The way in which the ruling class regarded the poor is illustrated in the tone of the discussions when the problem of poverty had become acute at the end of the eighteenth century. When Pitt, who had been pestered by Eden to read his book, handed a volume to Canning, then his secretary, that brilliant young politician spent his time writing a parody on the grotesque names to be found in the Appendix, and it will be recollected that Pitt excused himself for abandoning his scheme for reforming the Poor Law, on the ground that he was inexperienced in the condition of the poor. It was no shame to a politician to be ignorant of such subjects. The poor were happy or unhappy in the view of the ruling class according to the sympathy the rich bestowed on them. If there were occasional misgivings they were easily dispelled. Thus one philosopher pointed out that though the position of the poor man might seem wanting in dignity or independence, it should be remembered by way of consolation that he could play the tyrant over his wife and children as much as he liked.[380] Another train of soothing reflections was started by such papers as that published in the Annals of Agriculture in 1797, under the title ‘On the Comforts enjoyed by the Cottagers compared to those of the ancient Barons.’ In such a society a sentiment like that expressed by Fox when supporting Whitbread’s Bill in 1795, that ‘it was not fitting in a free country that the great body of the people should depend on the charity of the rich,’ seemed a challenging paradox. Eden thought this an extraordinary way of looking at the problem, and retorted that it was gratifying to see how ready the rich were to bestow their benevolent attentions. This was the point of view of Pitt and of almost all the speakers in the debate that followed Fox’s outburst, Buxton going so far as to say that owing to those attentions the condition of the poor had never been ‘so eligible.’ Just as the boisterous captain in Evelina thought it was an honour to a wretched Frenchwoman to be rolled in British mud, so the English House of Commons thought that poverty was turned into a positive blessing by the kindness of the rich.
Writing towards the end of the ancient régime, Cobbett maintained that in his own lifetime the tone and language of society about the poor had changed very greatly for the worse, that the old name of ‘the commons of England’ had given way to such names as ‘the lower orders,’ ‘the peasantry,’ and ‘the population,’ and that when the poor met together to demand their rights they were invariably spoken of by such contumelious terms as ‘the populace’ or ‘the mob.’ ‘In short, by degrees beginning about fifty years ago the industrious part of the community, particularly those who create every useful thing by their labour, have been spoken of by everyone possessing the power to oppress them in any degree in just the same manner in which we speak of the animals which compose the stock upon a farm. This is not the manner in which the forefathers of us, the common people, were treated.’[381] Such language, Cobbett said, was to be heard not only from ‘tax-devourers, bankers, brewers, monopolists of every sort, but also from their clerks, from the very shopkeepers and waiters, and from the fribbles stuck up behind the counter to do the business that ought to be done by a girl.’ This is perhaps only another way of saying that the isolation of the poor was becoming a more and more conspicuous feature of English society.
