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I have already indicated what I helieve to he the causes of that condition . Excepting what may he called police regulations and social customs , the regulation of social duties is left to the commercial principle , the " higgling of the market "; and we find , by practical experiment , that it is not only insufficient , hut that it positively enforces a distraction of social energies . The landowner , who is supposititiously charged with the trust of causing the land to be cultivated for the general good , does in " only a very few exceptional cases busy himself about the cultivation of the land : his main or sole
object is , to obtain rent from his tenants , which he does to the utmost possible degree , even at a time when he reproaches the farmer with not having sufficient capital to bestow on the due cultivation of the land . I will not say that he deliberately interrupts cultivation for the encouragement of game , but , unquestionably , in numberless instances , that pursuit is more absorbing than the improvement of agriculture . I will not pause
upon antiquated covenants , kept up through I know not what inertness , pride of antiquity , supercilious indifference , or dread of raising questions about shaky tenures—covenants which positively forbid improved culture throughout large tracts of country . As to the farmers , confessedly they have too little capital , a convertible term for Baying that each man has too much land for his means of cultivating it . To pay their rents , they
keep down wages by every possible contrivance : they avoid employing labour though they starve the land hy it . In one county I have known them oppose emigration , because it was beginning to affect the rate of wages ; in some parts of Norfolk and Suffolk , indeed pretty widely , I believe it will be found that , at certain dead seasons , the general body of labourers obtain workhouse relief ; the fanners preferring to pay rates for idle paupers ,
rather than to pay a larger amount of cash for labour . The labourer—how does he live ? On the lowest possible diet , in the worst of hovels , unless the process of exile , which the cottage-destroying landlord enforces , drives the labourer into some neighbouring town , to crowd its poorest quarter : there he helps to thicken the fever-atmosphere , to raise the rents paid by the proximate pauper , and to raise the rates for the townsmen .
We have seen that " the higgling of the market " cannot regulate even trade in its largest relations . Competition , which may stimulate the ratio of production as compared with population , becomes a clog upon production as soon as it induces the labourer to forego a part of his own returns . Division of employments , which facilitates production while the hands are multiplied solely with a view to greater ease in the processes of
producing and exchanging , becomes an agent which diminishes the ratio of production compared with the number of people , as soon as the number of hands is multiplied in order to make employment for those who would otherwise be idle and wageless ; and this is an abuse which clogs almost every branch of employment with surplus hands . The higgling of the market tends to divert industry from the primary occupations which supply
necessaries to the unwealthy multitude , and multiplies in an extravagant degree the secondary employments which supply non-essential conveniences , luxuries , and nicknacks , to the wealthier classes . Free trade has perfected the application of that philosophy which would leave the relations of industry totally without regulation . I rejoice in a consummation which has removed disguises from the anarchical state of industry ; for protection
class as time advances , prove that we need some common regulation ? A machinery for such a regulation—an engine to regulate the relations of land , capital , and labour , is to be found in an institution which we possess , at least , in name—in an effective Poor Law . An effective Poor Law , indeed , would be a thing
totally different from the present Poor Law ; as we might presume from the broad fact that its authors repudiated any such purpose . In justice to them , however , I may say not only that their appointed task was different , but that their task was one in itself quite sufficient for their attention , and quite legitimate moreover . I believe that the vitiated administration of the old Poor Law could not
have been followed up by a thoroughly effective law , without the intervention of a castigating law . The question is , whether the castigating law has not lasted long enough , and whether we need longer delay the establishment of an effective auxiliary law . The authors of the present law were too exclusively inspired by the natural antagonism to the abuses of the old law , the premium on the breeding of paupers , the payment of rates in aid of wages , the malversation of parish funds ; hence
they framed a law , unlocalized , ultra-Malthusian , anti-industrial . They regarded it as an evil to have a Poor Law at all , and hence the " repulsive " theory , which was to make the condition of the pauper so grievous in lodging , raiment , and food , —the three suggesting the ideas of imprisonment , liveried degradation , and gruel , —that the most miserable " independent labourer" should revolt from seeking its aid : before accepting the aid of the union he must give up home , furniture to its
last stick , character , liberty , the society of his family , the natural revulsions of a healthy stomach , and must content himself with confinement , separation , whitewash , classification , grey drugget , and the prospect of issuing forth a homeless , penniless , connectionless man , to make the best he could in beginning the world again with the first week's wages that he might get . The commissioners of
1833 had divers significant indications in the evidence which they collected , of the advantage that might be made of industrial employment ; but that point was beside the objects on which they were naturally intent : under the repulsive theory , their idea of industrial employment was metamorphosed into a vexatious labour test ; regarding all paupers as culpable , the authors of the statute made no effective distinction between the destitute and
habitual vagrants . The working of the law accords with its nature To carry out its repulsiveness has proved impracticable , and therefore the workhouse test has been comparatively little enforced : out-door relief , which was to have been the exception , has been the rule . The labour test , odious of malice prepense , when applied extensively , has occasioned riots ; when applied in detail , it has been a fertile cause of indiscipline . On great emergencies the repulsive nature of the law has been too hazardous to maintain , and it has been " relaxed . " The law is harsh to the
honest labourer , feeble against the habitual vagrant , whose devices are too strong for the philosophical niceties of the repulsive theory . The law shocks humanity by confounding with the hereditary workhouse denizen , and with the idiot , the aged labourer and his helpmate . Working against nature , against practicability , against the inextinguishable instincts of sense and justice , while it has failed in its promised objects of maintaining the independence of the labourer , and preventing the multiplication of the pauper class , it has proved
expensive in machinery . Its working exhibits the usual results of power wasted on attempting impracticabilities , great cost , and more vexation of the spirit . Its total uselessness as an engine to regulate the relations of industry needs not be added to this list of deficiencies , because it made no pretension to such an office . What I insist upon is , that it has failed in its own appointed purposes , and that its only success was in castigating past abuses ; it is a negative law , where we want a powerful engine ; an expensive nullity , where we might have that powerful engine with little cost .
