OF POOR LAWS.
In Chapter V. of Mr. Malthus’s book iii., we have these luminous remarks
of his on Poor Laws, which have been so often quoted by statesmen and
philanthropists:—
“It is,” says our author, “a subject often started in conversation, and
mentioned always as a matter of great surprise, that, notwithstanding
the immense sum which is annually collected for the poor in this
country, there is still so much distress among them. But a man who looks
a little below the surface of things would be much more astonished if
the fact were otherwise than it is showed to be, or even if a collection
universally of eighteen shillings in the pound, instead of four, were
materially to alter it. Suppose that by a subscription of the rich, the
eighteen pence or two shillings which men earn now were made up to four
shillings, it might be imagined, perhaps, that they would then be able
to live comfortably, and have a piece of meat every day for their
dinner. But this would be a very false conclusion. The transfer of three
additional shillings a day to each labourer would not increase the
quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all
to have a moderate share. What would then be the consequence? The
competition among the buyers in the market of meat would rapidly raise
the price from 8d. or 9d. to two or three shillings in the pound, and
the commodity would not be divided among many more people than at
present.
“When an article is scarce, and cannot be distributed to all, he that
can show the most valid patent, that is, he that offers the most money,
becomes the possessor ... and when subsistence is scarce in proportion
to the number of the people, it is of little consequence whether the
lowest members of the society possess two shillings or five. They must,
at all events, be reduced to live upon the hardest fare and in the
smallest quantity.
“A collection from the rich of eighteen shillings in the pound, even if
distributed in the most judicious manner, would have an effect similar
to that resulting from the supposition which I have just made; and no
possible sacrifices of the rich, particularly in money, would for any
time prevent the recurrence of distress among the lower members of
society, whoever they were. Great changes might, indeed, be made. The
rich might become poor and some of the poor rich; but while the present
proportion between population and food continues, a part of society must
necessarily find it difficult to support a family, and this difficulty
will naturally fall on the least fortunate members.”
Malthus mentions that in a great scarcity which occurred in England in
1801, no less than ten millions sterling were given away in charity. In
one case cited by our author, a man with a family received fourteen
shillings a week from his parish. His common earnings were ten shillings
a week, and his weekly revenue therefore twenty-four. Before the
scarcity he had been in the habit of purchasing a bushel of flour a
week, with eight shillings perhaps, and consequently had two shillings
out of his ten to spare for other necessaries. During the scarcity he
was enabled to purchase the same quantity at nearly three times the
price. He paid twenty-two shillings for his bushel of flour, and had as
before two shillings remaining for other wants.
The price of labour, says Malthus, when left to find its natural level,
is a most important political barometer, explaining the relations
between the supply of provisions and the demand for them: between the
quantity to be consumed and the number of consumers: and, taken on the
average, it further expresses clearly the wants of society respecting
population—that is, whatever may be the number of children to a marriage
necessary to maintain exactly the present population, the price of
labour will be just sufficient to support this number, or be above it or
below it, according to the state of the real funds for the maintenance
of labour, whether stationary, progressive, or retrograde. “Instead,
however, of considering it in this light, we consider it as something
which we may raise or depress at pleasure, something which depends
principally upon his Majesty’s justices of the peace. When an advance in
the price of provisions already expresses that the demand is too great
for the supply, in order to put the labourer in the same position as
before, we raise the price of labour; that is, we increase the demand,
and are then much surprised that the price of provisions continues
rising. In this we act much in the same manner, as if, when the
quicksilver in the common glass stood at ‘stormy,’ we were to raise it
by some mechanical pressure to ‘settled fair,’ and then be greatly
astonished that it continued raining.”
“In the natural order of things, a scarcity must tend to lower, instead
of to raise, the price of labour. Many men who would shrink at the
proposal of a maximum would propose themselves that the price of labour
should be proportioned to the price of provisions, and do not seem to be
aware that the two proposals are very nearly of the same nature, and
that both tend directly to famine. It matters not whether we enable the
labourer to purchase the same quantity of provisions which he did before
by fixing their price, or by raising in proportion the price of labour.”
These arguments of Mr. Malthus were a death-blow to the frightful system
of the rate in aid of wages which at the early part of the present
century was fast turning England into the most pauper-ridden country in
Europe.
