POOR-LAW REFORM.

CONFOUNDING OF POVERTY 'WITH PAUPERISM.*

THE Poor-law of 1834 confounded the condition of poverty—the calamity of destitution—with the social offence of pauperism : its intended effect was solely restrictive.

A poor-law should relate to the poor. What is "the poor"? The bulk of the population. In England and Wales the popula- tion is about sixteen millions, and, making every. allowance for other classes, the larger half of that number may be classed as "poor." Of course it is the primary duty of a government to promote the welfare and comfort of the whole people, and there- fore to promote the welfare and comfort of that larger portion the poor. Political writers have talked as if the primary object of government must be the "wealth and greatness of the country," and the welfare of the humbler classes merely an incident of that wealth and greatness ; whereas the true primary object must be the welfare and comfort of the whole number of human beings that happen to exist in the country, the "wealth and greatness being merely the secondary incident growing out of the other. When Mr. Malthus construed destitution to be a confession that the destitute had no right to exist,—that there was "no place" for him at "Nature's feast,"—he ventured upon an assumption which it transcends human capacity to verify. Statesmen can- not presume to be informed respecting Nature's intended dis- tribution of places at her feast, nor to consider those distinctions of poverty and riches which result from the artificial arrange- ments of society as Nature's predestined fiat. Statesmen must be content to take the total number of living human creatures, and do the best they can for them, poor and all. This is not to be effected by laws merely to restrain the weaknesses incidental to poverty.

The proposed objects of the Poor-law of 1834 may fairly be stated thus : first, to check pauperism ; second, to improve the morals of the poor ; third, to improve the condition of the labouring classes, by making their circumstances more conducive to inde- pendence, especially by abolishing parish-allowances "in aid" and by so raising wages ; and fourth, to improve the condition of the labouring classes by means of stimulants to exertion and frugality. The inodus operandi was privative—depriving the labourer of divers immunities, allowances, and facilities that tempted him to the faults which were to be counteracted. The law, in fact, was meant to inculcate the desired virtues by dint of penal privations.

Let us observe how that was to be done.

The morals of the poor in matters leading to the multiplication of born paupers were to be improved. Under this head, the abuses denounced in 1834 were principally three,—licentiousness permitted by the bad management of workhouses, allowances to families at so much a head, and the lax state of the law in re- spect to the affiliation of bastards. The remedies were, to reform the management of workhouses, especially in classifying the sexes ; to withhold the parish-allowance at so much a head, abolishing "partial relief" ; and to throw upon unmarried women the whole liability for the maintenance of their offspring.

The reform of the workhouse management was most necessary; and under it the best workhouses have been made very decent abodes. But the classification which was necessary for the restraint of professed paupers became unjust to decorous married people whom misfortune might oblige to seek temporary aid from the fund for the relief of the poor; so that the regulation which is necessary for professed paupers renders the workhouse an improper abode for the poor. The instant and constant cry of the class of poor subject to the operation of the statute was, that poverty was treated as a crime ; and the complaint was true : the involuntary destitution of the poor was here confounded with the social offence of voluntary pauperism. The withdrawal of allowance at so much per head, considered in respect of married persons involved the proposition, that the liability. to maintain every. Child born, under pain of declared pauperism and confinement in "the house," would enforce upon parents a conjugal abstinence, and check the tendency to large families which is observable in England. That tendency is oh.. vious ; but it is not confined to England. The greatest contrast is presented by France. In that country, prudential reasons of economy no doubt restrict the number of children in family ; but • Throughout this investigation, the word "pauper" is used to signify the class that permanently and voluntarily subsists at the charge of the public. In practice, the word is often used with that limitation, but not always, because the distinction contended for here has not hitherto been sufficiently observed. The strict limitation, however, in spirit accords with the history of the adjective and its changes, from the time when it was simply the Latin for " poort" until its present general se- ceptation as indicating any person who receives pansh-relitf.

