DECAY OF ENGLISH LIBERTY, AND GROWTH OF ENGLISH POOR LAWS.
Blackstone, whose Commentaries have been, for half a century, a common
school-book, and whose opinions on the rise, growth and full development
of British liberty, are generally received as true, as well in America
as in Europe, maintains a theory the very opposite of that for which we
are about to contend.
He holds that the appearance of the House of Commons, about the reign of
Henry the Third, was the dawn of approaching liberty. We contend that it
was the origin of the capitalist and moneyed interest government,
destined finally to swallow up all other powers in the State, and to
bring about the most selfish, exacting and unfeeling class, despotism.
He thinks the emancipation of the serfs was another advance towards
equality of rights and conditions. We think it aggravated inequality of
conditions, and divested the liberated class of every valuable, social
and political right. A short history of the English Poor Laws, which we
shall annex, will enable the reader to decide between us on this head.
He thinks the Reformation increased the liberties of the subject. We
think that, in destroying the noblest charity fund in the world, the
church lands, and abolishing a priesthood, the efficient and zealous
friends of the poor, the Reformation tended to diminish the liberty of
the mass of the people, and to impair their moral, social and physical
well-being. He thinks that the Revolution, by increasing the power of
the House of Commons, and lessening the prerogative of the Crown, and
the influence of the Church, promoted liberty. We think the Crown and
the Church the natural friends, allies and guardians of the laboring
class; the House of Commons, a moneyed firm, their natural enemies; and
that the Revolution was a marked epoch in the steady decay of British
liberty.
He thinks that the settlement of 1688 that successfully asserted in
theory the supreme sovereignty of Parliament, but particularly the
supreme sovereignty of the House of Commons, was the consummation or
perfection of British liberty. We are sure, that that settlement, and
the chartering of the Bank of England, which soon succeeded it, united
the landed and moneyed interests, placed all the powers of government in
their hands, and deprived the great laboring class of every valuable
right and liberty. The nobility, the church, the king, were now
powerless; and the mass of the people, wholly unrepresented in the
government, found themselves exposed to the grinding and pitiless
despotism of their natural and hereditary enemies. Mr. Charles Dickens,
who pities the condition of the negro slaves, thus sums up, in a late
speech, the worse condition of the "Slaves without Masters," in Great
Britain: "Beneath all this, is a _heaving_ mass of poverty, ignorance
and crime." Such is English liberty for the masses. Thirty thousand men
own the lands of England, three thousand those of Scotland, and fewer
still those of Ireland. The great mass of the people are cut off from
the soil, have no certain means of subsistence, and are trespassers upon
the earth, without a single valuable or available right. Contrast their
situations with that of the old villeins, and see then whether our
theory of British liberty and the British constitution be true, or that
of Blackstone.
All writers agree there were no beggars or paupers in England until the
liberation of the serfs; and moreover admit that slaves, in all ages and
in all countries, have had all their physical wants sufficiently
supplied. They also concur in stating, that crime was multiplied by
turning loose on society a class of men who had been accustomed to and
still needed the control of masters.
Until the liberation of the villeins, every man in England had his
appropriate situation and duties, and a mutual and adequate interest in
the soil. Practically the lands of England were the common property of
the people of England. The old Barons were not the representatives of
particular classes in Parliament, but the friends, and faithful and able
representatives of all classes; for the interests of all classes were
identified. Monteil, a recent French author, who has written the most
accurate and graphic description of social conditions during the Feudal
ages, describes the serfs as the especial pets and favorites of the
Barons. They were the most dependent, obedient, and useful members of
the feudal society, and like younger children, became favorites. The
same class now constitute the Proletariat, the Lazzaroni, the Gypsies,
the Parias, and the "pauper banditti" of Western Europe, and the Leperos
of Mexico. As slaves, they were loved and protected; as pretended
freemen, they were execrated and persecuted.
