A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Reform of the Poor Law. Aug. 1834.

But if their liberal Church policy was doomed to failure, the ministry was able to do one great work by the reform of the Poor Law. The chief effects of the old Poor Law have been already mentioned. Its lax administration, the power of relief in the houses of the paupers, the system of allowances in aid of wages, and the distribution of relief in proportion to the number of children, had pauperized the agricultural poor, had withdrawn the chief restraints on early and imprudent marriages, had fostered immorality, and increased the amount of the poor rate till it seemed as though England would sink beneath the burden. It had become necessary to adopt some sounder principles, even although they had the appearance of harshness. Nor was the Government without experience by which to guide its action. Already in about a hundred parishes an improved administration had been tried, and in every instance it had succeeded; while, on the other hand, in certain parishes where the old system remained in vigour cultivation had been actually abandoned, and the neighbouring parishes having to support their poor, there was every risk of the plague spreading throughout England. The chief error in the old system was the complete confusion which existed between poverty and pauperism, between the industrious poor man and the self-pauperized idler. It was this point on which a commission issued in 1832 chiefly insisted. The Bill based on their report was in fact little more than a recurrence to the true principles enunciated in the first general Poor Law of the reign of Elizabeth. To separate these two classes it was necessary that outdoor relief should be discontinued and the allowance system put an end to. Those only who were really in want were to receive relief, but upon conditions which should render it certain that the want was real. In the workhouse every able-bodied man must work; it was not fair that the industrious should be called upon to support an increasing race of paupers raised in the workhouse, husbands and wives must therefore be separated; for the sake of training and education, children must be kept from the possible contamination of the adult paupers; and as the maintenance of industry was one of the chief objects of the reform, free circulation of labour and the removal of most of the restrictions of the old law of settlement were indispensable. The system no doubt had a very harsh appearance, but its principles could scarcely be questioned. But these principles were in fact nothing new; all the evils to be rectified had arisen from the bad way in which such principles had been carried out. The machinery then by which relief was to be administered was of almost more importance than the principles on which it was to be granted. For economy, parishes were formed into unions, with one workhouse instead of several. The method of collecting the rates was left unchanged, the distribution was still left to guardians and select vestries; but this local management was placed under a central board, consisting of three commissioners, with assistants, at first twenty-one, diminished subsequently to nine. There was one other point which bore an appearance of extreme harshness, was much objected to at the time, and was subsequently changed; this was an attempt to check immorality by throwing the charge of the maintenance of illegitimate children upon the mother. This appeared completely to shield the guilty father, and to punish only the weak and misguided mother, but in fact, as many wise people saw at the time, it roused a feeling of self-dependence and respect among women, and produced the very best effects; the decrease of illegitimate births was extraordinary. The decrease in England was nearly 10,000, or thirteen per cent. in two years. In one point only did it appear that party interests could interfere with the passage of the Bill. It almost necessarily implied the subsequent repeal of the Corn Laws. Freedom of labour, the abolition of the Act of Settlement, rendered such a change indispensable; but this the ministry, very anxious to avoid the appearance of touching laws which were very dear to the hearts of the agricultural interest, still refused to believe, and denied in the most absolute terms. Nevertheless, between the second reading on the 9th of May and the third reading of the Bill on the 1st of July, a very powerful opposition had been aroused. It was spoken of as a Bill cruel against the poor. From a radical point of view the centralization of the system was decried. The commissioners were spoken of as three-tailed Bashaws. It was however carried by 157 to 50 votes. This was on the 2nd of July, when Lord Grey was still in office. Under the new ministry the management of the Bill in the Upper House passed into the hands of Lord Brougham; he supported it in one of his ablest speeches, and it was carried on the second reading by a very considerable majority, and became law on the 14th of August. Although some subsequent amendments were necessary, it has on the whole proved highly successful. The poor rate, which at the end of the American War, when the population of England was about 8,000,000, amounted to £2,132,487, which during the subsequent forty years of mismanagement had risen till in 1833, when the population was 14,000,000, it had reached £8,606,501, was in the course of three years reduced by upwards of £3,000,000.

Discontent and misery of the poor.

But though its character was so free from taint of party, though its action was on the whole so beneficial, the new Poor Law was used, and used with effect, to excite the deep-felt discontent which was prevalent in the lower classes, and which continued to increase and to acquire form and organization during the next four years, till it assumed the definite form of Chartism, and produced the very dangerous outbreak in the year 1839. It was scarcely possible but that such discontent should exist; the hopes of the poor man, raised to an exaggerated height by the excitement of the Reform Bill, had been cruelly disappointed. While no doubt some good and useful measures of reform had been carried, it was impossible to deny that the reform ministry had on the whole proved itself unwilling and unable to handle the great social questions of the time, that disputes in Parliament had fallen back into their old grooves, and had assumed the form of party contests rather than of efforts for the improvement of the great mass of the people. Hitherto trade had been fairly prosperous, but in 1835 symptoms were evident that this prosperity was disappearing; and when want was added to the justly-felt disappointment of the workmen, when agitators were exciting them with dismal stories of the cruelty of the Poor Law, of the tyranny of the manufacturing masters, and when every good and popular measure seemed to be first stripped of half its value by the ministry which introduced it, and then totally rejected by an obstructive House of Lords, it is not to be wondered at that the unrepresented masses believed that they had been used merely as an instrument, and that if increased representation was so good for their betters, it would prove the cure for them also, and began to clamour for a wide extension of the franchise, and more efficient security that the particular wants of their class should receive attention.

