BOOKS.
SIR GEORGE NICHOLLS ON THE ENGLISH POOR-LAW.* THE English Poor-law is popularly ascribed to the reign of Eliza- beth ; the more legally-informed trace the origin of the law to the time of Richard the Second. Mere dealing with poverty to get rid of its importunity, or the trouble or terror it created, has been mat- ter of legislation from a much earlier period. The vagrant and " sturdy beggar" have been at all times of our history a great bug- bear to respectable men and timid women; and before Richard and Wat Tyler laws were passed for punishing them summarily and se- verely. In the twelfth year of Richard the Second a distinction was for the first time drawn between the impotent and the ablebodied poor. But no more was done for the impotent than to acknow- ledge their existence, permit them to beg, and make them a sort of fixture : "beggars impotent to serve [work] shall abide in the cities and towns where they shall be dwelling at the time of the proclamation of this statute; and if the people of the cities and towns will not, or may not, suffice to find [maintain] them, that then the said beggars shall draw them to other towns within the hundred, rape, or wapentake, or to the towns where they were born, within forty days after the proclamation made, and there shall continually abide during their lives." Three years later, by the 15th Richard II, an approach was made to regular relief. "It was enacted, that in every licence of the appropriation of any parish- church, (that is, the appropriation of its revenues to some cathedral, monastic or other religious institution,) it shall be expressly provided that the dioce- san shall ordain a convenient sum of money to be distributed yearly of the fruits and profits of the same to the poor parishioners, in aid of their living and sustenance for ever' ; and this enactment was confirmed in the following reign.,, During the civil contentions or wars that followed, no essential advance was made in the treatment of the poor. An improve- ment in the tone of speaking of them took place under Henry the Seventh, and the enactments were somewhat milder. The 22d of Henry the Eighth undertook to relieve poverty by regulating beg- ging ; the local authorities having power to grant licences to beg, and to punish all such as begged without. Five years afterwards, another act was passed, which realized Dr. Chalmers's idea of a voluntary assessment. The local authorities were ordered to make collections from the parishioners to form a fund " towards re- lieving the said poor, needy, sick, sore, and indigent persons, and also towards setting in work the said sturdy and idle vagabonds and valiant [i. e. stout] beggars." It was expressly declared that no one should be "constrained" to contribute, but all people were forbidden to give alms or dole except to the common gathering. The same act also allowed the authorities to put children out to ser- vice. In the first year of Edward the Sixth, an act of most stringent severity was passed, by which the whole tribes of idle and sturdy vagrants could under certain specified circum- stances be made "slaves," and punished pretty much at the discretion of their masters. A young beggar or the child of a beggar, whether male or female, could be taken by any one whether the parties be "willing or not," and a justice of the peace could adjudge the said child to be the servant or apprentice of the person so taking. The voluntary assessment directed by the act of Henry the Eighth was perhaps not very successful; for this statute of his son enjoined the curate of the parish to exhort his parishioners to remember the poor "according to such talent as God has given him." Up to this time the churchwardens, or two others, had been the main agents in collecting and distri- buting alms. By the 5th and 6th Edward VI a close approach was made to the institution of overseers and a system of parish account. It would also seem that the exhortations of the curates had not been sufficiently moving ; for it is directed, that "if any person being able, shall obstinately and frowardly refuse to give toward the help of the poor, or wilfully to discourage others from so charitable a deed, the parson and churchwardens are gently to exhort him ; and if he will not be so persuaded, then the bishop is to send for him and persuade him by charitable ways and means, and so to take order according to his discretion." It appears that even episcopal eloquence sometimes failed to open the closed fists. By the 5th of Elizabeth, the succession of orators from the church: warden to the bishop not succeeding, the bunks shall be handed over to the sessions ; and the worshipful bench not extracting any- thing, the justices "may sesse, tax, and limit upon every such ob- stinate person so refusing, according to their good discretion, what sum the said obstinate person shall pay," and commit him to prison in default.