Mr. Lester, a New York abolitionist, after a long and careful
observation and study of the present condition of the English laboring
class, solemnly avers, in his "Glory and Shame of England," that he
would sooner subject his child to Southern slavery, than have him to be
a free laborer of England.
But it is the early history of the English Poor Laws, that proves most
conclusively that the liberation of the villeins was a sham and a
pretence, and that their situation has been worse, their rights fewer,
and their liberties less, since emancipation than before. The Poor Laws,
from the time of Edward the Third to that of Elizabeth, were laws to
punish the poor, and to keep them at work for low wages. Not till late
in the reign of Elizabeth, was any charitable provision made for them.
Then, most of them would have starved, as the confiscation and sales of
the church lands had deprived them of their only refuge, but for the new
system of charity. The rich must have labor, and could not afford to let
them _all_ starve, although they were ready to attempt the most
stringent means to prevent their increase.
In the Edinburgh Review, October, 1841, on Poor Law Reform, we find the
following admirable history and synopsis of the English Poor Laws:
The great experiment of Poor Law amendment, which has now for
seven years been in progress among our southern neighbors, appears
to us to have been insufficiently attended to, and therefore to
have been imperfectly understood in this part of the island. We do
not believe that many of our Scottish readers are fully aware of
the origin of the English Poor Laws, of the changes which they
underwent, of the abuses which they created, of the remedy which
has been applied; or of the obstacles which have diminished the
success of that great measure, and now threaten its efficiency.
And yet these are subjects of the deepest interest, even to those
who study legislation merely as a science. A series of laws are
exhibited, persevered in for centuries, by a nation always eminent
for practical wisdom, of which the result has almost invariably
been failure, or worse than failure; which in scarcely a single
instance have attained their objects, and in most cases have
produced effects precisely opposite to the intentions of their
framers;--have aggravated whatever they were intended to diminish,
and produced whatever they were intended to prevent. From us, as
Scotchmen, they merit peculiar attention, not only from the
resemblance of our poor laws to the earlier English statutes; but
from the probability that, as the connection between the two
countries becomes more intimate, we shall at no distant period
follow the example, whatever it may be, of the larger country to
which we are united; and participate in the evils and advantages
of the system which she may finally adopt. This fate already
threatens Ireland. It is scarcely probable that Scotland can avoid
it.
Each of the subjects to which we have alluded, would require a
volume for its complete development; but we are constrained to
give to them such consideration as is admissible within the limits
of an article of moderate length.
The Committee of the House of Commons which considered the Poor
Laws in 1817, commence their able Report by stating, that "the
principle of a compulsory provision for the impotent, and for
setting to work the able-bodied, originated, without doubt, in
motives of the purest humanity." From this statement, plausible as
it is, we utterly dissent. We believe that the English poor laws
originated in selfishness, ignorance, and pride. Better motives,
without doubt, though misdirected by almost equal ignorance,
dictated the changes which were made in those laws during the 18th
century--the fourth which elapsed from their commencement; but we
are convinced that their origin was an attempt substantially to
restore the expiring system of slavery. The evils of slavery are
now understood; it is admitted that it destroys all the nobler
virtues, both moral and intellectual; that it leaves the slave
without energy, without truth, without honesty, without industry,
without providence; in short, without any of the qualities which
fit men to be respected or even esteemed. But mischievous as
slavery is, it has many plausible advantages, and freedom many
apparent dangers. The subsistence of a slave is safe; he cannot
suffer from insufficient wages, or from want of employment; he has
not to save for sickness or old age; he has not to provide for his
family; he cannot waste in drunkenness the wages by which they
were to be supported; his idleness or dishonesty cannot reduce
them to misery; they suffer neither from his faults nor his
follies. We believe that there are few of our Highland parishes in
which there is not more suffering from poverty than would be found
in an equal Russian population. Again, the master thinks that he
gains by being able to proportion the slave's subsistence to his
wants. In a state of freedom, average wages are always enough to
support, with more or less comfort, but still to support, an
average family. The unmarried slave receives merely his own
maintenance. A freeman makes a bargain; he asks whatever his
master can afford to pay. The competition among employers forces
them to submit to these terms; and the highly paid workman often
wastes his extra wages in idleness and debauchery. And when
employment is abundant; that is, when his services are most
wanted, he often tries to better himself by quitting his master.
All this is disagreeable to masters who have been accustomed to
the apparent economy of servile labor, and to its lethargic
obedience.
The great motive of the framers of the earlier English poor laws
was to remedy the latter class of inconveniences; those which
affect, or appear to affect the master. The motive of the framers
of the later acts again, beginning with George I., was to remedy
the first class of evils: those which affect the free laborer and
his family.
The first set of laws were barbarous and unskillful, and their
failure is evident from their constant re-enactment or amendment;
with different provisions and severer penalties. The second set
had a different fate--they ultimately succeeded, in many
districts, in giving to the laborer and to his family the security
of servitude. They succeeded in relieving him and those who, in a
state of real freedom, would have been dependent on him, from many
of the penalties imposed by nature on idleness, improvidence, and
misconduct. And by doing this, they in a great measure effected,
though certainly against the intentions of the legislature, the
object which had been vainly attempted by the earlier laws. They
confined the laborer to his parish; they dictated to him who
should be his master; and they proportioned his wages, not to his
services, but to his wants. Before the poor law amendment act,
nothing but the power of arbitrary punishment was wanting in the
pauperized parishes to a complete system of praedial slavery.
Our limits will not allow us to do more than to state very briefly
the material parts of the numerous statutes, beginning by the
statute of laborers, 23d Edward III., (1349,) and ending by the
39th Eliz. cap. 4, (1597,) which were passed for the supposed
benefit of masters.
The 23d Ed. III. requires all servants to accept the wages which
were usually given five or six years before, and to serve by the
year, not by the day; it fixes a positive rate of wages in many
employments; forbids persons to quit the places in which they had
dwelt in the winter, and search employment elsewhere in the
summer; or to remove, in order to evade the act, from one county
to another. A few years after, in 1360, the 34th Ed. III.
confirmed the previous statute, and added to the penalties, which
it imposed on laborers or artificers absenting themselves from
their services, that they should be branded on the forehead with
the letter F. It imposed also a fine of L10 on the mayor and
bailiffs of a town which did not deliver up a laborer or artificer
who had left his service.
Twenty-eight years after, in 1388, was passed the 12th Rich. II.,
which has generally been considered as the origin of the English
poor laws. By that act the acts of Ed. III. are
confirmed--laborers are prohibited, on pain of imprisonment, from
quitting their residences in search of work, unless provided with
testimonials stating the cause of their absence, and the time of
their returning, to be issued by justices of the peace at their
discretion. And, "because laborers will not, nor, for a long
season, would not, serve without extrageous and excessive hire,"
prices are fixed for their labor; and punishments awarded against
the laborer who receives more, and the master who gives more.
Persons who have been employed in husbandry until twelve years of
age, are prohibited from becoming artisans. Able-bodied beggars
are to be treated as laborers wandering without passports.
Impotent beggars are to remain where they are at the time of the
proclamation of the act; or, if those places are unwilling or
unable to support them, they are, within forty days, to repair to
the places where they were born, and there dwell during their
lives.
We have said that this act has been treated as the origin of the
English poor laws. It has been so considered in consequence of the
last clause, which is the first enactment recognizing the
existence of the impotent poor. But this enactment makes no
provision for them; though, by requiring them to be stationary in
a given spot for the rest of their lives, it seems to assume that
they would be supported there. It gives them, however, no claim,
nor is there a clause in the whole act intended to benefit any
persons except the employers of labor, and principally of
agricultural labor--that is to say, the land-owners who made the
law. If the provisions of the act could have been enforced, the
agricultural laborers, and they formed probably four-fifths of the
population of England, though nominally free, would have been as
effectually _ascripti glebae_ as any Polish serf. And, to make a
nearer approximation to slavery, in the next year (1389), the
13th Rich. II. was passed; which directs the justices of every
county to make proclamation every half year, at their discretion,
according to the price of food, what wages every artificer and
laborer shall receive by the day. This act, with some intervals,
during which the legislature attempted itself to fix the prices of
labor, remained substantially in force until the present century.
A further attempt to reduce husbandry laborers to a hereditary
caste of serfs, was made by the 7th Hen. IV. cap. 17. (1405,)
which, after reciting that the provisions of the former acts were
evaded by persons apprenticing their children to crafts in
towns--so that there is such a scarcity of husbandry laborers that
_gentlemen_ are impoverished--forbids persons not having 20s.
a-year in land to do so, under penalty of a year's imprisonment.
It appears, however, that the laborers did not readily submit to
the villenage to which the law strove to reduce them; for from
this time the English statute book is deformed by the enactments
against able-bodied persons leaving their homes, or refusing to
work at the wages offered to them, or loitering, (that is to say,
professing to be out of work,) which, to use the words of Dr.
Burn, "make this part of English history look like the history of
the savages in America. Almost all the severities have been
inflicted, except scalping."[2] A new class of criminals,
designated by the terms "sturdy rogues" and "vagabonds," was
created. Among these were included idle and suspect persons,
living suspiciously.[3] Persons having no land or craft whereby
they get their living.[4] Idle persons calling themselves
serving-men, having no masters. Persons who, after having been
sent home, absent themselves from such labor as they shall be
appointed to.[5] Able-bodied poor persons who do not apply
themselves to some honest labor or other; or serve even for meat
and drink, if nothing more is to be obtained.[6] Persons able to
labor, not having land or master, nor using any lawful employment.
Laborers using loitering, and refusing to work for reasonable
wages.[7]
The first attempt on the part of a person dependent on his labor
for his support to assert free agency, by changing his abode, or
by making a bargain for his services, or even by refusing to work
for "bare meat and drink," rendered him liable to be whipped and
sent back to his place of birth, or last residence, for three
years; or, according to some statutes, for one year, there to be
at the disposal of the local authorities. The second attempt
subjected him, at one time, to slavery for life, "to be fed on
bread and water and refuse meat, and caused to work by beating,
chaining, or otherwise;" and for the third, he was to suffer death
as a felon.
We have seen that the 12th Rich. II. required the impotent poor to
remain for life where they were found at the proclamation of the
act, or at the places of their birth. The subsequent statutes
require them to proceed either to their places of birth, or last
places of residence, for three years. The law assumed, as we have
already remarked, that they would be supported there by voluntary
alms; and as respects the able-bodied, it assumed that an
able-bodied slave, for such the laborer given up to the local
authorities was, could always be made worth his maintenance; that
maintenance being, of course, the lowest that could keep him in
working order. It appears, however, that casual alms were found an
insufficient, or an inconvenient provision for the impotent; that
the local authorities were not sufficiently severe taskmasters of
the able-bodied; and that the keeping them at work required some
fund, by way of capital. The 27th Hen. VIII. cap. 25, (1536,)
therefore, requires the parishes to which the able-bodied should
be sent, "to keep them to continual labor in such wise that they
may get their own living by the continual labor of their own
hands;" on pain that every parish making default shall forfeit
twenty shillings a-month. It directs the churchwardens, and two
others of every parish, to collect alms and broken meat, to be
employed in supporting the impotent poor, and "setting and keeping
to work the sturdy vagabonds;" and forbids other almsgiving, on
pain of forfeiting ten times the amount. This is the first attempt
at making charity legal and systematic; and it was obviously a
part of the scheme for confining the laboring population to their
own parishes. It seems to have been supposed that voluntary alms,
systematically distributed, would provide wholly for the impotent,
and form a fund which, aided by the fruits of their forced labor,
would support the "sturdy vagabonds;" and, therefore, that no one
could have an excuse for changing his residence.
In the early part of Elizabeth's reign was passed a statute, 5th
Eliz. cap. 3, (1562,) inflicting the usual penalties, whipping,
slavery, and death, on sturdy vagabonds; that is to say, on those
who, having no property but their labor, presumed to act as if
they had a right to dispose of it; and containing the usual
provisions for confining the impotent poor to their parishes. In
one respect, however, it was a great step in advance; for it
contains for the first time a provision enabling the justices to
tax, at their discretion, those who refused to contribute to the
relief of the impotent and the keeping at work the able-bodied.
Concurrently with this statute, and indeed as a part of it, for it
is the next chapter on the roll of parliament, was passed the 5th
Eliz. cap. 4. This statute requires all persons brought up to
certain specified trades, at that time the principal trades of the
country, and not possessed of property, or employed in husbandry,
or in a gentleman's service, to continue to serve in such trades;
and orders that all other persons, between twelve years old and
sixty, not being gentlemen, or students in a school or university,
or entitled to property, and not engaged in maritime or mining
operations, be compelled to serve in husbandry with any person
that will require such person to serve, within the same county.
Females, in corporate towns, between the ages of twelve and forty,
and unmarried, are to be disposed of in service by the corporate
authorities, at such wages, and in such sort and manner, as the
authorities think meet. The hours of work are fixed by the
statute; and the justices are, twice a-year, after "conferring
together respecting the plenty or scarcity of the time," to fix
the wages. Persons directly or indirectly paying more, are to be
punished by imprisonment and fine; persons receiving more, by
imprisonment. No person is to depart from one parish to another,
or from one hundred or county to serve in another hundred or
county, without a license from the local authorities.
When we recollect that disobedience to these enactments exposed a
man or a woman to be included in the proscribed class of
vagabonds, punishable by whipping, branding, slavery, and death,
it must be admitted that, whatever might be the practice, the
_law_ gave little freedom to the laboring classes.
The 14th Eliz. cap. 5, (1572,) carried on the same legislation
against the able-bodied, merely aggravating the penalty, by
subjecting the offenders (that is, all persons who would not work
for what the justices should think reasonable wages) to whipping
and burning for the first offence, and to the penalties of felony
for the second. It made a further approach to the present system,
by directing the fund "for setting to work the rogues and
vagabonds," and relieving the impotent, to be raised by a general
assessment.
Twenty-five years afterwards, the two acts of the 39th Eliz. cap.
3 and 4, were passed, which for the first time divided into
separate statutes the punishment of the able-bodied, and the
relief of the impotent. By the second of these acts, vagabonds
(including, we repeat, persons able to labor, having no lord or
master, not using any lawful employments, and laborers refusing to
work for common wages) are to be whipped, but not branded, sent
back to their parishes: if they appear to be such as will not be
reformed, they are to be transported, or adjudged perpetually to
the galleys.
The other act, the 39th Eliz. cap. 3, differs so slightly from the
43d Eliz. cap. 2, that it requires no further attention.
The 43d of Eliz. directs, that the churchwardens and two or more
householders, to be appointed by the justices, shall take order,
with the consent of the justices, for setting to work children,
and all persons having no means to maintain themselves, and using
no ordinary or daily trade of life to get their living by; and to
raise a fund by taxation of the inhabitants for such setting to
work, and for the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, and
blind poor not able to work. And the justices are directed to send
to the House of Correction, or common jail, "such as shall not
employ themselves to work, being appointed thereunto as
aforesaid."
It appears from this statement, that the 43d of Elizabeth deserves
neither the praise nor the blame which have been lavished on it.
