were 
 mentioned by Mr. Hickson, a manufacturer at Northampton 
 and a landholder in Kent, who gave evidence before Mr. 
 Chadwick : 
 
 "The case of a man who has worked for me will show the 
 effect of the parish system in preventing frugal habits. This 
 is a hard-working, industrious man, named William Williams. 
 He is married, and had saved some money, to the amount 
 of about j^jo, and had two cows; he had also a sow and 
 ten pigs. He had got a cottage well furnished ; he was a 
 member of a benefit club at Meopham, from which he 
 received 8s. a week when he was ill. He was beginning to 
 learn to read and write, and had sent his children to the 
 Sunday School. He had a legacy of about ^46, but he 
 got his other money together by saving from his fair wages 
 as a waggoner. Some circumstances occurred which 
 obliged me to part with him. The consequence of this 
 labouring man having been frugal and saved money, and 
 got the cows, was that no one would employ him, although 
 his superior character as a workman was well known in the 
 parish. He told me at the time I was obliged to part with 
 him, ' Whilst I have these things I shall get no work ; I 
 must part with them all ; I must be reduced to a state of 
 beggary before any one will employ me ! ' I was compelled 
 to part with him at Michaelmas ; he has not yet got work, 
 and he has no chance of getting any until he has become a 
 pauper ; for until then the paupers will be preferred to him. 
 He cannot get work in his own parish, and he will not 1 e 
 allowed to get any in other parishes. Another instance of 
 the same kind occurred among my workmen. Thomas 
 Hardy, the brother-in-law of the same man, was an excellent 
 workman, discharged under similar circumstances ; he has 
 a very industrious wife. They have got two cows, a well- 
 furnished cottage, and a pig and fowls. Now he cannot 
 get work because he has property. The pauper will be 
 preferred to him, and he can qualify himself for it only by
 
 40 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 becoming a pauper. If he attempts to get work elsewhere 
 he is told that they do not want to fix him on the parish. 
 Both these are fine young men, and as excellent labourers 
 as I could wish to have. The latter labouring man 
 mentioned another instance of a labouring man in another 
 parish (Henstead) who had once had more property than 
 he, but was obliged to consume it all, and is now working 
 on the roads." (Report, p. 49.) 
 
 In parishes where a labour-rate prevailed there were 
 instances of the parish officers declining to recognise in 
 sitisfaction of the labour-rate the employment of men who 
 ha I never applied for relief. As the man of property or the 
 man of spirit could not come on the parish, they could not 
 expect to be employed in places where the men already on 
 the parish were more than enough to do all the work 
 required. Thus the best workman was visited with the 
 penalty appropriate to the worst ; industry, regularity, 
 sobriety, and thrift were severely punishable ; and a reckless, 
 dissolute, swinish way of living was enforced upon the 
 multitude by those who have the deepest stake in order and 
 civilisation. Anything more stupid, more cruel, more mis- 
 chievous than such a procedure can scarcely be conceived ; 
 yet this procedure had its origin in a thoughtless, slovenly 
 benevolence. Such a benevolence in the Legislature will 
 always be attended with the same consequences. Every 
 scheme for charging the poor upon the rates in whole or in 
 part ignores the fact that most ratepayers are poor. Such 
 schemes really charge the thriftless upon the thrifty poor. 
 Were model dwellings, for instance, provided at nominal 
 rents for all the very poor who live in London, the increase 
 of rates would force into squalor the poor who are next above 
 them. Besides, the desire of accumulation is so evenly 
 matched with the desire of enjoyment, that a legislation 
 which exacts any large share of the fruits of economy 
 effectually prevents all but the very rich from saving. 
 Wherever taxation has become enormous, it has brought 
 about a progressive decline of wealth, of civilisation, and of 
 the human species itself. 
 
 In its immediate working the old poor-law stimulated
 
 OPERATION OF THE LAW AS ADMINISTERED. 41 
 
 by artificial means the natural growth of population. 
 Under the scales system the labourer's income varied not 
 according to his exertions, but according to the number 
 of his family. The more he received from the parish, 
 the less he would accept from his employer ; so that the 
 competition of men with families depressed wages to a 
 rate insufficient for the support of single men. Thus in 
 West Wycombe, Bucks, the parish paid in weekly wages to 
 single men under twenty years of age, 35. ; to single men 
 over that age, 45. ; to married men without children, 55.; 
 and so on, whilst the farmers paid at the same rate. In 
 Northamptonshire the Commissioners were told : 
 
 " As the farmers have under the scale system a direct 
 inducement to employ married men rather than single, in 
 many villages, particularly in the southern district, they will 
 not employ the single men at all ; in others they pay them 
 a much lower rate of wages for the same work, in the hope 
 of driving them to seek work out of the parish. Instead of 
 this, they marry directly, knowing that if they cannot 
 maintain themselves the parish must do it for them, and 
 that the farmers will be more ready to give work to men 
 likely to become burthensome than to those who are not. 
 The usual remark they make is, ' Well, I'll go and get a 
 wife, and then you must do something for me.' 
 
 " At Nuneaton the overseer mentioned a case which had 
 occurred a few days before to himself, in an application 
 made to him by a lad to procure him relief from the parish. 
 His answer to him was, ' Go away and work, you foolish 
 boy ; ' the boy's answer was, ' Ah, but, sir, I married 
 yesterday, and I expect the parish to find me a place to 
 live in.'" 
 