Many causes combined to destroy the companionship of classes, and most of all the break-up of the old village which followed on the enclosures and the consolidation of farms. In the old village, labourers and cottagers and small farmers were neighbours. They knew each other and lived much the same kind of life. The small farmer was a farmer one day of the week and a labourer another; he married, according to Cobbett, the domestic servant of the gentry, a fact that explains the remark of Sophia Western’s maid to the landlady of the inn, ‘and let me have the bacon cut very nice and thin, for I can’t endure anything that’s gross. Prythee try if you can’t do a little tolerably for once; and don’t think you have a farmer’s wife or some of those creatures in the house.’ The new farmer lived in a different latitude. He married a young lady from the boarding school. He often occupied the old manor house.[382] He was divided from the labourer by his tastes, his interests, his ambitions, his display and whole manner of life. The change that came over the English village in consequence was apparent to all observers with social insight. When Goldsmith wanted to describe a happy village he was careful to choose a village of the old kind, with the farmers ‘strangers alike to opulence and to poverty,’ and Crabbe, to whose sincere and realist pen we owe much of our knowledge of the social life of the time, gives a particularly poignant impression of the cold and friendless atmosphere that surrounded the poor:
‘Where Plenty smiles, alas! she smiles for few,
And those who taste not, yet behold her store,
Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore,
The wealth around them makes them doubly poor.’[383]
Perhaps the most vivid account of the change is given in a letter from Cobbett in the Political Register for 17th March 1821,[384] addressed to Mr. Gooch:—
‘I hold a return to small farms to be absolutely necessary to a restoration to anything like an English community; and I am quite sure, that the ruin of the present race of farmers, generally, is a necessary preliminary to this.... The life of the husbandman cannot be that of a gentleman without injury to society at large. When farmers become gentlemen their labourers become slaves. A Virginian farmer, as he is called, very much resembles a great farmer in England; but then, the Virginian’s work is done by slaves. It is in those States of America, where the farmer is only the first labourer that all the domestic virtues are to be found, and all that public-spirit and that valour, which are the safeguards of American independence, freedom, and happiness. You, Sir, with others, complain of the increase of the poor-rates. But, you seem to forget, that, in the destruction of the small farms, as separate farms, small-farmers have become mere hired labourers.... Take England throughout three farms have been turned into one within fifty years, and the far greater part of the change has taken place within the last thirty years; that is to say, since the commencement of the deadly system of PITT. Instead of families of small farmers with all their exertions, all their decency of dress and of manners, and all their scrupulousness as to character, we have families of paupers, with all the improvidence and wrecklessness belonging to an irrevocable sentence of poverty for life. Mr. CURWEN in his Hints on Agriculture, observes that he saw some where in Norfolk, I believe it was, two hundred farmers worth from five to ten thousand pounds each; and exclaims “What a glorious sight!” In commenting on this passage in the Register, in the year 1810, I observed “Mr. CURWEN only saw the outside of the sepulchre; if he had seen the two or three thousand half-starved labourers of these two hundred farmers, and the five or six thousand ragged wives and children of those labourers; if the farmers had brought those with them, the sight would not have been so glorious.”’
A practice referred to in the same letter of Cobbett’s that tended to widen the gulf between the farmer and the labourer was the introduction of bailiffs: ‘Along with enormous prices for corn came in the employment of Bailiffs by farmers, a natural consequence of large farms; and to what a degree of insolent folly the system was leading, may be guessed from an observation of Mr. ARTHUR YOUNG, who recommended, that the Bailiff should have a good horse to ride, and a bottle of port wine every day at his dinner: while in the same work, Mr. YOUNG gives great numbers of rules for saving labour upon a farm. A pretty sort of farm where the bailiff was to have a bottle of port wine at his dinner! The custom was, too, to bring bailiffs from some distant part, in order to prevent them from having any feeling of compassion for the labourers. Scotch bailiffs above all, were preferred, as being thought harder than any others that could be obtained; and thus (with shame I write the words!) the farms of England, like those of Jamaica, were supplied with drivers from Scotland!... Never was a truer saying, than that of the common people, that a Scotchman makes a “good sole, but a d——d bad upper leather.”’[385] Bamford, speaking of 1745, says: ‘Gentlemen then lived as they ought to live: as real gentlemen will ever be found living: in kindliness with their neighbours; in openhanded charity towards the poor, and in hospitality towards all friendly comers. There were no grinding bailiffs and land stewards in those days to stand betwixt the gentleman and his labourer or his tenant: to screw up rents and screw down livings, and to invent and transact all little meannesses for so much per annum.’[386] Cobbett’s prejudice against Scotsmen, the race of ‘feelosofers,’ blinded him to virtues which were notoriously theirs, as in his round declaration that all the hard work of agriculture was done by Englishmen and Irishmen, and that the Scotsmen chose such tasks as ‘peeping into melon frames.’ But that his remarks upon the subject of the introduction of Scottish bailiffs reflected a general feeling may be seen from a passage in Miss Austen’s Emma, ‘Mr. Graham intends to have a Scotch bailiff for his new estate. Will it answer? Will not the old prejudice be too strong?’