A.D. 1833.]

THE OLD POOR-LAW SYSTEM.

already done away with most of its evils, and restored the poorer classes of society to the social and moral status from which they had been degraded by pernicious legislation.

227

regularity, early rising, cleanliness, and labour of a wellmanaged workhouse; while the honest and respectable portion of the working classes, who prized the comforts of home, would struggle on to the last, rather than relinquish them in order to seek food in the receptacle of poverty and vice. Every possible precaution should be adopted to preserve the health and improve the morals of paupers; but the able-bodied tenant of a workhouse should be made to feel that his situation is decidedly less comfortable than that of the industrious labourer who supports himself; and there should be the strongest inducements for him to quit the house, and regain his former position as soon as possible. The workhouse test, then, operated powerfully in keeping down pauperism; but another cause came into operation still more influential, namely, the law of settlement. By the act 13 and 14 Chas. II., a legal settlement in a parish was declared to be gained by birth, or by inhabitancy, apprenticeship, or service for forty days; but within that period, any two justices were authorised, upon complaint being made to them by the churchwardens or overseers, if they thought a new entrant likely to become chargeable, to remove him, unless he either occupied a tenement of the annual value of ten pounds, or gave sufficient security that he would indemnify the parish for whatever loss it might incur on his account. And by a subsequent act, 3 William III., every new comer was obliged to give notice to the churchwarden of his arrival. This notice should be read in church after divine service, and then commenced the forty days during which objection might be made to his settlement. In case of objection, if he remained it was by sufferance, and he could be removed the moment ̧ be married, or was likely to become chargeable. A settlement might also be obtained by being hired for a year when unmarried or childless, and remaining the whole of that time in the service of one master; or being bound an apprentice to a person who had obtained a settlement. Dr. Burn has given the following graphic sketch of the duties of an overseer under these laws:-"The office of an overseer of the poor seems to be understood to be this: to keep an extraordinary watch to prevent persons coming to inhabit without certificates, and to fly to the justices to remove them; and if a man brings a certificate, then to caution the inhabitants not to let him a farm of ten pounds

The statutory provision for all who cannot support themselves had now existed for upwards of 250 years. There was no considerable increase of population in England from the period when the poor laws were first established up to the middle of the last century. Its people have been always distinguished for their industry, thrift, and forethought. No other nation has furnished such unquestionable proofs of the prevalence of a provident and independent spirit. From the year 1601, when the Act 43 Elizabeth, the foundation of the old code of poor laws, was put in force, to the commencement of the late war, there had been scarcely any increase of pauperism. In 1815, there were 925,439 individuals in England and Wales, being about one-eleventh of the then existing population, members of friendly societies, formed for the express purpose of affording protection to the members in sickness and old age, and enabling them to subsist without resorting to the parish fund. It may be asked, How was this state of things compatible with the right which the law gave to the destitute for support at the expense of the parish? The answer is, that the exercise of that right was subjected to the most powerful checks, and restricted in every possible way. In the first place, the poor could not obtain relief at the public expense, could not abandon the struggle for self-support, and cast themselves as a burden upon their neighbours without making sacrifices. Had they been relieved in their own homes, they could enjoy all their former comforts and pleasant associations as well in idleness as they did when they worked hard; and thus the great motive for exertion would be withdrawn, and others would follow the bad example, and learn to eat the bread that others earned, without shame or remorse. The demoralising effect of this mode of relief was pointed out by Sir Matthew Hale, in the middle of the seventeenth century, and to obviate the evil workhouses were erected in some of the large towns. In 1723, an act was passed to make them general, authorising the churchwardens and overseers, with the consent of the parishioners, to establish a workhouse in each parish; and it was at the same time enacted that the overseers should be entitled to refuse relief to all who did not choose to accept it in the work-a-year, and to take care to keep him out of all parish house, and to submit to all its regulations. In consequence of this act, workhouses were erected in many parishes, and they had an immediate and striking effect in reducing the number of paupers. Many who had previously received pensions from the parish, preferred depending on their own exertions rather than take up their abode in the workhouse. According to official accounts, the total sum raised by assessment under the name of poor's rate in England and Wales, during the three years ending with 1750, amounted at an average to £730,135 a year, of which £689,971 was expended on the poor, being a mere trifle more than the sum expended on them at the Revolution, and about £300,000 less than the sum supposed to have been expended at the commencement of the century. Then, as now, the lazy, profligate, and disorderly part of the community had the greatest possible aversion to the discipline,