other influences appears m the destitution of the citizen . The first step toward improving the law would be , to divide it into two totally distinct statutesone an auxiliary law [ of regulation and assistance ; the other , a penal law for the controul of vagrancy : it is necessary to relieve and purify the auxiliary law , which concerns the inoffensive and their help , of the penal law which relates only to the ill-disposed offender . The Vagrant Law belongs properly to the criminal law . In form , vagrancy is an
offence only against society ; but in substance and spirit it is an offence against natural law ; since it is an attempt to snatch , or filch , that subsistence which , under the natural dispensation , can only be obtained by labour . In essence , therefore , the class of offences lumped under the somewhat lax title of vagrancy , comes under the head , not of " malum prohibitum , " that is , offence artificially created by the prohibition of conventional law , but " malum in se , " offence bad in itself . The nature of the offence indicates the proper treatment of the
offender . On an overt act of vagrancy , such as the refusal to work , maliciously bad execution of work , indiscipline while under Poor Law controul , or fraudulent claim on poor-relief , the offender should be arraigned before a jury , or before a magistrate with the absolute power of appeal to a jury . On conviction , he should be regarded as a person who has forfeited his individual rights to the state , detained in custody , and consigned to
such a system of prison discipline as that propounded by Captain Maconochie ; under which the prisoner would earn subsistence and ultimate freedom , only by the exercise of set industry . In every respect , expediency and the spirit of justice would be satisfied by such a treatment . Many great or rough works might be suggested which will never " pay" individual enterprise , but would pay the undying State—such as the improvement of the surface of the land or the shores , for purposes
either of ulterior cultivation or of transit . The Poor Law proper should be entirely of an auxiliary and regulating kind . Those who come under its operations may be divided into two classes—the infirm , and the able-bodied . The first class comprises the sick , the imbecile , and the aged . The present treatment of the sick , resting upon the repulsive theory , is neither humane nor creditable . Attempts are made among the provident poor to eke it out by the help of sick clubs and the like , but they are necessarily imperfect , because the fford insuffi
means of the industrious poor a very - cient command of organization , and because the very poor are wholly without means to spare ; nevertheless , this sort of contribution is , in effect , a subsidiary poor-rate . It is quite clear that , with a healthy regulation of industry in other respects , it would be the best ceconomy for society to secure a restoration of the sick ; the claim of the imbecile is scarcely denied . The claim of the aged rests upon various grounds—long support of industrial duties at wages not more than sufficient to keep ud the physical faculties for industry , long
payment of poor-rates , positive infirmity , the general extension of the sort of claim which makes its pressure tolerably equable , the policy of relieving the independent labourer from a dead weightthese and many other considerations cooperate to justify a free allowance for the labourer who shall be pronounced , on competent authority , to be superannuated . I know that these suggestions go to remove the chief inducements towards saving ; but , in the first place , I doubt whether the saving disposition will ever be more than an exceptional disposition ; still
more , whether it is usually developed in concurrence with a high state of the productive energies . A comparison of France and England will illustrate my meaning . I perceive that the gross amount of production is far more influenced by skill and energy in producing than by individual parsimony ; and , therefore , I conclude that the wealth of a country is more promoted by active producing habits , like those of the English , than by painstaking parsimony like that of the French . I perceive , also , that so long as industry is duty regulated , and so long as the " stock " is sufficient to cover the vicissitudes of a few seasons , further saviniy is a needless diversion of pains from the
more profitable operation of producing . With a social provision for the infirm—and society can organize the provision much better than individuals can , especially poor individuals—the bulk of the working classes in a well-regulated community ought to be amply provided for by the return 01 the labour of the season .
The objects of a Poor Law , I take to be theseto aid in keeping social order by securing justice to the honest , though unfortunate , and controlling the disorderly ; and to regulate the relations of land , capital , and labour , where the deficiency of
disguised without remedying the anarchy . But I point to the actual state of things , and ask you whether this persevering attempt to carry on the ^ economical services of society , not only without organization , but with the positive encouragement of that which is the reverse of organization , the encouragement of severance and antagonism , amounts to success ? Do not the calamitous tendencies and results which we see befalling every
Untitled Article
900 ®!) $ *** & «*? Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 14, 1850, page 900, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1862/page/12/
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