| Years. | Number of Paupers relieved, Quarters ending Lady-day. | Numerical Increase and Decrease. + denotes Increase. * „ Decrease. | Annual Increase and Decrease per Cent. | Increase per Cent. from 1840 to 1848 = 56. Annual Increase, 7 per Cent. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1840 | 1,199,529 | |||
| 1841 | 1,299,048 | + 99,519 | + 8 | |
| 1842 | 1,427,187 | + 128,139 | + 10 | |
| 1843 | 1,539,490 | + 112,303 | + 8 | |
| 1844 | 1,477,561 | + 938,071 | + 60 | |
| 1845 | 1,470,970 | * 6,591 | * 0·4 | |
| 1846 | 1,332,089 | * 38,881 | * 3 | |
| 1847 | 1,721,350 | + 389,261 | + 29 | |
| 1848 | 1,876,541 | + 155,191 | + 9 |
Here, then, we have an increase of 56 per cent. in less than ten years, though the increase of the population of England and Wales, in the same time, was but 13 per cent.; and let it be remembered that the increase of upwards of 650,000 paupers, in nine years, has accrued since the New Poor Law has been in what may be considered full working; a law which many were confident would result in a diminution of pauperism, and which certainly cannot be charged with offering the least encouragement to it. Still in nine years, our poverty increases while our wealth increases, and our paupers grow nearly four times as quick as our people, while the profits on trade nearly double themselves in little more than a quarter of a century.
We now come to the records of criminality:—
TABLE SHOWING THE INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF CRIMINALS IN ENGLAND AND WALES FROM 1805-1850.
| Annual Average Number of Criminals Committed. | Numerical Increase. | Decennial Increase per Cent. | Annual Increase per Cent. | Increase per Cent. in the 43 years. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1805 | 4,605 | 504 | Annual Average Increase per Cent., 11·7. | |||
| 1811 | 5,375 | 770 | 17 | 2·8 | ||
| 1821 | 9,783 | 4408 | 82 | 8·2 | ||
| 1831 | 15,318 | 5535 | 57 | 5·7 | ||
| 1841 | 22,305 | 6987 | 46 | 4·6 | ||
| 1850 | 27,814 | 5509 | 25 | 3·6 |
From these results—and such figures are facts, and therefore stubborn things—the people cannot be said to have increased beyond the wealth or the means of employing them, for it is evident that we increase in poverty and crime as we increase in wealth, and in both far beyond our increase in numbers. The above are the bare facts of the country—it is for the reader to explain them as he pleases.
As yet we have dealt with those causes of casual labour only which may induce a surplusage of labourers without any decrease taking place in the quantity of work. We have seen, first, how the number of the unemployed may be increased either by altering the hours, rate, or mode of working, or else by changing the term of hiring, and this while the number of labourers remains the same; and, secondly, we have seen how the same results may ensue from increasing the number of labourers, while the conditions of working and hiring are unaltered. Under both these circumstances, however, the actual quantity of work to be done in the country has been supposed to undergo no change whatever; and at present we have to point out not only how the amount of surplus, and, consequently, of casual labour, in the kingdom, may be increased by a decrease of the work, but also how the work itself may be made to decrease. To know the causes of the one we must ascertain the antecedents of the other. What, then, are the circumstances inducing a decrease in the quantity of work? and, consequently, what the circumstances inducing an increase in the amount of surplus and casual labour?
In the first place we may induce a large amount of casual labour in particular districts, not by decreasing the gross quantity of work required by the country, but by merely shifting the work into new quarters, and so decreasing the quantity in the ordinary localities. “The west of England,” says Mr. Dodd, in his account of the textile manufactures of Great Britain, “was formerly, and continued to be till a comparatively recent period, the most important clothing district in England. The changes which the woollen manufacture, as respects both localization and mode of management, has been and is now undergoing, are very remarkable. Some years ago the ‘west of England cloths’ were the test of excellence in this manufacture; while the productions of Yorkshire were deemed of a coarser and cheaper character. At present, although the western counties have not deteriorated in their product, the West Riding of Yorkshire has made giant strides, by which equal skill in every department has been attained; while the commercial advantages resulting from coal-mines, from water-power, from canals and railroads, and from vicinage to the eastern port of Hull and the western port of Liverpool, give to the West Riding a power which Gloucestershire and Somersetshire cannot equal. The steam-engine, too, and various machines for facilitating some of the manufacturing processes, have been more readily introduced into the former than into the latter; a circumstance which, even without reference to other points of comparison, is sufficient to account for much of the recent advance in the north.”
Of late years the products of many of the west of England clothing districts have considerably declined. Shepton Mallet, Frome and Trowbridge, for instance, which were at one time the seats of a flourishing manufacture for cloth, have now but little employment for the workmen in those parts; and so with other towns. “At several places in Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Gloucestershire, and others of the western counties,” says Mr. Thornton, “most of the cottagers, fifty years ago, were weavers, whose chief dependence was their looms, though they worked in the field at harvest time and other busy seasons. By so doing they kept down the wages of agricultural labourers, who had no other employment; and now that they have themselves become dependent upon agriculture, in consequence of the removal of the woollen manufacture from the cottage to the factory” [as well as to the north of England], “these reduced wages have become their own portion also;” or, in other words, since the shifting of the woollen manufacture in these parts, the quantity of casual labour in the cultivation of the land has been augmented.