This act passed in 1562. Between that date and the close of Elizabeth's reign in 1603, the better principles of the English poor-law were established in full vigour. Overseers of the poor were appointed; a fund was established for the relief of the poor by a rate to be levied on property; a distinction was drawn be- tween the impotent and the ablebodied; and while both were
to be provided for, the ablebodied were bound to render work in return. Under the same great sovereign some approach was made to what is now called hygiene, by only permitting one family in one cottage ; while the bastardy law punished the parents as for a moral offence as well as rendered them responsible for the support of the child. That these acts were generally introduced or at once became workable is not probable ; and in fact it is known that they were often evaded by parishes as much as possible. The Poor- • A History of the English Poor-law, in connexion with the Legislation and other circumstances affecting the Condition of the People. By Sir George Nicholls, K-c.a., into Poor-law Commissioner, and Secretary to the Poor-law Board. In two volumes. Published by Murray.
laws also received additions from time to time to adapt them to new circumstances, or to make them meet the " crotchets" of
philanthropy or of so-called philosophy; but the interest of the inquiry terminates with the last Tudor,—that is, as a picture of ancient times, and as an illustration of the manner in which all the leading laws and institutions of England gradually grew, and how every member of the commonwealth was expected according to his position to discharge his duty towards the commonwealth. And under our ancient system of society every one had a position ; he had land, or a calling, or a master : those who had not were outcasts.
The "landless" or " masterless " men of olden times come under some denomination of the class of "vagrant," of whom the law had such a horror, and with whom it often dealt so summarily and sternly. We can have little conception of the state of things which rendered so stringent measures necessary. In our state of high material cultivation and improvement, and of almost effeminate re- finement, when a noise is a " nuisance," and even a wandering minstrel is liable to be put down by the police under statute, it is difficult to realize the wild and woody nature of whole districts , of some parts of the country, or the marshy state of other parts. There were no roads ; and in our notion of the term they were not wanted, for there were no carriages, royalty itself, down to Eliza- beth's time, riding on horseback. Villages were far apart ; the tracks beset by " valiant beggars," (" valiant " being used in the sense of stout,) who solicited alms after the fashion of the mendicant in Gil Blas. Many of these were doubtless runaway serfs or of- fenders against some feudal law ; and though the abstract right was probably on the side of the pariahs, it would not render their proceedings less vicious, or themselves less terrible to the defence- less, or less odious to those whom they might rob or maltreat. As the increase of towns offered facilities for the escape of villeins from their masters, and growing wealth and intelligence rendered the villein himself dissatisfied with his condition, the troops of vagrants seem to have increased. The culminating point was probably the reign of Richard the Second; for the confusion under Stephen was the universal anarchy of civil war and disputed titles. Even ' when we have allowed for the declamation of the aggrieved law- makers in the following picture, it cannot be denied that such a social condition required to be dealt with by a strong hand. The disbanded soldiers of Edward the Third's wars evidently formed the nucleus of the hordes.
"The 2d Richard the 2d, cap. 6, recites that the King hath perceived, as well by complaints made to him as by his own knowledge, 'that divers of his liege people in sundry parts of this realm, as also the people of Wales, in the county of Hereford, and the people of the county of Chester, with the counties adjoining, some of them claiming to have right to divers lands, tenements, and other possessions, and some espying women and damsels un- married, and some desiring to make maintenance in their marches, do gather them together to a great number of men-of-arms and archers in the manner of war, and confederate themselves by oath and other confederacy, not having consideration to God nor to the laws of Holy Church, nor of the land, nor to right nor justice, but, refusing and setting apart all process of the law, do ride in great routs in divers parts of England, and take possession and fix themselves within divers manors, lands' and other possessions, of their own authority, and hold the same with such force, doing there many apparelments of war; and in some places do ravish women and damsels, and bring them into strange countries, where please them • and in some places lying in wait with such routs, do beat and maim, murder and slay the people, for to have their wives and their goods, and the same women and goods retain to their own use ; and sometimes take the King's liege people in their houses and bring and hold them as prisoners, and at the last put them to fine and ransom, as it were in a land of war ; and sometimes come before the justices in their sessions in such guise, with great force, whereby. the