From what has preceded it may fairly be argued that at all times there was a very sufficient fund for the relief of the poor, seeing that tithe, penance, fine, voluntary contribution, and compulsory assessment all combined to furnish their quota. It now remains to enquire into the method of its distribution.
The gains of the altar, whether in tithes, oblations, or other forms, were strictly payable over to the metropolitan or cathedral church of the district. The division of the fund was thus committed to the consulting body of the clergy, and their executive or head; and the several shares were thus distributed under the supervision and by the authority of the bishop and his canons in each diocese. Private alms may have remained occasionally at the disposal of the priest in a small parish, but the recognized public alms which were the property of the poor, and held in trust for them by the clergy, were necessarily managed by the principal body, the clergy of the cathedral. To the vicinity of the cathedral flocked the maimed, the halt, the blind, the destitute and friendless, to be fed and clothed and tended for the love of God. In that vicinity they enjoyed shelter, defence, private aid and public alms; and as in some few cases the cathedral church was surrounded by a flourishing city, they could hope for the chances which always accompany a close manufacturing or retailing population. In this way the largest proportion of the poor must have been collected near the chief church of the diocese, on whose lands they found an easy settlement, in whose xenodochia, hospitals and almshouses they met with a refuge, to whom they gave their services, such as they were, and from whom they received in turn the support which secular lords were unable or unwilling to give: for the cathedral church being generally a very considerable landowner, had the power of employing much more labour than the majority of secular landlords in any given district.
But it must not be imagined that the poor could obtain no relief save at the cathedral: every parish-church had its share of the public fund, as well as private alms, devoted to this purpose; and to the necessary buildings of every parish-church, however small, a xenodochium belonged. When now we consider the great number of churches that existed all over England in the tenth century, a number which most likely exceeded that now in being, and consequently bore a most disproportionate ratio to the then population of the country,—when we further consider that the poor were comparatively few (so that a provision was absolutely made for the case where a pauper could not be found in a royal village), we shall have no difficulty in concluding that relief was supplied in a very ample degree to the needy.
It does not necessarily follow, although in itself very probable, that the claim to relief was a territorial one, that is that the man was to have relief where he was born, lived or had gained a settlement by labour. As some landowners, particularly in later times, especially honoured certain churches with the grant of tithes consecrated to them, it is possible that some paupers may have followed the convenient precedent, and argued that whither the fund went, thither might the recipients go also. And inasmuch as in many cases they would appear under the guise of poor pilgrims, we can readily understand the immense resort to particular shrines at particular periods, without overrating the devotion or the superstition of the multitude. But all this might have led to very serious consequences, had the facilities really been so great. In point of fact there were no facilities at all except for such as were from age or infirmity incapable of doing any valuable service. For among the Saxons the law of settlement applied inexorably to all classes: no man had a legal existence unless he could be shown to belong to some association connected with a certain locality, or to be in the hand, protection and surety of a landed lord. Even a man of the rank nearest the princes or ealdorman could not leave his land without having fulfilled certain conditions; and the illegal migration of a dependent man from one shire or one estate to another was punished in the severest manner, in the persons of all concerned. He was called a Flýma or fugitive, and the receiving or harbouring him was a grave offence, punishable with a heavy fine, to be raised for the benefit of the king’s officers in the shire the fugitive deserted, as well as that wherein he was received[[1033]]. Even if the vigilance of the sheriffs and ealdorman in two shires could be lulled, it was difficult to disarm the selfishness of a landlord or an owner who thought the runaway’s services of any value, or his price worth securing. A year and a day must elapse ere the right abated from the “lord in pursuit,” for so was the lord called over all Europe in the idioms of the several tongues[[1034]]; and hence it cannot have been a very easy matter for any man to take advantage of the poor-law, while it remained any one’s advantage to keep him from falling into the state of pauperism: in other words, no man whose labour still possessed any value would be so cast upon the world as to have no refuge but what the church in Christian charity provided. And this was the real and trustworthy test of destitution. If a man was so helpless, friendless and useless that he could find no place in one of the mutual associations, or in a lord’s family, it is clear that he must become an outlaw as far as the State is concerned[[1035]]: he must fly to the woods, turn serf or steal, or else commend himself as a pauper to the benefits of clerical superintendence: but it is perfectly obvious that none but the hopelessly infirm or aged could ever be placed under such difficulty, in a country situated like England at any period of the Saxon rule, and hence pauper relief was in practice strictly confined to those for whom it was justly intended. The Saxon poor-law then appears simple enough, and well might it be so: they had not tried many unsuccessful and ridiculous experiments in œconomics, suffered themselves to be misled by very many mischievous crochets, nor on the whole did they find it necessary to make so expensive a protest against bad commercial legislation as our poor-law has proved to us. But it is not quite the simple thing it seems, and requires two elements for its efficient working, which are not to be found at every period, namely a powerful, conscientious clergy, and a system of property founded exclusively upon the possession of land, and guarded by a compulsory distribution of all citizens into certain fixed and settled associations.
I have already called attention to the fact that it was usual, if not necessary, on emancipating a serf, to provide for his subsistence. It is however not improbable that, though such emancipated serfs remained for the most part upon the land, and in the protection of their former lord, they found some assistance from the poor fund, either directly from the church, or indirectly through the private alms of the lord.
To resume all the facts of the case:—the State did not contemplate the existence or provide for the support of any poor: it demanded that every man should either be answerable for himself in a mutual bond of association with his neighbours; or that he should place himself under the protection of a lord, if he had no means of his own, and thus have some one to answer for him. If unfree, the State of course held him to be the chattel of his owner, who was only responsible to God for his treatment of him. He therefore who had no means and could find no one to take charge of him was an outlaw, that is, had no civil rights of any kind.
But Christianity taught that there was something even above the State, which the State itself was bound to recognize. It accordingly impressed upon all communicants the moral and religious duty of assisting those of their brethren whom the strict law condemned to misery; and the clergy presented their organization as a very efficient machinery for the proper distribution of alms. The voluntary oblations became in time replaced by settled payments; but the law did not alter the disposition which the clergy had adopted; it only recognized and sanctioned it; first by making the various church payments compulsory upon all classes; and secondly by enacting that the mode of distribution long prevalent should be the legal one, in a secular as well as an ecclesiastical obligation. And thus by slow degrees, as the State itself became Christianized, the moral duty became a legal one; and the merciful intervention of religion was allowed to supply what could not be found in the strict rule of law.
It is unnecessary here to enquire how the power of the clergy to assist the poor was gradually diminished, by the arbitrary consecration or total subtraction of tithe, and other ecclesiastical payments; or how the burthen of supporting the poor, having become a religious as well as a civil duty, was shifted from one fund to another. It is enough to have shown how the difficulty was attempted to be met during the continuance of the Anglosaxon institutions. Under the present circumstances of almost every European state, it is admitted that no man is to perish for want of means, while means anywhere exist to feed him: and but two questions can be admitted, namely:—Who is really in want? and,—How is he to be fed at the least possible amount of loss to others? This is as far as the State will go. Religion, properly considered, imposes very different duties, and very different tests: but public morality alone ought to teach that where the State has interfered on one side, it must pay the penalty on the other; and that where it has positively prescribed the directions in which men shall seek their subsistence, it is bound to indemnify those whom these restrictions have tended to impoverish. Every Poor Law is a protest against some wrong done: and in proportion to the wrong is the energy of the protest itself. Do not interfere with industry, and it will be very safe to leave poverty to take care of itself. It is quite possible to conceive a state of things in which crime and poverty shall be really convertible ideas, but of this the history of the world as yet has given us no example.
[1007]. The Roman poor-law was, consequently upon the Roman imperial institutions, of a strange, exceptional and most dangerous character. The rulers literally fed the people: panem et circenses, food and amusements; these were the relief which the wealthy and powerful supplied, and if ever these were sparingly distributed, convulsions and revolution were inevitable. The Λειτουργίαι, public dinners, and other doles of a compulsory nature assisted the poorer among the Athenians. (I have not cancelled this note, which was written long before the events of February 1848 and their consequences had added another pregnant example to the store of history.)