In Chapter VI. of Book iii., Malthus remarks that, independently of any
considerations respecting a year of deficient crops, it is evident that
an increase of population without a proportional increase of food must
lower the value of each man’s earnings. The food must necessarily be
distributed in smaller quantities, and consequently a day’s labour will
purchase a smaller quantity of provisions. An increase in the price of
provisions will arise either from an increase of population faster than
the means of subsistence, or from a different distribution of the money
of the society.
Speaking of the Poor Laws of 1805, he says: “The Poor Laws of England
tend to depress the general condition of the poor in two ways. Their
first obvious tendency is to increase population without increasing the
food for its support. A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of
being able to support a family without parish assistance. They may be
said, therefore, to create the poor which they maintain; and as the
provisions of the country must, in consequence of the increased
population be distributed to every man in smaller proportions, it is
evident that the labour of those who are not supported by parish
assistance will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions than before,
and consequently many of them must be driven to apply for assistance.
“Secondly, the quantity of provisions consumed in workhouses, upon a
part of the society that cannot be considered the most valuable part,
diminishes the shares that would otherwise belong to the more
industrious and more worthy members, and this, in the same manner,
forces more to become dependent. If the poor in the workhouses were to
live better than they do now, this new distribution of the money of the
society would tend more conspicuously to depress the condition of those
out of the workhouse, by occasioning an advance in the price of
provisions.”
Fortunately for England, says our author, a spirit of independence still
remains among the peasantry. The poor laws are strongly calculated to
eradicate this spirit. “They have succeeded in part: but had they
succeeded as completely as might have been expected, their pernicious
tendency would not have been so long concealed.”
The following paragraph has often been cited by violent democrats as a
proof of the hard-heartedness of Malthus. At present, few of the
ultra-liberal party in this country are ill-instructed enough to
vituperate any one for his opinions in this matter. “Hard as it may
appear,” he continues, “in individual cases, dependent poverty ought to
be held disgraceful. Such a stimulus seems to be absolutely necessary to
promote the happiness of the general mass of mankind: and every general
attempt to weaken this stimulus, however benevolent its intention, will
always defeat its own purpose. If men be induced to marry from the mere
prospect of parish provision, they are not only unjustly tempted to
bring unhappiness and dependence upon themselves and children, but they
are tempted, without knowing it, to injure all in the same class with
themselves.”
It is very probable that the independence of character of the English
labouring classes was fatally lowered by the system Malthus complains
of, for to this very day, in many counties, the following experience of
our author holds good. “The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression,
seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their
whole attention; and they seldom think of the future. Even when they
have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it; but all that they
earn beyond their present necessities goes, generally speaking, to the
alehouse. The poor laws may, therefore, be said to diminish both the
power and the will to save among the common people, and thus to weaken
one of the strongest incentives to sobriety and industry, and
consequently to happiness.”
No wonder that Thomas Chalmers, the great Scottish economist, struggled
so hard against the introduction of the English poor laws into Scotland.
That poor law in Scotland is at present worse administered than it even
is in England, and has done much to create a pauper class. There is,
indeed, but little prospect of another poet like Burns arising in modern
Scotland. “The Cotters’ Saturday Night” was composed when the parish
gave discriminating relief only to the worthy and necessitous.
“These evils,” says Malthus, “attendant on the poor laws seem to be
irremediable. If assistance is to be distributed to a certain class of
people, a power must be lodged somewhere of discriminating the proper
objects, and of managing the concerns of the institutions that are
necessary; but any great interference with the affairs of other people
is a species of tyranny, and in the common course of things, the
exercise of this power may be expected to become grating to those who
are driven to ask for support. The tyranny of justices, churchwardens,
and overseers, is a common complaint among the poor; but the fault does
not lie so much in these persons, who probably before they were in power
were not more cruel than other people, but in the nature of all such
institutions. I feel persuaded that if the poor laws had never existed
in this country, though there might have been a few more instances of
very severe distress, the aggregate mass of happiness among the common
people would have been much greater than it is at present.”
The famous 43rd of Elizabeth, which has been so often referred to and
admired, enacts that the overseers of the poor “shall take order from
time to time, by and with the consent of two or more justices, for
setting to work the children of all such whose parents shall not by the
said persons be thought able to keep and maintain their children; and
also such persons married or unmarried, as having no means to maintain
them, use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by.
And also to raise, weekly or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant,
and every occupier of lands in the said parish (in such competent sums
as they shall think fit) a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wax, thread,
iron, and other necessary ware and stuff, to set the poor to work.”
