"Chargeability is the English slave system. The poor man cannot go where he lists in search of employment—he may become chargeable. He cannot take a good place which may be offered to him, for he cannot get a residence, lest he become chargeable. Houses are pulled down over the ears of honest working-men, and decent poor people are driven from Dan to Beersheba, lest they become chargeable. There is something infinitely distressing in the whole basis of this idea—that an English peasant must needs be regarded from his first breath, and all through life, as a possible pauper. But the positive hardships arising from the idea are what we have at present to deal with.
"These are delineated in a happy collection of facts lately brought forward by Mr. Chadwick at a meeting of the Farmers' Club in London. It appears that the company assembled, who, from their circumstances, were all qualified to judge of the truth of the facts and the soundness of the conclusions, gave a general assent to what was said by the learned poor-law secretary. Unfortunately, we can only give a few passages from this very remarkable speech.
"Mr. Chadwick first referred to the operation of the existing law upon unsettled labouring men. 'The lower districts of Reading were severely visited with fever during the last year, which called attention to the sanitary condition of the labouring population. I was requested to visit it. While making inquiries upon the subject, I learned that some of the worst-conditioned places were occupied by agricultural labourers. Many of them, it appeared, walked four, six, seven, and even eight miles, in wet and snow, to and from their places of work, after twelve hours' work on the farm. Why, however, were agricultural labourers in these fever-nests of a town? I was informed, in answer, that they were driven in there by the pulling down of cottages, to avoid parochial settlements and contributions to their maintenance in the event of destitution. Among a group, taken as an example there, in a wretched place consisting of three rooms, ten feet long, lived Stephen Turner, a wife, and three children. He walked to and from his place of work about seven miles daily, expending two hours and a half in walking before he got to his productive work on the farm. His wages are 10s. a week, out of which he pays 2s. for his wretched tenement. If he were resident on the farm, the two and a half hours of daily labour spent in walking might be expended in productive work; his labour would be worth, according to his own account, and I believe to a farmer's acknowledgment, 2s. 6d. per week more. For a rent of £5 5s., such as he now pays, he would be entitled to a good cottage with a garden; and his wife and children being near, would be available for the farm labour. So far as I could learn there are between one hundred and two hundred agricultural labourers living in the borough of Reading, and the numbers are increasing. The last week brought to my notice a fact illustrative of the present unjust state of things, so far as regards the labourer. A man belonging to Maple-Durham lived in Reading; walked about four miles a day to his work, the same back, frequently getting wet; took fever, and continued ill some time, assisted by the Reading Union in his illness; recovered, and could have returned to his former employment of 10s. per week, but found he was incapable of walking the distance; the consequence was, he took work that only enabled him to earn 5s. per week; he is now again unable to work. Even in Lincolnshire, where the agriculture is of a high order, and the wages of the labourer consequently not of the lowest, similar displacements have been made, to the prejudice of the farmer as well as the labourer, and, as will be seen, of the owner himself. Near Gainsborough, Lincoln, and Louth, the labourers walk even longer distances than near Reading. I am informed of instances where they walk as far as six miles; that is, twelve miles daily, or seventy-two miles weekly, to and from their places of work. Let us consider the bare economy, the mere waste of labour, and what a state of agricultural management is indicated by the fact that such a waste can have taken place. Fifteen miles a day is the regular march of infantry soldiers, with two rest-days—one on Monday, and one on Thursday; twenty-four miles is a forced march. The man who expends eight miles per diem, or forty-eight miles per week, expends to the value of at least two days' hard labour per week, or one hundred in the year, uselessly, that might be expended usefully and remuneratively in production. How different is it in manufactories, and in some of the mines, or at least in the best-managed and most successful of them! In some mines as much as £2000 and £3000 is paid for new machinery to benefit the labourers, and save them the labour of ascending and descending by ladders. In many manufactories they have hoists to raise them and their loads from lower to upper rooms, to save them the labour of toiling up stairs, to economize their strength for piece-work to mutual advantage. It is not in county and borough towns only that this unwholesome over-crowding is going on. I am informed that from the like cause the evil of over-crowding is going on in the ill-conditioned villages of open parishes. It is admitted, and made manifest in extensive evidence given before a committee of the house of lords by practical farmers, that when an agricultural labourer applies for work, the first question put to him is, not what has been his experience, what can he do, but to what parish does he belong. If he do not belong to the parish of the occupier, the reply is usually an expression of regret that he can only employ the labourer of his own parish. To the extent to which the farmer is directly liable to the payment of rates, by the displacement of a settled parish labourer, he is liable to a penalty for the employment of any other labourer who is not of the parish. To the same extent is he liable to a penalty if he do not employ a parish labourer who is worthless, though a superior labourer may be got by going farther a-field, to whom he would give better wages. This labourer who would go farther is thus driven back upon his parish; that is to say, imposed, and at the same time made dependent, upon the two or three or several farmers, by whom the parish is occupied. He then says, 'If this or that farmer will not employ me, one of them must; if none of them will, the parish must keep me, and the parish pay is as good as any.' Labour well or ill, he will commonly get little more, and it is a matter of indifference to him: it is found to be, in all its essential conditions, labour without hope—slave labour; and he is rendered unworthy of his hire. On the other hand, in what condition does the law place the employer? It imposes upon him the whole mass of labourers of a narrow district, of whatsoever sort, without reference to his wants or his capital. He says, 'I do not want the men at this time, or these men are not suitable to me; they will not do the work I want; but if I must have them, or pay for keeping them in idleness if I do not employ them, why, then, I can only give them such wages as their labour is worth to me, and that is little.' Hence wages are inevitably reduced. What must be the effect upon the manufacturer if he were placed in the same position as tenant farmers are in the smaller parishes in the southern counties, if he were restricted to the employment only of the labourers in the parish?—if, before he engaged a smith, a carpenter, or a mason, he were compelled to inquire, 'To what parish do you belong?' Why, that the 24s. a week labour would fall to 12s. or 10s., or the price of agricultural labour. Agriculturists from northern districts, who work their farms with 12s. and 15s. a week free labour, have declined the temptation of low rents, to take farms in parishes where the wages are 7s. or 8s. a week. While inspecting a farm in one of these pauperized districts, an able agriculturist could not help noticing the slow, drawling motions of one of the labourers there, and said, 'My man, you do not sweat at that work,' 'Why, no, master,' was the reply; 'seven shillings a week isn't sweating wages,' The evidence I have cited indicates the circumstances which prevent the adoption of piece-work, and which, moreover, restrict the introduction of machinery into agricultural operations, which, strange though it may appear to many, is greatly to the injury of the working classes; for wherever agricultural labour is free, and machinery has been introduced, there more and higher-paid labour is required, and labourers are enabled to go on and earn good wages by work with machines long after their strength has failed them for working by hand. In free districts, and with high cultivation by free and skilled labour, I can adduce instances of skilled agricultural labourers paid as highly as artisans. I could adduce an instance, bordering upon Essex, where the owner, working it with common parish labour at 1s. 6d., a day, could not make it pay; and an able farmer now works it with free labour, at 2s. 6d., 3s., and 3s. 6d., and even more, per day, for task-work, and, there is reason to believe, makes it pay well. A farmer, who died not long ago immensely wealthy, was wont to say that 'he could not live upon poor 2s. a day labour; he could not make his money upon less than half-crowners.' The freedom of labour, not only in the northern counties, but in some places near the slave-labour districts of the southern counties, is already attended with higher wages—at the rate of 12s., 14s., and 15s. weekly. In such counties as Berks and Bedford, the freedom of the labour market, when it came into full operation, could not raise wages less than 2s. a week; and 2s. a week would, in those counties, represent a sum of productive expenditure and increased produce equal to the whole amount of unproductive expenditure on the poor-rates.'"
By this arrangement of parochial settlement, the English agricultural labourer has a compulsory residence, like that of the American slave upon the plantation where he is born. This, therefore, is one of the most striking manifestations of the peasant being a serf. A free and beautiful system is that of the English Unions!
CHAPTER VI.
IMPRESSMENT, OR KIDNAPPING WHITE MEN FOR SLAVES IN THE NAVAL SERVICE.
One of the most repulsive features of the general system of slavery in Great Britain, is called impressment. It is the forcible removal of seamen from their ordinary employment, and compelling them to serve, against their will, in the ships of war. Long ago, some of the maritime nations condemned men to the galleys for crime. But Great Britain dooms peaceable and unoffending men to her vessels of war, severs all the ties of home and kindred, and outrages every principle of justice, in this practice of impressment. The husband is torn from his wife, the father from his children, the brother from the sister, by the press-gangs—the slave-hunters of Britain.