 Finally, consider the following law enacted by a 
 vestry : 
 
 " At a Vestry Meeting holden in the Parish Church of 
 Edgefield, on Monday, 8th April, 1833 : 
 
 " Resolved That the rate of wages for able-bodied men 
 be reduced to 45. per week ; that is. per week be given to 
 each wife, and is. for each child per week. If there are 
 not any children, allow the wife is. 6d. per week.
 
 42 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM, 
 
 " Agreed for three months from this date, to commence 
 Monday, isth." 
 
 \Herefolloiu 15 signatures^ (Report, pp. 50, 51.) 
 
 Thus, whilst the rate of wages generally was lowered, it 
 was lowered most of all for men without families. The 
 burthens entailed by the satisfaction of the strongest of 
 human instincts afford the most powerful and general 
 motive to economy. Where people are paid for complying 
 with that instinct, how many will continue economical ? 
 Men are prone enough to multiply their kind without con- 
 sidering the question of subsistence ; but the peculiar reck- 
 lessness of the English labourer has no doubt been fostered 
 by the vices of the poor-law. 
 
 Those who received relief under the system which we 
 have described suffered even more than those who tried to 
 keep themselves. Everywhere the recipients of outdoor 
 relief were the poorest, idlest, dirtiest, and most intemperate 
 of the population. The assistant-overseer of St. Sepulchre's, 
 London, deposed as follows : 
 
 "In the course of my visits to the residences of the 
 labouring people, in our own and other parishes, I have 
 seen the apartments of those who remained independent, 
 though they had no apparent means of getting more than 
 those who were receiving relief from the parish, or so much 
 as outdoor paupers. The difference in their appearance is 
 most striking. I now, almost immediately on the sight of a 
 room, can tell whether it is the room of a pauper or of an 
 independent labourer ; I have frequently said to the wife of 
 an independent labourer, 'I can see by the neatness and 
 cleanness of your place that you receive no relief from any 
 parish.' ' No,' they usually say, ' and I hope we never 
 shall.' This is applicable not only to the paupers in the 
 metropolis, but, it may be stated, from all I have seen, else- 
 where and heard, that it is equally applicable to other 
 places. The quantity of relief given to the paupers makes 
 no difference with them as to cleanliness or comfort ; in 
 many instances very much the contrary. More money only 
 produces more drunkenness. We have had frequent in- 
 stances of persons being deprived of parochial relief from
 
 OPERATION OF THE LAW AS ADMINISTERED. 43 
 
 misconduct or otherwise, or, as the officers call it, ' choked 
 off the parish,' during twelve months or more, and at the 
 end of that time we have found them in a better condition 
 than when they were receiving weekly relief." {Report, 
 
 ]> 56.) 
 
 Another witness says : 
 
 "In the year 1824 or 1825 there were two labourers 
 who were reported to me as extremely industrious men, 
 maintaining large families ; neither of them had ever applied 
 for parish relief. I thought it advisable that they should 
 receive some mark of public approbation, and we gave them 
 ,\ apiece from the parish. Very shortly they both became 
 applicants for relief, and have continued so ever since." 
 
 Another witness adds : 
 
 " I can decidedly state, as the result of my experience, 
 that when once a family has received relief, it is to be ex- 
 pected that their descendants, for some generations, will 
 receive it also. 
 
 " The change that is made in the character and habits 
 of the poor by once receiving parochial relief is quite re- 
 markable ; they are demoralised ever afterwards. I remem- 
 ber the case of a family named Wintle, consisting of a man, 
 his wife, and five children. About two years ago the father, 
 mother, and two children were very ill and reduced to great 
 distress, being obliged to sell all their little furniture for 
 their subsistence ; they were settled with us ; and as we 
 heard of their extreme distress, I went to them to offer 
 relief; they, however, strenuously refused the aid. I re- 
 ported this to the churchwarden, who determined to ac- 
 company me, and together we again pressed on the family 
 the necessity of receiving relief; but still they refused, and 
 we could net prevail upon them to accept our offer. We felt 
 so much interested in the case, however, that we sent them 
 45. in a parcel with a letter, desiring them to apply for more 
 if they continued ill ; this they did, and from that time to 
 this (now more than two years) I do not believe that they 
 have been for three weeks off our books, although there 
 has been little or no ill-health in the family. Thus we 
 effectually spoiled the habits acquired by their previous
 
 44 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND -THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 industry ; and I have no hesitation in saying that in nine 
 cases out of ten such is the constant effect of having once 
 tasted of parish bounty. This applies as much to the young 
 as to the middle-aged, and as much to the middle-aged as 
 to the old. I state it confidently, as the result of my expe- 
 rience, that if once a young lad gets a pair of shoes given 
 him by the parish, he never afterwards lays by sufficient to 
 buy a pair ; so if we give to the fathers or mothers of 
 children clothing or other assistance, they invariably apply 
 again and again." (Report, pp. 57, 58.) 
 
 The loss of an independent spirit is perhaps less de- 
 plorable than the dissolution of family ties. These were 
 totally relaxed by the abuses of the poor-law. Its working 
 in this direction deserves to be studied at the present time, 
 when we read and hear so many proposals for transferring 
 to the State all the duties of the parent. 
 
