THE NEW ERA IN ENGLISH PARISHES
Reflection of the Estates of the Realm in the old divisions of rural
life in England. Modifications in the system introduced by recent
changes in local government. The English village as it now is. The
public house as a place of resort largely displaced by the parish
meeting room. The quickened sense of civic life shown in the speech
and bearing of the villagers. The exact functions of the Parish
Council, or Meeting. Relations between Parish and District Councils.
Retrospect of English Poor Law system. Greater popularity of the
District Councils. Other duties than of Poor Law Guardians discharged
by District Councils. Clergy and Squires. How affected. District
Board's composition. Its relations with magistrates, and popular
feeling.
Before 1894, English parishes in rural districts possessed, as they still
do, three centres of local life. The State was represented by the squire,
or chief landowner, often, as may still be the case, an absentee. The
Rectory, or Vicarage, with the neighbouring church was the geographical
depository of spiritual power. The village inn, or public house, was the
place of popular meeting, and with its adjoining skittle-alley was the
source of popular amusement. Here the gossip of the neighbourhood was
discussed, or the local newspaper read. London journals did not, and do
not, often enter remote neighbourhoods in the provinces. The doings of the
Imperial Parliament, or the Concert of the European Powers were, as they
remain, of little interest to the rural tillers of the soil in comparison
with the wages paid by the farmers in the district, the supervision, or
the lack of it, exercised by lords of the land over the cottages of the
poor. Nothing more struck the stranger who wished to acquire information
as to the daily lot of the rural population, and as to opportunities for
their improvement, than the prevailing ignorance or indifference about the
facts of their daily life. It was not exactly Christian acquiescence in
chronic want and squalor as a Divine dispensation. It was rather an
unreasoning suspicion as to the motives of the enquirer, and as to the
consequences to themselves of the answers given, which, if it did not seal
the villagers' lips, restricted their replies to inarticulate grunts or
evasive generalities.
Within the fifth decade of the present reign, all this has either changed
entirely or has been appreciably modified. The public house, or inn,
stands indeed where it stood. The tap is no longer the parish club room.
Even the skittle-alley has lost many of its attractions. The authority of
the Manor House has been divested of the superstitious sanctions with
which it was once clothed. The squire and the parson are regarded as
well-meaning persons with a good deal of human nature, after all, about
them. As for the geographical centre of village existence, it is no longer
the roof tree of the publican, but the village meeting hall. This, in the
majority of cases, would never have existed but for the initiative of the
clergyman. He it is who with no parliamentary sessions to attend during
half the year, with no town house always ready to receive him, passes most
of his time among his own people; and thus combines in his own person,
very often, the two separate principles of Church and State. This village
assembly room is furnished with the chief county and market town
newspapers. It is without carpets or draperies, and does not consequently
retain tobacco smoke. If, therefore, the villager likes a dry pipe while
he reads, or chats, it may at stated hours be allowed him. Gradually,
therefore, he has grown to regard the place as his betters regard the
House of Commons, as the best club of which he knows. The publican may
suffer, but all other members of the little community have gained.
At the present moment, the manner and the countenances of the rural
company, apart from the subjects of their more than usually animated
conversation, indicate a season of exceptional importance. The truth is,
that an election for the village parliament is imminent. Whether the name
be parish council or parish meeting, the reality is the same. That reality
since Sir Henry Fowler's amendment in 1894 practically implies Home Rule
for every parish in rural England. The franchise is in effect universal.
