Effects of the foregoing Institutions.
You are requested to state whether the receipt, or the expectation of relief, appears to produce any and what effect,
- 1st. On the industry of the labourers?
- 2nd. On their frugality?
- 3rd. On the age at which they marry?
- 4th. On the mutual dependence and affection of parents, children and other relatives?
- 5th. What, on the whole, is the condition of the able-bodied and self-supporting labourer of the lowest class, as compared with the condition of the person subsisting on alms or public charity. Is the condition of the latter, as to food and freedom from labour more or less eligible? See p. 261 and 335 of the Poor Law Extracts.
You are also requested to read the accompanying volume[1], published by the English Poor Law Commissioners, and to state the existence of any similar mal-administration of the charitable funds of the country in which you reside, and what are its effects?
You are also requested to forward all the dietaries which you can procure of prisons, workhouses, almshouses and other institutions, with translations expressing the amounts and quantities in English money, weights and measures, and to state what changes (if any) are proposed in the laws or institutions respecting relief in the country in which you reside, and on what grounds?
In reply to the following Questions respecting Labourers, you are requested to distinguish Agriculturists from Artisans, and the Skilled from the Unskilled.
- 1. What is the general amount of wages of an able-bodied male labourer, by the day, the week, the month or the year, with and without provisions, in summer and in winter?
- 2. Is piece-work general?
- 3. What, in the whole, might an average labourer, obtaining an average amount of employment, both in day-work and in piece-work, expect to earn in a year, including harvest-work, and the value of all his advantages and means of living?
- 4. State, as nearly as you can, the average annual expenditure of labourers of different descriptions, specifying schooling for children, religious teachers, &c.
- 5. Is there any, and what employment for women and children?
- 6. What can women, and children under 16, earn per week, in summer, in winter and harvest, and how employed?
- 7. What, in the whole, might a labourer’s wife and four children, aged 14, 11, 8 and 5 years respectively (the eldest a boy), expect to earn in a year, obtaining, as in the former case, an average amount of employment?
- 8. Could such a family subsist on the aggregate earnings of the father, mother and children, and if so, on what food?
- 9. Could it lay by anything, and how much?
- 10. The average quantity of land annexed to a labourer’s habitation?
- 11. What class of persons are the usual owners of labourers’ habitations?
- 12. The rent of labourers’ habitations, and price on sale?
- 13. Whether any lands let to labourers; if so, the quantity to each, and at what rent?
- 14. The proportion of annual deaths to the whole population?
- 15. The proportion of annual births to the whole population?
- 16. The proportion of annual marriages to the whole population?
- 17. The average number of children to a marriage?
- 18. Proportion of legitimate to illegitimate births?
- 19. The proportion of children that die before the end of their first year?
- 20. Proportion of children that die before the end of their tenth year?
- 21. Proportion of children that die before the end of their eighteenth year.
- 22. Average age of marriage, distinguishing males from females?
- 23. Causes by which marriages are delayed?
- 24. Extent to which, 1st, the unmarried; 2nd, the married, save?
- 25. Mode in which they invest their savings?
[1] Extracts from the information on the Administration of the Poor Laws.
These questions, together with the volume to which they refer, of Extracts of Information on the Administration of the Poor Laws, were transmitted by Viscount Palmerston to His Majesty’s Foreign Ministers and Consuls on the 30th November, 1833.
The replies to them form the remaining contents of the following pages.
It will be perceived, therefore, that this volume contains documents of three different kinds:
- 1. Private Communications.
- 2. Diplomatic Answers to the general inquiries suggested by Viscount Palmerston’s circular of the 12th of August, 1833.
- 3. Diplomatic Answers to the Questions framed by the Commissioners, and contained in Viscount Palmerston’s circular of the 30th November, 1833.
Unfortunately, only a small portion of these documents had arrived when the Commissioners made their Report to His Majesty on the 20th February, 1834. The documents then received are contained in the first 115 pages of this volume, and were printed by order of the House of Commons, and delivered to Members in May, 1834. Those subsequently received were transmitted to the printers as soon as the requisite translations of those portions which were not written in English or French could be prepared. If it had been practicable to defer printing any portion until the whole was ready, they might have been much more conveniently arranged. But to this course there were two objections. First, the impossibility of ascertaining from what places documents would be received; and secondly, the difficulty of either printing within a short period so large a volume, containing so much tabular matter, or of keeping the press standing for six or seven months. The Parliamentary printers have a much larger stock of type than any other establishment, but even their resources did not enable them to keep unemployed for months the type required for many hundred closely-printed folio pages. The arrangement, therefore, of the following papers is in a great measure casual, depending much less on the nature of the documents than on the times at which they were received. The following short summary of their contents, may, it is hoped, somewhat diminish this inconvenience.
I.—The Private Communications consist of,
| Page | |
| 1. Two Papers by Count Arrivabene, containing an account of the labouring population of Gaesbeck, a village about nine miles from Brussels (p. 1.); and a description of the state of the Poor Colonies of Holland and Belgium in 1829 | 610 |
| 2. A Report, by Captain Brandreth, on the Belgian Poor Colonies, in 1832 | 15 |
| 3. A Statement, by M. Ducpétiaux, of the Situation of the Belgian Poor Colonies, in 1832 | 619 |
| 4. An Essay on the comparative state of the Poor in England and France, by M. de Chateauvieux | 2 |
| 5. Notes on the Administration of the Relief of the Poor in France, by Ashurst Majendie, Esq. | 34 |
| 6. A Report made by M. Gindroz to the Grand Council of the Canton de Vaud, on Petitions for the Establishment of Almshouses | 53 |
| 7. A Report by Commissioners appointed by the House of Representatives, on the Pauper System of Massachusetts | 57 |
| 8. A Report by the Secretary of State, giving an Abstract of the Reports of the Superintendents of the Poor of the State of New York | 99 |
| 9. A Report by Commissioners appointed to draw up a Project of a Poor Law for Norway | 701 |
II.—The following are the answers to Viscount Palmerston’s Circular of the 12th August, 1833.
Some of these Reports were transmitted to the Commissioners without signatures. The names of the Authors have been since furnished by the Foreign Office, and are now added.
America.
Europe.
| 1. Sweden—Report from Lord Howard de Walden, his Majesty’s Minister | 343 |
| 2. Russia—Report from Hon. J. D. Bligh, ditto | 323 |
| 3. Prussia—Report from Robert Abercrombie, Esq., his Majesty’s Chargé-d’Affaires | 425 |
| 4. Wurtemberg—Report from Sir E. C. Disbrowe, his Majesty’s Minister | 483 |
| 5. Holland—Report from Hon. G. S. Jerningham, his Majesty’s Chargé-d’Affaires | 571 |
| 6. Belgium—Report from the Right Hon. Sir R. Adair, his Majesty’s Minister | 591 |
| 7. Switzerland—Report from D. R. Marries, Esq., ditto | 190 |
| 8. Venice—Report from W. T. Money, Esq., his Majesty’s Consul-General | 663 |
III.—Answers to the Questions suggested by the Commissioners, and circulated by Viscount Palmerston on the 30th November, 1833, have been received from the following places:
America.
Europe.
It is impossible, within the limits of a Preface, to give more than a very brief outline of the large mass of information contained in this volume, respecting the provision made for the poor in America and in the Continent of Europe.