justices be afraid, and not hardy to do the law ; and do many other riots and horrible offences, whereby the realm is put in great trouble,' &c. For remedy of which evils, and desiring above all things the peace and quietness of the realm, and that the good laws and customs thereof be kept and maintained in all points, and offenders duly punished, it is ordained by the King, with the assent of Parliament, 'that none be so hardy from henceforth as to do anything that shall be in affray of the people or against the peace.' And it is further ordained, that certain sufficient and valiant persons, lords and others, shall be assigned by the King's commission in every county, which shall have the power, as soon as they know or be credibly certified of any assemblies, routs, or riotings, of offenders, baratours, and other such rioters, in affray of the people and against the peace, to arrest them incontinent without tarrying for Indictments or other process of law, especially the chieftains and leaders of such routs, and send them to the next gaol, with the cause of their arrest clearly put in writing, there to abide till the coming of the jus- tices into the country, without being delivered in the mean time by main- prise, bail, or other manner.' " The daring outrages here described seem to warrant the application of such a remedy as is here provided ; yet, from some cause, whether proceed- ing from its maladministration or the dislike of the valiant persons' selected to carry it into effect, or jealousy of the sovereign power, this enactment seemed very grievous' to the Commons, and at their prayer it was utterly repealed and annulled' the next year, and all who had been imprisoned under it, without other indictment,' were declared to be ' ut- terly delivered.' The statute of Northampton, (2d Edward the 3d, cap. 3,) providing for such offences in the ordinary course of law, was at the same time confirmed. An eminent writer on Constitutional Law remarks, with reference to the immediate repeal of this enactment at the instance of the Commons, that so sensitive was their jealousy of arbitrary imprisonment, that they preferred enduring riot and robbery to chastising them by any means that might afford a precedent to oppression, or weaken men's rever- ence for Magna Charts.' "
These rioters were the precursors of Wat Tyler, who appeared three years afterwards.
It will be seen by Sir George Nicholls's titlepage that his subject is extended to all laws relating to the poor. He thus includes a variety of statutes on police and political economy; for our ances- tors had a strong liking to fix the price of commodities and the wages of labour, as well as to put down waste and vice by sumptuary laws. This interpretation likewise enables the author to go back even to Saxon times, and to furnish a continuous picture of the English poor, so far as their condition can be arrived at from laws and statutes. Sir George has thus, undesignedly, carried into action a sugges- tion or theory of Mr. Froude in the Oxford Essays, respecting the study of history from acts of Parliament The result, as far as regards Sir George Nicholls, is good, though limited. The narra- tive of the legal changes indicates the condition of the people in mass, in the vigorous and racy but perhaps somewhat coloured language of the old acts of Parliament. We miss those individual if not more lifelike pictures which might have been drawn from the chroniclers, poets, and tale-writers. Sir George, however, may say that he was not writing the history of the English poor, but of the English poor-law. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there is matter in the volumes which only remotely bears on the condition of the poor. The work is to some extent a very summary history of England as regards home administration, with touches upon foreign politics ; laws indicative of manners and society that have any connexion with the poorer classes, and facts regarding the economical condition of the country, are treated at greater length ; lastly, and no doubt as a predominant subject, comes the history proper of the Poor-law, as exhibited in acts of Parliament. Administration, however, is quite as important as enactment; and Sir George Nicholls has overlooked to a great de- - gree the cases decided under the law. Cases are not only im- • portant as showing the mere law, but the temper in which it is regarded and administered, independently of the light which they - often throw upon customs and character.
The early part of the work is an introductory survey. The de- tailed history commences with the reign of Edward the First, and is brought down to the present time. The scale of treatment is somewhat irregular. The first volume contains the whole narra- tive from Anglo-Saxon times to the end of Queen Anne ; the second deals with the Poor-law from the accession of the house of Brunswick. The period from George the Third to Victoria occu- pies as much space as all the other history. If importance be measured by much speaking and writing, the last ninety-five years are undoubtedly entitled to prominence, and for practical purposes such fulness of treatment is judicious. The historical 'interest of the subject ends with the reign of George the Second. After that, we seem to come upon our own age—the days of blue- books, talk, and red-tapism.
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