not by means of the self-denial which the political economists en- deavoured to force upon the English labouring classes. The econo- mists have failed : there is no evidence that the births of legiti- mate children have decreased from any such cause. The pecuniary considerations involved in a future contingent, the birth of a

child, probable but not at all certain, are evidently- too feeble to possess the influence expected from them by the "cold, calculating lifalthusians." Such prudential considerations would obviously be feeble in proportion to the ignorance and rudeness of the parents; and when you compare the moral weakness of the igno- rant, the opportunity, the absence of diversion, the very drift of much that they hear in the shape of religious instruction, and other circumstances in the condition of the poor, you do not won- der so much at the failure of the proposition, as at the ludicrously extravagant miscalculation of influences which it implied. The plan has never been fully enforced ; for although "partial relief" has ceased, the administrators of the law have ventured to apply the "workhouse test" in the most imperfect manner ; mainly because the proposed "classification of the sexes," as applied to married couples of fair character, excited far too formidable a de- gree of dislike. The new bastardy clauses involved the proposition that liability would make women circumspect and chaste ; another miscalcu- lation, which it would have needed very little knowledge of " life " to correct. The mothers of illegitimate children belong to two classes—the shameless, and the inexperienced or the yielding : neither class would make much account of ulterior responsibili- ties, until those responsibilities had actually arrived at fulfilment. With the latter class, the contingent liability would often be scarcely understood, possibly not known ; for it is part of decent bringing up in England to shut out the young from all know- ledge of certain subjects until danger is past or a disaster has happened. Much may be said for as well as against the ex- clusion of such knowledge • but one effect no doubt is, that many a girl is irretrievably lost before she knows what it is that she has incurred. The rigours of the New Poor-law, without supplying any additional safeguard, scarcely any ad- ditional check upon the fault itself, rendered the ulterior con- sequences intolerable. The young girl often has awaked from the delirium of seduction, from the first pangs of maternity, to be scared by finding herself involved in an infamous state of beg- gary: the child is the sole witness against her, and often it is put out of the way. The moral influence attributed to liability was grossly overrated. For gentlemen of comfortable circumstances, to whom repute for propriety is the decus et tutamen of genteel existence, responsibility is an awful bond; but it is one that can weigh but little with the younq and ardent, or with the poor having small "stake in society.' The stern penalties to enforce it therefore became not much more than useless cruelty ; and there was no possibility of maintaining the enactment in the face of public opinion. The proposition to make the labourer "independent" by de- privation and penalty was not much less infelicitous. It is true that the practice of giving relief "in aid of wages" had pau- perized whole parishes ; and we believe that the abolition of that abuse has been, on the whole, for the better ; but, in the twelfth year of the New Poor-law, we still look in vain for any general or ascertained raising of wages in consequence. The other mode of spurring the labourer to independence was by establishing a certain scale of physical enjoyment, whereof the pauper's condition was to be the very lowest point. His dietary was to be as low as possible, decidedly lower than that of the industrious labourer ; in fact, the tables actually issued by the Commissioners in many places have been insufficient to support health : and this was a penalty held out in terrorem, without dis- tinction, to the destitute poor equally with the voluntary pauper. It was presumed that the domestic virtues of frugality and par- simony could be enforced by that screw ; it was further presumed that by dint of frugality and "saving" the poor who were thus to be urged could better their condition—might even rise in the scale of society. In looking back, the absurdities involved in such assumptions crowd upon the mind.

The law was wrong in treating adults as children, with com- missioners over them as schoolmasters. Adults are not children, and in some things not teachable. Extreme frugality is not always an unquestionable virtue ; and it is, at all events, a trait seldom to be created by exhortation, but rather limited by nature to particular persons or districts. It i

may be said broadly, that there s no such margin in the English labourer's income that he can be expected to save. He might, by dint of incredible exertion and self-denial ; but the effort would amount to a degree of martyrdom which is only to be admired, not exacted. The Commissioners of Inquiry furnish some preg- nant evidence on this point. They circulated questions as to the average earnings of labouring families : 856 parishes reported the annual earnings of alabouring man to be, on the average, about 281.; to that sum, 668 of those parishes added 14/. for the earnings of the wife and children—in all, 42/. The Commissioners put the fur- ther question, whether the family of the labourer, with his wife and four children, could subsist on those aggregate earnings? Answers were received from 899 parishes, to the effect set forth in these totals—

Number of Parishes.

No (simply) 71 Yes (simply) 212

Barely, or without meat

125 With meat 491

The subsequent inquiries into the state of the labouring classes, instituted by the Anti-Corn-law League, and more recently by others, have shown in detail what is the condition of the poor on whom frugality was to be enforced,—people living on cabbage- broth or potatoes ; sleeping huddled together, men, women, and children, in one room, for want of money to rent enough house- room ; men wearing the selfsame articles of clothing for whole generations, and so on. Nevertheless, there are classes who do live in a condition which is such that it would be possible for them to save out of PI. a year, if they had it : the Irish and the Scotch do so. One great advocate of the New Poor-law speaks in terms so approving of the Scotch system, where the relief given is but a few shillings a year, as to imply that it ought to be a model for England-