So far from having been prompted by benevolence, it was a
necessary link in one of the heaviest chains in which a people
calling itself free has been bound. It was part of a scheme
prosecuted for centuries, in defiance of reason, justice, and
humanity, to reduce the laboring classes to serfs, to imprison
them in their parishes, and to dictate to them their employments
and their wages. Of course, persons confined to certain districts
by penalties of whipping, mutilation, and death, must be
supported; and, if they were capable of labor, it was obvious that
they ought to be made to contribute to the expense of their
maintenance. Thence arose the provisions for relieving the
impotent, and setting to work the able-bodied. But those
provisions do not, on the other hand, deserve the censure passed
on them by the Committee of the House of Commons in 1817. They
were not of a nature to induce the industrious to relax their
efforts. They held out no temptations to idleness. The
able-bodied, who were the objects of the 43d Elizabeth, were those
"who, having no means to maintain themselves, used no ordinary and
daily trade of life to get their living by;" such persons were, by
the previous acts, criminals; the work to which they were to be
put was forced work; and if they did not employ themselves in it,
"being thereunto appointed as aforesaid," the justices were to
commit them to jail. The industrious laborer was not within the
spirit or the words of the act. This was, indeed, the complaint of
Lord Hale: "The plaster," says his Lordship, "is not so large as
the sore. There are many poor who are able to work if they had it,
and had it at reasonable wages, whereby they might support
themselves and their families. These are not within the provisions
of the law."[8]
And it was long before the legislature assented to any extension
of the 43d Elizabeth. The 8th and 9th Will. III. cap. 30, passed
nearly a century afterwards, "To the intent that the money raised
_only_ for the relief of _such as are impotent as well as poor_,
may not be misapplied," requires all persons receiving relief, and
their families, to wear a badge, containing a large Roman P, and
the first letter of the name of the parish from which they
received relief; the object being not, as has been supposed, to
degrade the pauper, but to afford an easy means of detecting the
overseer who had relieved an able-bodied person.
The oppressive legislation of the Plantagenets and Tudors was
unsuccessful. The provisions on which its efficacy depended,
namely, the regulation of wages by the justices, the punishment of
those who refused to work for such wages, or who paid more than
such wages, and the punishment of those who left their parishes
without license, became gradually obsolete. Legally considered,
they remained in force until the present century. Sir Frederic
Eden has collected regulations of wages by the justices, from the
35th of Eliz. (1593) down to 1725. And the last which he gives,
that regulating wages for the county of Lancaster in 1725,
contains an exposition of the law by the justices, in the spirit
of the times of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth: "That the transgressors
may be inexcusable when punished, we, the said justices, publish
these denunciations, penalties, punishments, and forfeitures which
the statutes impose. No servant that hath been in service before,
ought to be retained without a testimonial that he or she is
legally licensed to depart, and at liberty to serve elsewhere, to
be registered with the minister of the parish whence the servant
departs. The master retaining a servant without such testimonial
forfeits five pounds. The person wanting such testimonial shall be
imprisoned till he procure it. If he do not produce one within
twenty-one days, to be whipped as a vagabond. The person that
gives more wages than is appointed by the justices shall forfeit
five pounds, and be imprisoned ten days; the servant that takes
more to be imprisoned twenty-one days. Every promise or gift
whatever to the contrary shall be void. We, the said justices,
shall make strict enquiries, and see the defaults against these
ancient and useful statutes severely corrected and punished."
Free society is a recent and small experiment. The English Poor Laws and
the English poor, constitute its only history; for only in England has
the experiment been made on a large scale for several centuries. If we
have not proved its total and disastrous failure in England, in our
Sociology, and in this chapter, we are resolved to prove it before we
have done.
It is a favorite political maxim of Englishmen, that taxation and
representation should go hand in hand; and that none shall be taxed
without their own consent. Yet in Great Britain, the working men, who
pay every cent of tax, are not represented at all, have no vote in
elections, and are taxed without and against their own consent; whilst
the capitalist class, who pay no taxes, but, as Gerrit Smith truly
says, are the mere conduits, that pass them from the laborers to the
government. This vampire capitalist class impose all the taxes, and pay
none. Alas! poor human nature! It is ever grasping at truth, and hugging
itself.