“What is this,” exclaims Malthus, “but saying that the funds for the
maintenance of labour in this country may be increased at will, and
without limit, by a _fiat_ of Government, or an assessment of the
overseers. Strictly speaking, this clause is as arrogant and as absurd
as if it had enacted that two ears of wheat should grow where one only
had grown before. Canute, when he commanded the waves not to wet his
princely foot, did not, in reality, assume a greater power over the laws
of nature. No directions are given to the overseers how to increase the
funds for the maintenance of labour; the necessity of industry, economy,
and enlightened exertion, in the management of agricultural and
commercial capital, is not insisted on for this purpose; but it is
expected that a miraculous increase of these funds should immediately
follow an edict of the Government, used at the discretion of some
ignorant parish officers.”
Mr. Malthus adds to these denunciations of the Poor Law Act of
Elizabeth, as carried out in 1805, the following: “If this clause were
really and _bonâ fide_ put into execution, and the shame attending the
receiving of parish relief worn off, every labouring man might marry as
early as he pleased, under the certain prospect of having all his
children properly provided for; and, as according to the supposition,
there would be no check on population from the consequences of poverty
after marriage, the increase of population would be rapid beyond example
in old States. After what has been said in the former part of this work,
it is submitted to the reader whether the utmost exertions of the
enlightened government could, in this case, make the food keep pace with
the population, much less a more arbitrary effort, the tendency of which
is certainly rather to diminish than to increase the funds for the
maintenance of productive labour.”
In the year 1880 it was found by the census of our most flourishing
colony of New Zealand that the population of those fertile islands had
actually been able to double in eleven years. But, as Mr. Malthus
observes: “After a country has once ceased to be in the peculiar
situation of a new colony, we shall always find that in the actual state
of its cultivation, or in that state which may rationally be expected
from the most enlightened government, the increase of its food can never
allow for any length of time an unrestricted increase of population,
and, therefore, the due execution of the clause in the 43rd of
Elizabeth, as a permanent law, is a physical impossibility.”
One only circumstance, Mr. Malthus seems to think, in the administration
of the English Poor Laws at the commencement of this century prevented
them from plunging the country into ruin. This was the condition that
they contained that each parish should maintain its own poor. “As each
parish,” he says, “is obliged to maintain its own poor, it is naturally
fearful of increasing their numbers, and every land-holder is, in
consequence, more inclined to pull down than to build cottages. This
deficiency of cottages operates necessarily as a strong check to
marriage, and this check is probably the principal reason why we have
been able to continue the system of the poor laws so long.”
Mr. Malthus’ writings made such a powerful impression on the minds of
his contemporaries, that in 1834 an entire revolution took place in the
Poor Laws of England and Wales. Mr. Gladstone, in an admirable speech on
Free Trade, delivered in Leeds in the summer of 1881, refers to the
passing of this Act as the most beneficent change that had preceded the
long and earnest struggle which immediately followed upon the principles
of Free Trade, and which culminated in 1846 in the abolition of the
duties on food supplies. Mr. John Stuart Mill is enthusiastic in his
admiration of the Act of 1834. In his magnificent and well-known chapter
on Popular Remedies for Low Wages (Book ij. chap. 12, § 2.), he thus
speaks of the English Law of 1834:—
“To give profusely to the people, whether under the name of charity or
of employment, without placing them under such influences that
prudential motives shall act powerfully upon them, is to lavish the
means of benefiting mankind without attaining the object. Leave the
people in a situation in which their condition manifestly depends upon
their number, and the greatest permanent benefit may be derived from any
sacrifice made to improve the physical well-being of the present
generation, and raise, by that means, the habits of their children. But
remove the regulation of their wages from their own control; guarantee
to them a certain payment, either by law or by the feeling of the
community; and no amount of comfort that you can give them will make
either them or their descendents look to their own self-restraint as the
proper means for preserving them in that state. You will only make them
indignantly claim the continuance of your guarantee to themselves, and
their full complement of possible posterity.”
“On these grounds some writers have altogether condemned the English
Poor Law, and any system of relief to the able-bodied, at least when
uncombined with systematic legal precautions against over-population.
The famous Act of the 43rd of Elizabeth undertook, on the part of the
public, to provide work and wages for all the able-bodied; and there is
little doubt that if the intent of that Act had been fully carried out,
and no means had been adopted by the administrators of relief to
neutralize its natural tendencies, the poor-rate would by this time have
absorbed the whole net produce of the land and labour of the country.”