" A great deal of the abuse of the poor-laws of England has originated in the too lavish allowances made to paupers; which, indeed, have been often such as to

place them in a decidedly better situation than independent labourers. But such abuses are iniknown in Scotland. The statute of 1.579 ordered, that 'inquisition or inquiry should be made into the circumstances of every poor person claiming relief, to learn how much would enable him or her to 'live unbeggand.' An in- quiry of this sort into the means and condition of each individual claiming relief has always been rigorously enforced; and this whether the relief sought for were to be made through an assessment, or from the sums collected at the church-doors, and other voluntary sources. The object in view has uniformly, been so to eke out or assist the separate means of the pauper, supposing he has any, that he may not be reduced to the necessity of begging. And it is really astonishing what a small pittance is in general:el/Tic:eta or this purpose; sometnnes not tuore han a few shillings a year being required and rarely more than 3/. or 41." "It was ruled, that any single heritor has right to call the kirk-session to ac- count for their administration of the poor's money:. In consequence of these acts and decisions, everything respecting the administration of the poor's funds in Scotland has been mtrusted to those best acquainted with the real wants and situations of the claimants for relief, and who have at the same time the strongat motives for confining the charge on their account within the narrowes4 It is curious to compare this calm approval with the painful and peremptory outcry that has at last burst from Scotland for a more

efficient law to relieve the poor. Indeed, since these passages were written, it has been found necessary to concede an " amended " poor-law to Scotland—that is, one less rigorous ; and a still greater relaxation is only suspended for a time.

The frugality exercised by the Scotch has been learned in a hard school ; but still it is a voluntary virtue with that people.

It is remarkable how characteristics of this nature observe a cer- tain geographical distribution. The penury of the Irish, a kind of helpless frugality, is quite of a different kind from that of the Scotch. In England, the traditional and ideal boast is that the

people enjoy "plenty " ; and the boast has so far hold of the popular mind, that probably no very numerous class will begin to

save before it really does enjoy the said plenty. The depositors in savings banks notoriously do not belong to the poorest classes. At the existing range of prices, " plenty " is certainly not involved in the rate of income indicated above.

The extent to which the projectors of the law of 1834 carried their expectation of enforced frugality is shown in their proposal to relieve the poor by loans, to be repaid. Parliament could not be induced to go quite so far as that.

The administrators of the Poor-law have not been able to es- tablish for the pauper "a condition in no case so eligible as the

condition of persons of the lowest class subsisting on the fruits of their own industry" : the condition of that "lowest class" will not support healthy existence ; but in the dull, unhopeful con- finement of a workhouse so low a scale was even more productive of disease ; and under the pressure of public opinion the condition of the pauper has been rendered more suitable for the support of

health—better than that of " the lowest class subsisting on the

fruits of their own industry." It is still so inferior to the condition of persons in prisons, that epicurean paupers commit outrages on purpose to get transferred from the workhouse to the bridewell. The whole scheme, indeed, of enforcing personal frugality on the bulk of the English people through the terror of a gruel diet in the workhouse was impracticable ; no one ventured to push the attempt very far and even the imperfect attempt has created a greater amount of popular odium than most general coercive laws.

It is evident that the "test," as applied to the industrious poor, could not be carried out ; would not succeed if it were; excites a mischievous odium by its mere theoretical existence on the statute- book ; and had better be avowedly abandoned.

One important defect in the statute was, the neglect to make due distinction between the amount of pauperism which may be calculated as permanent, and the temporary destitution visiting whole industrial classes or districts through fluctuations in trade or disastrous seasons ; visitations that have little in common with

permanent pauperism. Several of the manufacturing towns in 1842 furnished examples of this temporary visitation. A true poor-law would include some adequate and deliberate provision to aid the poor over such periods of difficulty ; whereas it was virtually necessary to suspend our merely pauper-restraining law. The act makes no suitable provision for certain permanent classes of destitute poor—the sick, the insane, and the aged : all these are classed with voluntary paupers and vagrants ! The law has not even done all that it might in checking pau- perism: witness the numbers and insolence of unruly, paupers in

workhouse or bridewell, or tramping the country. The reason is obvious : it has treated pauperism and poverty as identical ; that confusion of separate things involved great injustice to mere po- verty, and it became necessary to relax the rigour of the law in re- gard to poverty ; but as there was no discrimination, it was relaxed also towards pauperism. It may, in short, be called a law for the support of paupers and the coercion of the poor.