Increase of trades unions.

Many signs of the growing discontent were visible. The most formidable in the course of the year 1834 was the great extension and changed character of the trades unions. For some time trade societies had existed, and from time to time individual trades had combined to strike for advance of wages or other trade purposes, but in this year a combination of many trades began to make itself seen, which by mutual support should enable those on strike to hold out against their masters, and though the system broke down through the natural inefficiency of an uneducated body for such a combination, the danger became great when it was extended to the agricultural poor. To repress this symptom, so threatening to the landowners and farmers, six labourers were indicted at Dorchester under an obsolete statute against the administering of oaths. Amidst much popular sympathy, they were sentenced to seven years' transportation. The whole body of unionists, in their indignation, summoned a general meeting in Copenhagen Fields on the 21st of April. Besides a general intention to overawe the ministry, there seems to have been among a knot of their leaders a distinct plan of somehow or other securing the Government by violent means. It was intended that the deputation of the trades should lay hands upon Lord Melbourne, who was then minister for home affairs, and proceed to further acts of violence. Warned in time, Melbourne kept himself out of sight, and sent his under secretary to receive the deputation, while silently troops were held in readiness, the public offices defended with artillery, and 5000 householders sworn in as special constables. The under secretary declared that a petition accompanied by 60,000 men could not be received, and seeing the preparations made for their reception, the crowd withdrew in quiet, and the day passed over safely, but the incident shows both the power and temper of the unionists. Even more formidable was the general feeling against the House of Lords which exhibited itself at the close of the next year. By that time the House had shown itself still more obstinate, and facts had been brought to light which rendered it particularly odious to the people.

Dispute between Durham and Brougham.

In the autumn of 1834 the possession of office by the Whigs was regarded as secure, and while O'Connell returned to continue the agitation in Ireland, the ministers withdrew as usual to refresh themselves after the labours of the session. Among others, Lord Brougham travelled in Scotland, everywhere bringing both himself and the ministry into ridicule by his inconsistent and egotistical speeches. On the 15th of September the late Prime Minister attended a banquet held in his honour at Edinburgh, where he met Lord Durham, his son-in-law, Lord Brougham, and several of the other ministers. In returning thanks for the health of the ministry, the Chancellor appeared to rebuke the reformers for their impatience and for endangering all progress by their haste. These words by no means suited the views of Lord Durham, one of the chief authors of the Reform Bill, and a man of very popular tendencies. He replied that he entirely disagreed with his noble and learned friend, and frankly confessed that he was one of those persons who saw with regret every hour that passed over the existence of recognized and unreformed abuses. Brougham took this rebuke in the highest dudgeon, and in a very few days, at Salisbury, he replied severely upon Lord Durham, and uttered a sort of challenge to him to meet him in the House of Lords, and shortly after in the Edinburgh Review charged him with revealing the secrets of the Cabinet. Lord Durham's words at Edinburgh were eagerly accepted as proofs of a more frank acceptance of the principles of reform than they had hitherto met with from Government, and all minds were eagerly set upon the approaching duel in the House. But the King, who, as has been already mentioned, much disliked the Church policy of the Whigs, dreaded what must have given rise to a new Dismissal of the Melbourne ministry. Nov. 1834. assertion of the duty of rapid reform. He was eager to prevent the meeting in the House, and circumstances favoured him. Before the session Lord Spencer died, and Lord Althorp, his son, was thus removed to the Upper House. There was no reason why this should have broken up the ministry, but the King seized his opportunity, sent for Lord Melbourne, asserted that the ministry rested chiefly on the personal influence of Lord Althorp in the Commons, declared that, deprived of it as it now was, the Government could not go on, and dismissed his ministers, instructing Melbourne at once to send for the Duke of Wellington.

The Peel-Wellington ministry.

Ever since the passing of the Reform Bill the conduct of Sir Robert Peel had been extremely judicious. In his hands the Tory party had been entirely remodelled; there were indeed remnants of it unchanged, especially in the House of Lords, but gradually most of the party had separated themselves from this remnant, and had taken the name of Conservatives, declaring themselves as willing as the Whigs to foster reforms, although only in a Conservative manner. It was in vain that the old Tories had sought to keep the Duke of Wellington with them; he had wisdom enough to see that the hope of the party lay with Peel, and to keep up the closest connection with him. His first step therefore, when summoned by the King, was to send to Peel, who, believing that the time for a Conservative ministry had not yet arrived, had gone abroad, and was now in Rome. While waiting for his arrival, the Duke took upon himself the discharge of no less than five offices, conduct which, though in fact perfectly wise and reasonable, was foolishly complained of at the time as unconstitutional. Peel, although he was as yet by no means anxious for office, could not but obey the summons, and hurried home with extreme rapidity. He had hoped to obtain the support of Sir James Graham and Mr. Stanley, the late deserters from the Whig ministry, and it was a grave disappointment when they refused to act with him. Thus prevented from forming the moderate Conservative ministry he intended, Peel was reduced to fill his places with men of more pronounced opinions, which promised ill for any advance in reform. He himself became Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury. The Foreign, Home, War, and Colonial Offices were filled respectively by Wellington, Goulburn, Herries, and Aberdeen. Lord Lyndhurst became Lord Chancellor, Hardinge Irish Secretary, and Lord Wharncliffe Privy Seal.