“It is not at all surprising, therefore, that Mr. Malthus and others
should at first have concluded against all Poor Laws whatever. It
required much experience, and careful examination of different modes of
Poor Law management, to give assurance that the admission of an absolute
right to be supported at the cost of other people could exist in law and
in fact, without fatally relaxing the springs of industry and the
restraints of prudence. This, however, was fully substantiated by the
investigations of the original Poor Law Commissioners. Hostile as they
are unjustly accused of being to the principle of legal relief, they are
the first who fully proved the compatibility of any Poor Law in which a
right to relief was recognised with the permanent interests of the
labouring class and of posterity.”
“By a collection of facts, experimentally ascertained in parishes
scattered throughout England, it was shown that the guarantee of support
could be freed from its injurious effects upon the minds and habits of
the people, if the relief, though ample in respect to necessaries, was
accompanied with conditions which they disliked, consisting of some
restraints on their freedom, and the privation of some indulgences.”
“Under this proviso it may be regarded as irrevocably established that
the fate of no member of the community need be abandoned to chance; that
society can and therefore ought to ensure every individual belonging to
it against the extreme of want; that the condition, even of those who
are unable to find their own support, need not be one of physical
suffering, or the dread of it, but only of restricted indulgences and
enforced rigidity of discipline. This is surely something gained for
humanity, important in itself, and still more so as a step to something
beyond; and humanity has no worse enemies than those who lend
themselves, either knowingly or unintentionally, to bring odium on this
law, or on the principles in which it originated.”
“In the actual circumstances of every country (says Malthus, p. 180,
Book iii.) the prolific power of nature seems always ready to exert
nearly its full force; but within the limit of possibility, there is
nothing, perhaps, more improbable, or more out of the reach of any
government to effect, than the direction of the industry of its subjects
in such a manner as to produce the greatest quantity of sustenance that
the earth could bear. It evidently could not be done without the most
complete violation of the law of property, from which everything that is
valuable to man has hitherto arisen. Such is the disposition to marry,
particularly in very young people, that if the difficulties of providing
for a family were entirely removed, very few would remain single at
twenty-two. But what statesman or rational government could propose that
all animal food should be prohibited, that no horses should be used for
business or pleasure, that all people should live upon potatoes, and
that the whole industry of the nation should be exerted in the
production of them, except what was necessary for the mere necessaries
of clothing and houses. Could such a revolution be effected, would it be
desirable; particularly as, in a few years, notwithstanding all their
exertions, want, with less resource than ever, would inevitably recur.”
“The attempts,” says our author, “to employ the poor on any great sale
in manufactures have almost invariably failed, and the stock and
materials have been wasted. In those few parishes which, by better
management of larger funds, have been enabled to persevere in this
system, the effect of these new manufactures in the market must have
been to throw out of employment many independent workmen, who were
before engaged in fabrications of a similar nature. This effect has been
placed in a strong point of view by Daniel De Foe, in an address to
Parliament, entitled _Giving Alms no Charity_. Speaking of the
employment of parish children in manufactories, he says, ‘For every
skein of worsted these poor children spin there must be a skein the less
spun by some poor family that spun it before.’ Sir F. M. Eden, on the
same subject, observes, that whether mops and brooms are made by parish
children or by private workmen, no more can be sold than the public is
in want of.”
“It will be said, perhaps, that the same reasoning might be applied to
any new capital brought into competition in a particular trade or
manufacture, which can rarely be done without injuring, in some degree,
those that were engaged in it before. But there is a material difference
in the two cases. In this, the competition is perfectly fair, and what
every man on entering his business must lay his account to. He may rest
secure that he will not be supplanted, unless his competitor possess
superior skill and industry. In the other case, the competition is
supported by a great bounty, by which means, notwithstanding very
inferior skill and industry on the part of his competitors, the
independent workman may be undersold, and unjustly excluded from the
market. He himself is made to contribute to this competition against his
own earnings, and the funds for the maintenance of labour are thus
turned from the support of a trade which yields a proper profit to one
which cannot maintain itself without a bounty. It should be observed in
general that when a fund for the maintenance of labour is raised by
assessment, the greatest part of it is not a new capital brought into
trade, but an old one, which before was much more profitably employed,
turned into a new channel. The farmer pays to the poor’s rates for the
encouragement of a bad and unprofitable manufacture what he would have
employed on his land with infinitely more advantage to his country. In
the one case, the funds for the maintenance of labour are daily
diminished; in the other, daily increased. And this obvious tendency of
assessments for the employment of the poor to decrease the real funds
for the maintenance of labour in any country, aggravates the absurdity
of supposing that it is in the power of a government to find employment
for all its subjects, however fast they may increase.”