Without regard to income or place of domicile every parishioner whose name
occurs in the local government or parliamentary register has a vote, and
is in addition entitled to attend the parish parliament. So systematic is
the preservation of the separate individuality of every village, that
where the number of inhabitants is below[24] 300, and the gathering is
called a meeting, not a council; no association of that particular village
with others is allowed to supersede the separate meeting. The executive
body is thus always the parish meeting. The grouping order necessary for
the amalgamation of parishes for council purposes is never given without
the closest scrutiny by the County Council first, or confirmed by the
Imperial authority in London afterwards. In no case is the parish meeting
dispensed with. Amongst the groups we have seen discussing their affairs,
one might have noticed women as well as men; for though by the decision of
the Court of Appeal in the case of Drax _v._ Ffook, women can vote as
occupiers and not as owners, they are, whether spinsters or wives,
eligible to be parish councillors. Should the parish be without a village
hall, the schoolroom is the usual place of assembly. The one spot
peremptorily forbidden by the law is the public house; unless no other
rendezvous be procurable for love or money. It is still too early to
pronounce definitely as to the permanent effect of these institutions. The
general tendency has perhaps been towards the falsification alike of the
extreme hopes and fears which they first raised. Their jurisdiction
includes all the functions of the old vestries and their officers,
together with other novel and more drastic prerogatives. The discussions
are often limited to dull details of mechanical routine, but are
sometimes, as to-day, sufficiently animated. In the typical parish (a
generalization from actual experience), the question of opening or closing
footpaths across fields chances closely to divide parochial opinion. A
little time ago, the vexed problem was the limits of a village green
which had been so much diminished by encroachments as to cease almost to
exist. Another issue that a little while hence will furnish material for
debates not less vivacious is that of allotments for cottagers. Here as in
the other cases, there is a strong faction on either side. A heavy
parochial whip has been sent out by the two sets of leaders. If the matter
is decided in the affirmative, and the allotment or village green
extension, as the case may be, is carried, a measure of expropriation may
follow, should the County Council, as superior body, sanction the scheme,
and should the Local Government Board, after hearing the case of the
dissidents, confirm the parochial proposals. As a check to parochial
extravagance, the money to be advanced by the central authority is not to
exceed one-half the value of the local rates. Inheriting the power of the
vestries which they displaced, the bodies now mentioned have in their
hands the appointment of overseers of the poor. 'One man, one vote'[25] is
the universal principle. The employers of labour, that is the farmers, are
consequently liable to be placed in the minority by their servants. Hence
proceeded the assertion that the signal withdrawal of the farmers from the
Liberal party, as being morally responsible for the measure, largely
brought about the crushing defeat of the Gladstonians at the general
election of 1895. If the farmers were animated by any such resentment
towards the party which they identified with the real authorship of the
Act, the feeling has already to a great extent passed away. What remains
of it will no doubt evaporate as eventually sentimental grievances of this
kind seldom fail in England to do. Impartial evidence, gathered at first
hand, does indeed show that the increased mutual knowledge generated
between farmers and their hands in the parish meeting room has resulted in
an actual improvement of the relations between the two classes. All the
national processes which legislative change sets in motion have worked
slowly in England. It was not till the third or fourth appeal to the
constituencies under Household Franchise was made that the permanent
results of the peaceful revolution in 1868 could be computed with even
approximate accuracy. The final consequences of the extension of the
franchise to counties by the Liberals in 1884 have not yet declared
themselves. It would, therefore, be premature as yet to make any definite
deductions, social or political, as to the working of a system which has
been operative only since 1894.
One thing more about them may, however, be said. As in the case of the
farmers where, with a fair measure of conciliation and tact, the occupiers
of the soil find their official intercourse with its tillers unexpectedly
harmonious, so as regards the relations between the villagers and the
clergyman, in the position of the latter as the spiritual, and often
inevitably to a great degree the temporal, head of the community. Briefly
stated, the effect of the Parish Meeting, or Parish Council, is to restore
to the villagers certain of the rights which, in the old Manor Courts,
they had possessed. Where the clergyman combines with the practical sense
of an educated man a freedom from a suspicious antipathy to the civic
activities of his flock, there is not only no jealousy of the parson's
intervention in the deliberations of the parish hall; but the experience
which he is likely to bring to the work is welcomed by the councillors as
a valuable aid to their discussions. If, when standing for a seat on the
council, the rector issues an address savouring of dictatorial
self-assertion; if from his pulpit he prescribes a plan for the conduct of
these elections; the reverend gentleman may find himself at the bottom of
the poll. When, however, he deals with his parishioners on the assumption
of their equality in all non-religious matters with himself, he disarms or
prevents jealousy. He has a fair chance of being chosen by acclamation to
the president's chair at the little Board.[26] Parish Councils have for
the first time in the rural history of England developed a sense of
responsibility among those to whom a decade ago the idea of rural
citizenship, with obligations as well as rights, was unintelligible. They
have, therefore, impressed the minds of those concerned in them with some
sense of power. Thus far, no tendency has been displayed to use that power
in a revolutionary fashion. A body which, like the average parish
parliament, numbers from five to eleven, is not likely to prove a
tempestuously democratic, or violently revolutionary assemblage. Finally,
though, on the requisition of three members to the chairman the council
may be convened at any time, its actual convention is never brought about
more than thrice, and seldom more than once in a twelvemonth. Not the
least good which this institution carries with it in most neighbourhoods
is its creation of wider, less mean, more liberal interests in daily life,
and with these interests, subjects of conversation for the village
community more generous than private affairs of individual
households;--what Hodge, the ditcher, does so late at night in the
neighbourhood of the squire's game preserves; how much money the
carpenter's wife paid for her new bonnet; or how her daughters afford so
gaudy a display of Sunday finery. That the new machinery has thus far
worked with less friction than might have been expected may be inferred
from the statistics courteously forwarded to the present writer from the
Local Government Board under date August 7th 1896. As has been said
already, the Imperial authority at Whitehall acts as arbitrator in all
cases of difference between the popular Parish Councils and the more
exclusive County Councils as to the acquisition of land for allotments. At
the time now mentioned, it was the calculation of the President of the
Local Government Board that four cases had occurred of appeals by Parish
Councils against the refusal of the County Council to make the allotment
order; and that in fourteen cases in which orders have been made by County
Councils, eight protests against them have reached the Local Government
Board from persons immediately interested.