 " Pauperism," the Commissioners say, " seems to be an 
 engine for the purpose of disconnecting each member of a 
 family from all the others ; of reducing all to the state of 
 domesticated animals, fed, lodged, and provided for by the 
 parish, without mutual dependence or mutual interest." 
 And then they quote from Mr. Stuart's report the following 
 passage : 
 
 "The effect of allowance is to weaken, if not to destroy, 
 all the ties of affection between parent and child. When- 
 ever 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
 
 OPERATION OP THE LAW AS ADMINISTERED. 45 
 
 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 always 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 demoralised 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 know- 
 ledge of the parish officers, and be laid hold of for the 
 purpose of taking away the allowance." (Report, p. 59.) 
 
 Happily this state of things is no longer known among 
 us. We must take care that it never shall prevail again. 
 
 Even such a denunciation as the above hardly prepares 
 the reader for the following instance of inhumanity : 
 
 " A widow with two children had been in the receipt of 
 33. from the parish ; she was enabled by this allowance and 
 her own earnings to live very comfortably. She married a 
 butcher; the allowance was continued; but the butcher 
 and his bride came to the overseer and said, ' They 
 were not going to keep those children for 35. a week, 
 and if a further allowance was not made they should turn 
 them out of doors and throw them on the parish altogether.' 
 The overseer resisted ; the butcher appealed to the bench, 
 who recommended him to make the best arrangement he 
 could, as the parish was obliged to support the children." 
 
 After this we are not surprised to read that " those whose 
 minds have been moulded by the operation of the poor-laws 
 appear not to have the slightest scruple in asking to be 
 paid for the performance of those domestic duties which the 
 most brutal savages are in general willing to render gratui- 
 tously to their own kindred. ' Why should I tend my sick 
 and aged parents when the parish is bound to do it ? or, if 
 I do perform the service, why should I excuse the parish, 
 which is bound to pay for it?'" 
 
 " At Princes Risborough we turned over the minute 
 book of the select vestry, and found the following entries : 
 
 " ' Samuel Simmons' wife applied to be allowed some- 
 thing for looking after her mother, who is confined to her
 
 46 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 bed ; the mother now receives 33. 6d. 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 6s. weekly. To be allowed is. 
 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.' " 
 
 The general influence of the old poor-law upon the 
 welfare of the labourer was forcibly summed up by Mr. 
 Cowell, one of the Assistant-Commissioners. His words 
 deserve to be quoted : 
 
 "At the time of my journey, the acquaintance I had 
 with the practical operation of the poor-laws led me to 
 suppose that the pressure of the sum annually raised upon 
 the ratepayers and its progressive increase constituted the 
 main inconvenience of the poor-law system. The experi- 
 ence of a very few weeks served to convince me that this 
 evil, however great, sinks into insignificance when compared 
 with the dreadful effects which the system produces on the 
 morals and happiness of the lower orders. It is as difficult 
 to convey to the mind of the reader a true and faithful 
 impression of the intensity and malignancy of the evil in 
 this point of view, as it is by any description, however 
 vivid, to give an adequate idea of the horrors of a ship- 
 wreck or a pestilence. A person must converse with paupers, 
 must enter workhouses, and examine the inmates, must 
 attend at the parish pay-table before he can form a just 
 conception of the moral debasement which is the offspring 
 of the present system ; he must hear the pauper threaten to 
 abandon his wife and family unless more money is allowed 
 him, threaten to abandon an aged bedridden mother, to 
 turn her out of his house and lay her down at the over- 
 seer's door, unless he is paid for giving her shelter ; he must 
 hear parents threatening to follow the same course with 
 regard to their sick children ; he must see mothers coming
 
 OPERATION OF THE LAW AS ADMINISTERED. 47 
 
 to receive the reward of their daughters' ignominy, and 
 witness women, in cottages, quietly pointing out, without 
 even the question being asked, which are their children by 
 their husband and which by other men previous to marriage ; 
 and, when he finds that he can scarcely step into a town 
 or parish in any county without meeting with some instance 
 or other of this character, he will no longer consider the 
 pecuniary pressure on the ratepayer as the first in the class 
 of evils which the poor-laws have entailed upon the com- 
 munity." (Report, p. 60.)
 
 IV. CHARACTER OF PERSONS WHO DIS- 
 TRIBUTED AND AWARDED RELIEF. 
 
 IT may be asked in what degree the evils just recapitulated 
 were attributable to defects in the machinery of the old 
 poor-law. Such defects there certainly were, defects which 
 aggravated the mischief necessarily arising out of a bad 
 system. Historical accuracy requires that we should 
 specify these defects. Their study is in itself instructive at 
 the present time. A brief notice of the ancient organisation 
 for administering relief will therefore be in place here. 
 
 For purposes of local administration the two prin- 
 cipal areas were formerly the county and the parish. 
 The justices of the peace presided over the county ; 
 the vestry over the parish. Vestries, again, were of three 
 classes ; the common vestry, an assembly of all the rate- 
 payers in the parish ; the select vestry, a body of representa- 
 tives chosen by them ; and the self-appointed vestry, a body 
 which renewed itself from time to time by the method of 
 co-optation. The members of the vestry were then, as thcy 
 still are, unpaid. Unpaid also were most of the ministers 
 of the vestry, the churchwardens and overseers, although, at 
 the date of the Commission, more than three thousand 
 parishes had taken advantage of a recent Act of Parliament, 
 enabling them to appoint paid assistant-overseers. 
 
 In the relief of the poor as formerly administered, the 
 overseers, the vestry, and the magistrates, all took shares 
 almost equally important The overseers may here be 
 considered first. It was their duty to assess, collect, and 
 distribute the fund destined for the relief of the poor. They 
 had to decide, in the first instance, what amount of money
 
 CHARACTER OF PERSONS WHO DISTRIBUTED RELIEF. 49 
 
 was wanted, what persons were to pay it, and in what 
 proportions each was to contribute ; they were to enforce 
 payment from those liable, and to dole it out to those 
 whom they considered proper objects of relief. As they 
 received no salary and had arduous duties to perform, 
 they were not closely controlled by the vestries of their 
 several parishes. But they belonged to the same class with 
 the vestrymen, and were influenced by the same considera- 
 tions. How did they discharge their very difficult function ? 
 
 The unpaid overseers were in the great majority of 
 cases found wanting. They could properly discharge their 
 trust only by spending much time and trouble and by 
 incurring much unpopularity. They were usually men who 
 had to work hard for a living, and could not afford that 
 time and trouble. They lived among the paupers who 
 often had the will and the opportunity to resent by 
 outrage any thrift in the administration of relief. They 
 had no salary or promotion to lose by misconduct, in fact 
 they had much to gain by showing dishonest preference to 
 the poor who were their customers or members of their 
 sect. Abuses, no doubt, increased the burthen of the 
 poor-rate to which the overseer contributed ; but we have 
 seen what strong inducements many ratepayers had to 
 regard heavy rates as a blessing. At all events it was for 
 the overseers' interest to pay a somewhat heavier rate rather 
 than to spend their strength in the thankless task of sifting 
 out the cases of real distress and then dealing effectively 
 with these. They were required, it is true, to have their 
 accounts audited by the vestry and allowed by the magis- 
 trates ; but the accounts were seldom full or regular, the 
 audit was almost always a form, and the magistrates allowed 
 as of course the items passed by the vestry. 
 
 The overseers were elected for a year, and they often 
 exercised their function for two or three months only. The 
 office being so distasteful, it was a common custom to elect 
 several overseers, who acted in succession within the year. 
 Their work could not have been well done without long 
 experience ; without a readiness in applying sound principles 
 and a personal acquaintance with the paupers entrusted tc
 
 50 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 their care, which they could not possibly acquire in a year, 
 still less in a shorter time. They were obliged to resign 
 their office just as they had begun to know something about 
 the right way to discharge it. Putting together all these 
 circumstances, the temptations from within, the pressure 
 from without, the want of time, the want of experience, and 
 the strain of other avocations, we shall not be surprised to 
 find that a really efficient overseer was very rare in the 
 parishes examined by the Commission or by its officers. 
 An assistant-overseer who received a salary and gave all his 
 time and trouble to his official duty was much oftener 
 efficient; in many cases he saved to the parish which 
 employed him a sum far exceeding his remuneration. 
 
 The legal powers of a vestry in the administration of 
 relief were, according to the Commissioners, subject to 
 doubt and obscurity. To enter into a discussion of vexed 
 points, arising upon a law which has passed away, would be 
 tedious to the reader and foreign to the purpose of this 
 tract. It is sufficient for our purpose to know that almost 
 everywhere the practical influence of the vestry was very 
 great ; that it formed, in fact, the ruling authority of the 
 parish, a sort of council of government, of which the over- 
 seers were members, voting among the others and sub- 
 mitting to be controlled by the majority. The vestries, in 
 the opinion of the Commissioners, were generally bad ; 
 and, whilst the self-appointed vestry was the worst of all, 
 the common was worse than the select vestry. The 
 common vestry, as composed of ratepayers only, was in 
 most cases closed against owners, who in England are 
 seldom directly rated. As the abuses of the old-fashioned 
 method of relieving the poor, were often seemingly lucrative 
 to mere occupiers, it was seldom that bodies of occupiers 
 showed any eagerness to amend these abuses. 
 
 The persons who attended at the vestries were often 
 averse to any measures that would render the labourer in- 
 dependent of the parish, since the relief which kept him 
 rooted to the spot insured to them plenty of labour when 
 they had occasion for it. The parishes were then, as they 
 still are, extremely unequal in size. In the small parishes
 
 CHARACTER OF PERSQXS WHO DISTRIBUTED RELIEF, 51 
 
 the open vestry was exposed to intimidation by the paupers 
 as well as to the sinister influence of individual members. 
 In the large parishes it could seldom remain unanimous. 
 " There are so many petty and conflicting interests to 
 be accommodated," says one witness, " that these meetings 
 are scenes of angry contention and violent debate, which 
 end in nothing, and disgust the respectable portion of the 
 inhabitants, who resign themselves to endure the evils which 
 they cannot cure." (Report, p. 68.) 
 
 The select vestry, although elected by the very persons 
 who would otherwise have met in open vestry, was, in the 
 opinion of the Commissioners, more capable and less subject 
 to turbulence and corruption. This superiority they ascribed 
 principally to the lessening of magisterial interference, to the 
 presence of the clergyman, and to the practice of keeping 
 regular minutes of the proceedings. Yet the select vestry, in 
 spite of its merits, was often abandoned after a short trial. 
 Members grew remiss in their attendance, particularly in 
 seasons of riot and outrage, when the paupers wreaked their 
 vengeance upon those who had been frugal of the public 
 money. In some parishes the very integrity of the select 
 vestry raised up enemies. Under the influence of these 
 and of other causes the number of select vestries fell from 
 2,868, in the year 1827, to 2,391 in the year 1832. Their 
 virtues could not resist the overpowering poison of the un- 
 reformed poor-law. 
 
 It remains to consider the part taken by magistrates in 
 the administration of the relief of the poor. Under the 
 Act of the thirty-sixth year of George III., they had an 
 almost unlimited discretion in ordering relief. This dis- 
 cretion they exercised very freely and with very bad effects. 
 They were usually incapable of determining a suitable 
 standard of income for the poor in general or of ascertaining 
 the facts of each individual case. As to the former point, 
 men of fortune are of all others the least fitted to ascertain 
 how much use a poor man can extract from a shilling. To 
 the question asked by the Commissioners of many gentle- 
 men serving parochial offices in the metropolis What can 
 a family earn, and can they live on those earnings and lay 
 
 D 2
 
 52 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 by anything ? one stated that in St. Anne's, Limehouse, a 
 family might earn ^100 a year, on which they could live, 
 but could not save, whilst another stated that at Hammer- 
 smith a family might earn ^"49 8s., which would give them 
 wholesome food and enable them to lay by something. As 
 to the latter point, the ascertaining of the facts in each 
 particular case, no magistrate who had to act for many 
 parishes could possibly investigate a tenth of the cases 
 which came before him. An appeal from the overseer to 
 the magistrate was an appeal from a judge with imperfect 
 knowledge to a judge with none. Having to decide at 
 random, the magistrate, in his fear of acting cruelly, almost 
 always decided in favour of the pauper and against the 
 overseer. Often he did more, and in the presence of the 
 pauper reprimanded the overseer with a roughness fatal 
 alike to the zeal and to the authority of that officer. In 
 general, it was found that the best and kindest men among 
 the justices did most to pauperize the people. 
 
 Thus the overseers, the vestries, and the justices of the 
 peace had all failed in performing the task imposed upon 
 them. by the poor-law. It was this collapse of the old system 
 of administration which led to the substitution of large 
 areas, of unions, for single parishes, and the establishment 
 of a central board to watch and control the action of the 
 new local authorities. The modern mechanism of local 
 administration is, we know, defective in many ways, and 
 especially as a means of political training for the people. 
 One of the most important suggestions for its improvement 
 is the proposal to revive the civil parish or township, and to 
 entrust its affairs to a general assembly of all the rate- 
 payers. That something might thus be effected for the 
 better administration of local affairs and for the political 
 training of the nation seems clear. But those who wish to 
 revive a venerable institution are prone to exaggerate the good 
 resulting therefrom. The Commissioners of 1832 found 
 that the vestries, especially the common vestries, and the 
 unpaid overseers were usually indolent and ignorant, 
 and very often corrupt. The working of the parochial 
 system was bad. although its principle was sound and
 
 CHARACTER OF PERSONS WHO DISTRIBUTED RELIEF. 53 
 
 liberal. In principle a government which enlists every 
 citizen in public work is admirable. But it is not in every 
 age or country that the bulk of the citizens will take time or 
 pains with anything outside their private business. In any 
 case it will be well not to begin by heaping duties upon our 
 new parish assemblies. If they can do a little well, more 
 may be delegated to them. 
 
 The criticism passed by the Commissioners upon the 
 action of justices of the peace has less interest for us, because 
 nobody proposes to enlarge, and many are desirous to curtail, 
 the administrative powers of the magistracy. In general the 
 justices had made a bad use of the powers entrusted to them 
 by the statutes passed for the relief of the poor. But they 
 had misused these powers in a somewhat unexpected way. 
 They erred by taking in every dispute the part of the pauper 
 against the overseer, by encouraging and enforcing a lavish, 
 blind, and pernicious charity. Yet they were usually land- 
 owners ; and landowners beyond question lost more than 
 any other men by a wasteful system of relieving the poor. 
 We have seen that in many instances land was rendered 
 almost worthless by the growth of the poor-rate. The 
 justices of the peace in their foolish good-nature injured 
 themselves and the public. So many persons at the present 
 day seem to think that the possession of real property 
 involves a peculiar hardness of heart, that this circumstance, 
 simple enough in itself, may be not unworthy of notice.
 
 V. RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE 
 COMMISSIONERS. 
 
 THE Commissioners having detailed the mischiefs which 
 they found in existence, proceeded to examine certain 
 remedies which had been suggested. The first of these, 
 and one strongly recommended by many competent per- 
 sons, was that the relief of the poor should be made a 
 national, instead of a parochial charge, and should be both 
 provided and administered under the direction of the Go- 
 vernment. A witness expressed himself thus respecting 
 the parochial administration : " Ignorant or interested 
 persons talk about the advantages of people applying 
 their money and managing their own affairs, in opposition 
 to any plan of central management ; but however great the 
 mismanagement of this or any other Government that I 
 have ever heard of may be, there never was a tax so harshly 
 and vexatiously levied, or so badly and corruptly expended, 
 as the tax raised for the relief of the poor. It is the only 
 one raised and appropriated immediately by the payers 
 themselves, and it is in every respect the very worst." The 
 Commissioners admitted that such a change would have 
 had many advantages ; that the absurdities of the old law of 
 settlement would have been swept away, and a large imme- 
 diate saving of the public wealth effected; and that no other 
 equally comprehensive measure would have had so many or 
 such ardent supporters. But they thought that the saving 
 would be only temporary ; that candidates for power would 
 bid for popularity by promising to be good to the poor; 
 and that it would be difficult to find any satisfactory way of 
 raising the necessary funds.
 
 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 55 
 
 The second remedy suggested was the assisted emigra- 
 tion of superfluous labourers. This the Commissioners 
 thought likely to be of use in many cases. They recom- 
 mended that the vestry of each parish should be empowered 
 to order the payment, out of the rates raised for the relief of 
 the poor, of the expenses of the emigration of any persons 
 having settlements within such parish who might be willing 
 to emigrate ; provided that the expense of each emigration 
 be raised and paid within a period to be mentioned in the 
 Act. They did not, however, lay much stress upon emigra- 
 tion as a cure for pauperism. They thought that under a 
 reformed administration of the poor-law there would be 
 such an improvement in the industry of the labourer, and 
 such an increase in the fund available for his support, that 
 the paupers would be very generally absorbed into the mass 
 of independent wage-earners. This expectation was largely 
 fulfilled. England then contained barely half its present 
 population ; and had yet before it a long career of expand- 
 ing industry. Thus the Commissioners had to deal with a 
 state of affairs very different from ours, and might well 
 think less of emigration than we should do now. 
 
 More interest attaches to a third proposal for the cure 
 of rural pauperism by giving the labourers land to occupy. 
 Even at that time many landowners had tried the experi- 
 ment of allotting small pieces of land to labourers for culti- 
 vation in their spare time, and the parishes had statutory 
 power to do likewise. The Commissioners examined many 
 witnesses as to the success which had attended the system 
 of allotments. The general results of the evidence they 
 summed up as follows : i. That the extent of land which a 
 labourer can beneficially occupy is small, seldom exceeding, 
 even when his family is large, half an acre. Were he to 
 cultivate more, he could no longer rely upon his wages as 
 his regular and main support. If he ceased to rely upon 
 his wages ; if he became a petty farmer, before he had 
 accumulated a capital sufficient to meet not merely the 
 current expenses, but also the casualties of that hazardous 
 trade ; if he had to encounter the accidents of the 
 seasons, instead of feeling them at second-hand, after
 
 56 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NE\V SOCIALISM. 
 
 their force had been broken on the higher classes, his ulti- 
 mate ruin, in their opinion, was almost certain. One of the 
 Sub-Commissioners reported upon this subject as follows : 
 " A few leases for lives are occasionally met with, chiefly in 
 Montgomeryshire, which have been granted by the lords of 
 the manors with from five to fifteen acres of land ; not 
 enough to make the tenants farmers, and too much to per- 
 mit them to be labourers. On comparing the condition of 
 these small freeholders with that of labourers who have only 
 just sufficient land to occupy their leisure time, the result is 
 greatly in favour of the latter. My own observation was 
 confirmed by the testimony of others. Mr. Davies, the 
 rector of Aberhavesp, stated that in his neighbourhood several 
 persons had obtained leases for lives of a few acres of land 
 which had been recently enclosed, and that the majority of 
 them are now actually in a worse condition than paupers. 
 They trust solely to the produce of the land, and if there is 
 a bad season, or they are improvident, which is often the 
 case, in the consumption of a short crop, they are reduced 
 to a dreadful condition, as the possession of the land 
 operates against their obtaining parochial relief. 
 
 " Where a labourer was possessed of a small portion of 
 land, sufficient, and not more than sufficient, to occupy his 
 leisure time and furnish his children with employment, I 
 found a striking improvement in the general condition of 
 the whole family. The children were early and practically 
 taught the beneficial effects of industry, and the man ap- 
 peared to be more contented with his lot, and had less 
 inducement to keep loose company. From what I witnessed, 
 therefore, I cannot too strongly recommend that every facility 
 should be granted to encourage the occupation of land to 
 this extent by the labouring classes. The measure was 
 warmly advocated by all classes, and is universally popular." 
 (Report, pp. no, in.) 
 
 2. That where the system of letting land to labourers 
 has been introduced and carried on by individuals, it has 
 generally been beneficial ; and, on the other hand, that 
 where it has been managed by parish officers it has seldom 
 succeeded. This opinion of the Commissioners has some
 
 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSIONER*;. 57 
 
 interest at the present day, when it is proposed to invest 
 local bodies with the power of compulsory purchase, 
 in order that they may provide allotments and pieces of 
 pasture for the labourers. Such an enactment might 
 quicken negligent or stupid landowners to do what is for 
 their own interest as well as for the interest of the public, 
 and to make proper provision for those who labour on their 
 estates. Perhaps, however, its importance has been some- 
 times overrated. In the first place, such local bodies, for 
 the most part composed of and elected by farmers, are not 
 likely to incur any grave expense for this object at a time 
 when agriculture is declining and taxation augmenting. 
 Secondly, the local bodies, in providing allotments, will be 
 under disadvantages more or less resembling those to which 
 the Commissioners of 1832 ascribed their former failure. 
 The applicant for relief, they said, had been trained to con- 
 sider the distributors of relief as his enemies. He viewed 
 even their gifts with suspicion and distrusted still more their 
 attempts to bargain with him. He neither brought to any 
 contract with them the cheerfulness, nor performed his part 
 with the activity and perseverance necessary to the success 
 of his undertaking, even if all that was to be done upon their 
 part had been wisely and diligently executed. The over- 
 seers, anxious to escape with the least possible trouble from 
 the thankless task forced upon them, seldom bestowed much 
 care in choosing tenants, or in framing rules, or in enforcing 
 their observance. In short, none of the conditions of 
 success were present. 
 
 3. That the occupation of land by the labouring classes 
 may be made, and, in fact, is made, beneficial to the lessor 
 as well as to the occupier. This the Commissioners thought 
 the most important result of their inquiries. The immediate 
 advantages of allotments they considered to be so great as 
 would justify at least temporary measures for providing them 
 at the public expense. But they thought that since the 
 practice of letting land to labourers was profitable, it might 
 safely be trusted to spread without public interference. 
 They declare that at the time of their Report it was rapidly 
 extending.
 
 58 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 Another proposal noticed by the Commissioners was one 
 for the general enforcement of a labour-rate and for the abo- 
 lition of all other forms of relief. This also the Commis- 
 sioners rejected for reasons suggested by their survey of the 
 labour-rate system as they found it in operation in many 
 parts of England. We have formerly seen the evils incident 
 to that method of relieving distress and need not recapitulate 
 them here. 
 
 The Commissioners, not thinking any of the above 
 remedies adequate to the disease, next propounded their 
 own recommendations which were embodied in the 
 poor-law of 1834. All that is here necessary is to call 
 attention to the fundamental principle embodied in these 
 recommendations. It may be stated thus : that the situa- 
 tion of the person receiving relief should not on the whole 
 be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation 
 of the independent labourer of the lowest class. Upon 
 this principle the Commissioners recommended that, ex- 
 cept as to medical attendance, no relief whatever should 
 be given to able-bodied persons or to their families except 
 in well-regulated workhouses. They thought that relief 
 could not be made unattractive so well in any other 
 way as by giving it on condition of entering the work- 
 house. They did not mean that the board and lodging 
 supplied in the workhouse should be kept below the 
 standard for the poorest labourer out of doors. It is 
 both certain and deplorable that many thousands of spirited 
 men and women cannot provide for themselves by their 
 industry so comfortable a dwelling or such wholesome 
 and plentiful food as the chill bounty of the State sup- 
 plies to those who have ceased to struggle for indepen- 
 dence. But the sense of restraint, the uneasiness under 
 a workhouse discipline, however reasonable or temperately 
 enforced, the loss of the ordinary excitements and amuse- 
 ments, the feeling of impotence and humiliation will for 
 most people counterbalance the insipid, dreary well-being of 
 the workhouse. In this way the condition of those who live 
 in a well-managed workhouse may be more repellent than 
 the condition of the independent poor outside. This was
 
 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 59 
 
 what the Commissioners recommended and what has been 
 in great part carried out, with the result of considerably 
 reducing the number of paupers and raising the remunera- 
 tion of labour. 
 
 But is the principle thus laid down by the Com- 
 missioners a sound one ? It is repugnant to the principle 
 of many of the schemes now proposed for the alleviation 
 of distress. By adopting these schemes the State would 
 guarantee to the poor, at a rate much below cost price, many 
 of the chief necessaries of civilisation. It would give this 
 guarantee without reserve ; it would add no deterrent con- 
 ditions, ask no questions, impose no tests ; but give with a 
 bounty more open and unsuspecting than that of the most 
 munificent individual. The Commissioners of 1832 would 
 have regarded this generosity as foolishness. They admitted 
 that a civilised State should not allow its citizens to perish 
 by famine and exposure. They recognised the danger to 
 society arising from the extreme penury of the poorest 
 class. They would have relieved this class, but in such a 
 way as not to recruit it from classes a little more prosperous. 
 They would have so tempered the public charity that the 
 miserable would not refuse, and those who were not 
 miserable would not accept it. The gentler offices of 
 humanity they would have left to charitable men and women. 
 Were they right in drawing this distinction? Is there an 
 ineffaceable line separating the province of public from that 
 of private charity ? 
 
 Undoubtedly there is such a line. In the first place, 
 whatever the State gives is accepted as of right. Nobody 
 feels any gratitude for help given out of the public purse. 
 Nobody thinks that he can ever get enough. Nobody 
 lias any shame in asking for more. Everything which is 
 thus received is received without thanks ; too often with 
 anger and bitterness. Private charity, wisely dispensed, 
 does not involve to at all the same extent these unpleasant 
 consequences. A landowner may build cottages and let 
 them to labourers at a rent which does not nearly repay 
 the cost. But then a landowner exercises over his estate 
 a sort of patriarchal authority ; he provides lodging only for
 
 60 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 a certain number of persons, leaving the rest to go else- 
 where ; he makes a cheap cottage the reward of merit ; 
 he profits by the presence of the better sort of labourers 
 and by the higher cultivation of his land ; and whatever he 
 does, he does as an act of benevolence. How widely he 
 differs from a municipal body elected to do what he has 
 done, without any discretion as to the manner or extent of 
 doing it ! A rich neighbour may well give a dinner now 
 and then to a troop of poor school children. Such kindness 
 is good in itself, and no sane person counts upon it as a 
 source of income in the event of his marrying and having 
 a family. But if a school board guarantee to every one of 
 its scholars as much wholesome food as a boy or girl can 
 eat, is it not certain to cancel the strongest motive to 
 economy and to relax the bond between parent and child? 
 
 Again, those who dispense the bounty of the State are 
 often careless, or careful chiefly to profit somewhat by their 
 function. The parliamentary candidate who wants to 
 secure his seat, the party leader who wishes to hold or 
 recover office, the administrator whose importance grows 
 with the growth of his disbursement, the journalist whose 
 art it is to make the public weep golden tears ; all these 
 bear but a very small share of the cost, whilst they absorb 
 almost all the profit and praise. Herein also the charity of 
 the State differs from the charity of private persons. Private 
 persons give of their own ; and as they are at the pains and 
 expense, so they have the reward of their own conscience 
 and of the approval of others. State charity, as soon as it 
 overpasses the narrowest bounds, cannot be kept within 
 any bounds whatsoever. The recipients are numberless, 
 shameless, and insatiable. The distributors are few, help- 
 less, indifferent in most instances to everything but their 
 own popularity. Discrimination becomes almost impossible ; 
 caution is at an end ; frugality is denounced as hardness of 
 heart ; the expenses of the State and the appetites of the 
 needy are multiplied a hundredfold ; industry is burthen ed, 
 diligence relaxed, accumulation discouraged ; the sources of 
 revenue are dried up, and public bankruptcy and national 
 pauperism are the inevitable consequences.
 
 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 61 
 
 Wherever it has once been admitted that any large part 
 of the community has a right to have their incomes sup- 
 plemented out of the public purse all these plagues have 
 followed. The two greatest republics of antiquity, the Re- 
 public of Athens and the Republic of Rome date their rapid 
 decline from the establishment of unlimited outdoor relief. 
 Nor is there anything mysterious in this if we will but consult 
 our own nature. The natural man has no very high standard 
 of civilisation, but he has a very high standard of indolence. 
 Most men would be idle if they possibly could. Only a 
 minority work from motives of conscience, or public spirit, 
 or vanity, or restlessness. The rest work under the pressure 
 of terrible unsatisfied instincts; and of these the two 
 strongest are the instinct to maintain one's own life and 
 the instinct to continue one's species. Now, one of these 
 instincts is limited in its demands. A plain man needs 
 only a certain daily ration of bread and meat. But the 
 other instinct calls into being an unlimited number of 
 competitors for this ration. Whatever the effect of idle- 
 ness, luxury, or intellectual effort upon the more fortunate, 
 or of hunger, disease, and intemperance upon the more 
 miserable of our kind, it is certain that the normal man 
 and woman sufficiently lodged, clothed, and fed, and not 
 cruelly overworked, will, if they marry early, have a very 
 large family. It is also certain that a vast number of men 
 and women marry almost before they have attained physical 
 maturity. Those who do not do so are usually restrained 
 by the desire to maintain the standard of comfort and 
 decency recognised by their class. Out of the conflict of 
 these passions conies the energy which creates wealth faster 
 than it is consumed. Suspend the conflict and you relax 
 the energy ; relax the energy and you plunge the whole 
 community in suffering worse than even the poorest class 
 now endures. 
 
 Misery springs from many sources ; the deepest and most 
 constant being the imperfection of those who are miserable. 
 It is because of this moral and intellectual weakness in 
 most of those who are objects of charity that charity so 
 much needs to be guided by knowledge and controlled by
 
 02 THE OLD POOR-LAW AND THE NEW SOCIALISM. 
 
 judgment, if it is not to do more harm than good. The 
 sphere of State charity is limited by the limits of official 
 wisdom and integrity. The sphere of private charity is 
 limited only by the limits of individual inquiry and super- 
 vision. The evidence amassed by the Commissioners of 
 1832 proves that relief out of the rates, if given elsewhere 
 than in the workhouse, is almost always given blindly ; that 
 the instruments available to the State do not enable it to 
 dispense charity wisely and honestly in any other way. 
 Private charity, when properly organised, is far better able 
 to give outdoor relief in cases where such relief ought to be 
 given. Whilst inflexible general rules must control the dis- 
 tribution of State alms, private liberality can examine into 
 the circumstances of each particular case, deal with it upon 
 its merits, and establish a happy and an ennobling relation 
 between him who gives and him who takes. Private charity, 
 organised, reflective, energetic, has a boundless field, upon 
 which the State, if it is wise, will not trespass. This noble 
 charity demands from the rich not money only, but time ; 
 not time only, but labour. It is for them to remember that, 
 if legally owners, they are morally trustees of the wealth 
 which they enjoy. The old juridical definition of the right 
 of property as a right to use and abuse is a sound descrip- 
 tion of a legal right which must be preserved in the interest 
 of the public even when strained by the individual ; but it 
 will not avail to cover the misfeasance or nonfeasance of the 
 rich man at the bar of public opinion, of conscience, or of 
 God. 
 
 Nor in thus asserting the exclusive capacity of private 
 benevolence to deal with certain forms of distress do we 
 seek to cramp the action of the State. Over and above the 
 mechanism of national defence and internal order there are 
 many other appliances of civilised life which the State may 
 well provide for its citizens. It may undertake such public 
 works as it can execute better and more cheaply than any 
 other agency. It may undertake the construction of roads 
 and sewers, or the supply of gas and water. It may furnish 
 the means of national culture ; schools of every grade, ele- 
 mentary, intermediate, technical; libraries, museums, galleries
 
 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 63 
 
 of painting and sculpture, baths, parks, and gardens. In 
 providing these the State does not so much satisfy the needs 
 of animal nature as awaken the truly human instincts. By 
 enlarging the conscious wants of men, it urges them to more 
 strenuous exertion. Nay, the State may go further and employ 
 its unequalled credit for the benefit of particular classes. It 
 may build homes for the workmen in cities, or buy farms for 
 the cultivators in the country upon such terms as will simply 
 reimburse its outlay. All this it may wisely and fairly do. 
 But it acts unwisely in attempting to satisfy on easy terms 
 the gross animal wants of any class. It acts unfairly in 
 charging the maintenance of any class upon the rest of the 
 community. It acts cruelly when in the excess of pity it 
 seeks not to soften merely, but totally to abrogate, the 
 struggle for existence. That struggle has been ordained as 
 a painful but necessary means of human improvement.
 
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