It is strange how the present generation begins to forget the truths
that were clearly seen by the one immediately preceding. We have had a
proof of this in the late agitation for Protection _versus_ Free Trade.
And on November 5th, 1881, there was another example so given in the
case of a deputation of ratepayers of Newington, who waited on Mr.
Dodson, the President of the Local Government Board, to ask him to
administer out-door relief instead of building a new workhouse at
Champion Hill, at a cost of £200,000. The deputation, which actually
contained a professor of political economy, Mr. Thorold Rogers, urged
that the system of the workhouse test entailed a cost of 7s. a week to
the parish, whereas, if persons were relieved at home, 3s. or 4s. would
be all that would be required. Well might a French economist write an
essay upon “things that are seen, and things that are not seen”!
Mr. Dodson, in his able reply to this deputation, tried to teach again
the lesson taught by the Poor Law Commissioners in 1834, that the whole
object and system of the Poor Law which was then established in this
country was, that it should be strictly administered, with a view simply
of testing and checking absolute destitution, and no means, no effectual
means, had been devised, of so testing destitution, except by offering
the house: and just in proportion as the poor-law was strictly
administered, so in proportion the entrance to the house was insisted
upon as the condition of relief. In the case of out-door relief it was
impossible absolutely to test the case. Out-door relief could not be
closely watched. They could not tell, when a man received relief, that
he was not receiving aid from other sources, that he was not earning
something for himself, and might possibly, if he were left to his own
resources, earn more. This was a system, he said, which in that way
acted as a check upon exertion and upon providence; and he need not say
that anything which acted as a check on these could not result but in
the increase of pauperism, the demoralisation of the working classes,
and in increased charges upon the ratepayers. Of course, he knew that it
was very tempting, when a case came before them, to relieve a man by
out-door relief. They might give him 1s. 6d. and a loaf, or 2s.; and if
they brought him into the house it would of course cost 4s. or 5s., and
thus the ratepayers would not, for the moment, have so much to pay. But
the system of the workhouse was not so expensive as that, for we knew
that not more than one man in ten would go into the house. Where ten
would accept out-door relief, they could not get more than one or two
who would accept in-door relief. And, besides, they must further
remember this, that if they increased the rates by this system, they
were making the prudent and industrious man, who maintained himself and
his family by his own labour, support the idlers and vagrants who did
not make similar exertions. He knew how tempting it was to wish to save
the money of the ratepayers, and at the same time to gratify the
feelings of humanity to the poor by giving out-door relief, since it
often appeared hard and cruel to compel people to enter the workhouse,
and, as it was said, to “break up their homes.” But he, Mr. Dodson,
reminded his hearers that, as guardians, they had the administration of
the ratepayers’ money, and not the administration of a benevolent fund.
They were not administering a Charity, but were the stewards for the
ratepayers, and were bound to administer the Poor Law in the manner
which, not superficially and for the moment, was the most really
economical. The workhouse test was known by experience to be, in the
long run, the only truly economical and feasible way of administering
relief to the destitute. For what, he asked, was the whole history of
the modern English Poor Law? What was the condition of England before
1830, when that law was loosely administered? It was a system ruinous to
the indigent classes, and destructive to the ratepayers. The Poor Law
Commissioners had shown that the only way in which the people could be
guaranteed against starvation was by enforcing the workhouse test, and
thus avoiding the creation of a pauper class too numerous to be
alleviated.
It is gratifying to find that Mr. Dodson is so well instructed in the
affairs of the office in which he holds sway. Doubtless, he is also
aware of the grand difficulty which opposes all State assistance of the
poor at their own houses, and which consists in the utter recklessness
still so prevalent among the uneducated classes as to the size of their
families. To give out-door relief in the present state of public opinion
would merely be to offer a premium upon large families, and this could,
of course, only result in early death, degradation of the family, and a
relapse into barbarism. Even in Australia it has been found possible to
raise up a pauper class by such unwise out-door doles, which are no
charity at all, but merely a means to degrade and enslave the poorest
classes.
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