offices; to warn them, if they will hire servants, to hire them by the month, the week, or the day, rather than by any way that can give them a settlement; or if they do hire them for a year, then to endeavour to pick a quarrel with them before the year's end, and so to get rid of them. To maintain their poor as cheaply as they possibly can, and not to lay out twopence in prospect of any future good, but only to serve the present necessity. To bargain with some sturdy person to take them by the lump, who yet is not intended to take them, but to hang over them in terrorem, if they shall complain to the justices for want of maintenance. To send them out into the country a begging. To bind out poor children apprentices, no matter to whom, or to what trade; but to take special care that the master live in another parish. To move heaven and earth if any dispute happen about a settlement;

A.D. 1834.]

EVILS OF THE OLD POOR LAW.

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the parish; now, they have not saved a shilling before their the gentleman already referred to, remarks:-"I cannot marriage, and become immediately burdensome." forbear urging again that any measure having for its object the relief of the parishes from their over population, must of necessity become perfectly useless, unless the act of parliament contains some regulations with respect to the erecting and maintaining of cottages. I am quite satisfied that the erecting of cottages has been a most serious evil throughout the country. The getting of the cottage tempts young people of seventeen and eighteen years of age, and even younger, to marry. It is notorious that almost numberless cottages have been built by persons speculating on the parish rates for their rents."

The farmers were not so discontented with this allowance system as might be supposed, because a great part of the burden was cast upon other shoulders. The tax was laid indiscriminately upon all fixed property; so that the occupiers of villas, shopkeepers, merchants, and others who did not employ labourers, had to pay a portion of the wages for those that did. The farmers were in this way led to encourage a system which fraudulently imposed a heavy burden upon others, and which, by degrading the labourers, and multiplying their numbers beyond the real

demand for them, must, if allowed to run its full course, have ultimately overspread the whole country with the most abject poverty and wretchedness.

There was another interest created which tended to increase the evil. In the counties of Suffolk, Sussex, Kent, and generally through all the south of England, relief was given in the shape of house accommodation, or free dwellings for the poor. The parish officers were in the habit of paying the rent of the cottages; the rent was therefore high and sure, and consequently persons who had small pieces of ground were induced to cover them with those buildings. On this subject Mr. Hodges, VOL. VII.-No. 332.

The evils of this system had reached their height in the years 1831-2. That was a time when the public mind was bent upon reforms of all sorts, without waiting for the admission from the tories that the grievances of which the nation complained were "proved abuses." The reformers were determined no longer to tolerate the state of things, in which the discontent of the labouring classes was proportioned to the money disbursed in poor rates, or in voluntary charities; in which the young were trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice-the able-bodied maintained in sluggish and sensual indolence-the aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery incident to

The anomalous state of things with regard to districts was reinoved by the formation of unions.

In 1831 there were in England and Wales 56 parishes containing less than 10 persons; 14 parishes containing but from 10 to 20 persons, the largest of these, on the average, containing 5 adult males; and there were 533 parishes, containing from 20 to 50 persons, the largest of which would give 12 adult males per parish. It was absurd to expect that such parishes could supply proper machinery for the levying and collecting of rates, or for the distribution of relief. It was found that a large number of overseers could only certify their accounts by signing with a mark, attested by the justice's clerk. The size of the parishes influenced materially the amount of the poor-rate-the smallest giving the greatest cost per head. For example, the hundred absolutely largest parishes, containing a population of 3,196,064, gave 6s. 7d. per head; the hundred intermediate parishes, containing a population of 19,841, gave 15s. per head; while the hundred least parishes from which poor-rate returns were made, with a population of 1,708, £1 128. a head. The moral effects were still more remarkable. In the large parishes, 1 in 13 was relieved; in the intermediate, 1 in 12; and in the smallest, 1 in 4, or 25 per cent. of the population, were paupers. Hence the necessity of a union of parishes with a common workhouse and a common machinery, and with paid permanent officers for the administration of relief.