Ascending from the lowest deliberative unit in the new scheme of local
self government one passes from the Parish Council to the District
Council. If it can be questioned whether the average villager as yet fully
appreciates the gift of power made to him by the legislature in 1894, no
such doubt can exist as to those bodies that are a little higher in the
deliberative scale, the District Councils. The local parliament in the
parish hall may sometimes be unattended by a single cottager. The District
Council, if it be not as yet popular, is at least never neglected. Seats
on it were from the first objects of local ambition. This is only what
might have been expected in an age, a marked feature of which is the
quickened interest of all sections of the community in whatever affects
the health or comfort of the labouring classes. The District Council, as
its name implies, has a more than parochial dignity. Its jurisdiction is
practically commensurate with the sphere of the old Rural Sanitary
Authority. The relief of pauperism however, forms a first and special care
of this body, the members of which are also the Guardians of the Poor. Its
place of assembly is the chief small town of the neighbourhood; not indeed
the County town, but generally a convenient town where there happens to be
a railway station. The District Council has already contracted certain
associations of local fashion. The ladies of the country side have entered
warmly into its business, and often constitute a majority of its most
active members. There is, of course, the complaint of impulsiveness
brought against the District Councillors. Thus the domestic idea is
regarded by them with more respect than it secured from their
predecessors, the Boards of Guardians. Guardians were elected by the
plural vote of the larger ratepayers. They had, moreover, to satisfy a
property qualification in their own persons. District Councils in theory
know nothing of, and in practice are affected little by, such conditions.
The ex-officio magistrate, without which no Board of Guardians was
complete, is systematically absent from the new District bodies. The
_personnel_ of the new Councils, which occupy a place midway between the
Parish and the County assemblies, presents a notable contrast to that of
the superseded Boards of Guardians. County magistrates are not, in virtue
of that office, ordinary members of these bodies, which are almost solely
elective. The dignity of the body, however, is well maintained. The
chairman of the District Council becomes, in consequence of that position,
a County magistrate with powers as plenary as if he were the nominee of
the Lord Lieutenant. Sometimes, of course, the chairmen of the District
bodies are already magistrates. That is, however, the exception. There now
exist in the United Kingdom about a thousand elective magistrates, being
chairmen of District Councils. By far the greater part of these are new to
their legal responsibilities. A few are working men. One District Council
in Northamptonshire is presided over by the master of a small railway
station on the Midland line. Another has for its chairman an agricultural
labourer; a third is controlled by an ex-policeman; a fourth by one who
supports himself on the cultivation of sixteen acres of land. The effect
of popular election is not limited to the discharge of those duties
connected with pauperism and sanitation that are the primary concern of
the District bodies. Assessment committees, and school attendance
committees are both drawn from the District Councils. The latter of these,
it is generally admitted, have done their work better since they ceased to
be composed exclusively of employers of labour, and since they have become
representative of industry as well.[27]
The Poor Law, which has been in force during the whole of the Victorian
era, was, as scarcely needs to be said, among the earliest achievements of
the Reformed Parliament. Bitter and prolonged as was the resistance to
portioning out the country afresh for the relief of pauperism instead of
congregating the poor of each parish in their own workhouse, the
beneficent results of the change have long since been universally
admitted. 'The new Bastilles' was the name first given to the unions which
the Act of 1834 created, by the opponents of the Bill, with a view to
excite popular feeling against it. Only the most hardened paupers, who
objected on principle to industry of any kind, complained of the modicum
of labour exacted from the occupants of the new workhouses. Even these
shirkers have become reconciled to some sort of industry. The improvement
in the habits of the whole working class was conspicuous and immediate.
Thus, as in his History of the period, Mr Molesworth points out,[28] in
four unions of the Midlands, there were in 1834, 954 able-bodied paupers.
In June 1836 there were only 5. All the rest were in regular work. In the
county of Sussex, the most inveterately pauperized in England, there were
in 1834, 6,160 paupers. The Act had not been in operation two years before
this total was reduced to 124. By 1836 the Act had become operative in
twenty-two counties. The average of the reduction of the rates in these
was 43-1/2 per cent. The Commissioners of Enquiry, on whose report the new
legislation was based, predicted that the application of their principles
would restore and improve industry, would create or confirm habits of
thrift, would increase the demand for labour as well as the wages of the
labourer, and generally would promote the welfare of those who lived by
manual toil. The Queen had not ascended her throne when the erewhile
opponents of the Measure confessed that these anticipations were already
fulfilled. It was not to be expected that bodies so essentially different
from the old Boards of Guardians as the District Councils are would
administer the Poor Law in the same spirit or on the same principles as
their predecessors. Few socio-economical questions of the day have
provoked controversy so bitter, or divided skilled and conscientious
partizans into such mutually envenomed factions as the conditions on which
relief from the rates should be granted to the necessitous poor. The
uncompromising advocates of the workhouse test system, compulsory
residence, that is, within the workhouse walls, maintain that in this way
only can systematic pauperization be avoided, and that so alone will the
not uniformly industrious poor realize the stigma of coming upon the
rates. On the other hand, it may be argued that in innumerable cases
timely charity from the common fund will prevent the utter break up of a
needy, but not necessarily indolent home. Paupers, it may be said, who
will not work, and who are, therefore, not proper objects of compassion,
are never kept by any sense of pride or shame from taking up their
quarters in the local union. Thus, may it not be false economy to make
absolute destitution and homelessness a preliminary condition of parochial
help? On these points, those who differ will never agree. What it is now
relevant to point out, is that the administrative methods of the new
Councillors have very generally shown a reaction from the more stringent,
and less sympathetic policy of the old Boards of Guardians. Thus, the
workhouse test is far less often than formerly made the condition of poor
relief.
Organization in every department of activity or interest is the most
conspicuous movement of the last quarter of this century. Some years must
yet elapse before we know the exact point to which the legislation now
reviewed has disciplined and stimulated the inhabitants of rural England.
The object of the controllers of the vestries that the Parish Meetings
have superseded was to keep village administration in the hands of a
privileged and comparatively leisured minority. Hence it was not unusual
to fix the hour for the vestry meeting at 9 a.m.; when of course the male
population would be at work in the fields. Under the Act of 1894 the
Parish Councillors are bound to hold their sittings in the evening after
the day's work is done. From a historical point of view this legislation
cannot be charged with being revolutionary. The powers which the new
bodies have assumed in checking encroachments upon common land and other
like offences are indeed considerable. That prerogative is not an
innovation. It is rather a revival of the authority which in the old Manor
Courts, presided over by the steward of the Manor lord, the freeholders
could exercise. Beyond question, the most far-reaching and important
change introduced into country life by the new machinery is the infusion
of the elective element into the nominated magistracy. This has not yet
received the attention it deserves. Under the earlier regime, as has been
said, certain guardians had a seat at the Union Board because they were
magistrates. Under the existing dispensation certain Justices of the Peace
owe their place on the magisterial Bench to the fact of their performing
the duties of District Councillors and Guardians of the Poor. The
relations between the two positions are thus exactly inverted. That the
tendency of this change is to soothe the suspicions once widely prevalent
as to the principles on which Justices' justice was administered does not
seem disputable. It has also positively increased the respect in the rural
mind for the law itself as the expression of wisdom and equity. The
cordiality with which the older magistrates, nominated to the Bench by the
Lord Lieutenant, have generally welcomed their popularly chosen colleagues
has undoubtedly strengthened this wholesome sentiment. Finally, the same
career in the local polity as of old remains practically open to men
serving on the Commission of Peace. Where the old J.P. Guardian was a man
who did good work on the Union Board, he seldom now is debarred from doing
it still. Even when he is locally unpopular, a well-earned reputation of
ability or aptitude for affairs is pretty sure to bear down purely
personal objections and secure his return to the District Board; a
tolerably conclusive proof of the fitness of the parochial constituencies
for the measure of autonomy which they have received.