dwelling in such a society as that of a large workhouse, without discipline or classification, the whole body of inmates subsisting on food far exceeding, both in kind and in amount, not merely the diet of the independent labourer, but that of the majority of the persons who contributed to their support; in which a farmer paid ten shillings a-year in poor rate, and was in addition compelled to employ supernumerary labourers, not required on his farm, at a cost of from £100 to £250 a-year; in which the labourer had no need to bestir himself to seek work or to please his master, or to put a restraint upon his temper, having all a slave's security for subsistence, without the slave's liability to punishment; in which the parish paid parents for nursing their little children, and children for supporting their aged parents, thereby destroying in both parties all feelings of natural affection, and all sense of Christian duty. The government, therefore, resolved to apply a remedy. The following is a brief outline of the main features of the measure they proposed, and which was adopted by the legislature. They found the greatest evils of the old system were connected with the relief of the able-bodied; and in connection with that lay the chief difficulty of administering relief. It was, above all things, an essential condition that the situation of the pauper should not be made-really or apparently-so desirable as that of independent labourers of the lowest class; if it were, the majority of that class would have the strongest inducements to quit it, and get into the more eligible class of paupers. It was necessary, therefore, that an appeal to the parish should be a last resource —that it should be regarded as the hardest taskmaster and the worst paymaster. This principle was embodied in the Poor Law Amendment Act; and the effects which quickly followed on its operation were most marked and salutary. Able-bodied paupers were extensively converted into independent labourers, for whose employment a large fund was created by the reduction of parochial expenditure; next followed a rise in wages; then a diminution, not only of pauper marriages, but of early and imprudent marriages of all sorts; and lastly, there was a diminution of crime, with contentment among the labourers, increas-putative father to support them; and if he could not give ing with their industry: relief of a child was made relief to the parent, and relief of a wife relief to the husband.

The commissioners recommended the appointment of a central board to control the administration of the poor laws, with such assistant commissioners as might be found requisite, the commissioners being empowered and directed to frame and enforce regulations for the government of workhouses, and as to the nature and amount of the relief to be given and the labour to be exacted; the regulations to be uniform throughout the country. The necessity of a living, central, permanent authority had been rendered obvious by the disastrous working of the old system, arising partly from the absence of such control -an authority accumulating experience in itself, independent of local control, uninterested in favour of local abuse, and responsible to the government. A board of three commissioners was therefore appointed under the act, themselves appointing assistant commissioners, capable of receiving the powers of the commission by delegation.

The most important change in the settlement law was the repeal of the settlement by hiring and service, which prevented the free circulation of labour, interfered with the liberty of the subject, and fixed an intolerable burden upon the parish. This law was repealed by the 64th and 65th sections of the act; the settlement by occupation of a tenement, without payment of rates, by the 66th; while other sections effected various improvements in the law of removal. The old law made it more prudent for a woman to have a number of children without a husband than with a husband, as she could throw the burden of their support upon the parish, or through the parish force the

security to pay, he was liable to imprisonment. By this means marriages were often forced-a power of which the women availed themselves to a large extent. These evils were remedied in the new act by rendering the unmarried mother liable for the maintenance of her children, by rendering it unlawful to pay to her any sums which the putative father might be compelled to contribute for the reimbursement of the parish, and by rendering it necessary that evidence additional to that of the mother should be required to corroborate her charge against the person accused of being the father.

Each union of parishes, or each parish, if large and populous enough, was placed under the management of a board of guardians, elected annually by the ratepayers; but where, under previous acts, an organisation existed similar to that of unions or boards of guardians, under the Poor Law Amendment Act these have been retained. The following table exhibits the local divisions of England and Wales made under that Act: