Statement of the Provision for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes in a Considerable Portion of America and Europe / Being the preface to the foreign communications contained in the appendix to the Poor-Law Report

by Nassau William Senior

2. Does the law appear to have encouraged imprudent marriage or illicit intercourse?

The answers are implied in our previous statements. The existing system favours imprudent marriage and illicit intercourse,—but, precisely because it encourages marriage, probably does not augment the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births. But the final result is, that it encourages, in an extraordinary degree, the increase of the indigent population. The abuses which have followed this fatal system are too numerous to be here detailed. It is easy to conceive what must have been its results on a populace whom education, or rather the want of education, has deprived of all honourable feeling, and of all preference of independence to public charity. Idleness, carelessness, improvident marriage, and illicit intercourse, have been encouraged by the prospect of making others support their results. All means and opportunities of acquiring knowledge, or skill, or regular occupation, have been neglected. Thence have arisen not only a constantly increasing burden upon society, but obstacles to the development of the physical and intellectual faculties, to moral improvement, and in short to the advancement of civilization. Experience has clearly proved, that the number of paupers increases in proportion to the resources created for them, and that the bourgeois population is least industrious and least active, and endeavours least to be useful to society in those parishes which have the largest public property and public revenue.

This state of things, and above all the constantly increasing burden in some parts of the country, and the demands urged by parishes on the State for protection against the claims and the insolence of the really and the pretended indigent, have determined the government to strive to remedy the evil at its source. We are still ignorant of the proposed principles of the new law. The plan, or at least the preparatory inquiry, is now going on in the offices of the Department of the Interior. It is nearly certain, however, that compulsory charity will be, if not entirely abolished, at least restricted to those poor who are incapable of work. But if assessment for the indigent is put an end to, the revenue of the properties appropriated to them will remain for their support.

The administration of the poor-laws in the Canton of Berne is therefore on the eve of a radical reform.

The same views are more fully developed in a long and very able supplement to these answers, which immediately follows them, and bears the same official character—(pp. 220-222, and 225.)

The administration of parochial property has not been properly audited by any parochial authorities: frequently and for many years it has remained in the hands of the same family; those to whom it has been intrusted have received little or no salary: a capricious and dishonest management were the obvious and almost the inevitable consequences. The mere nature of the transaction led to mal-administration. The poor who had a right to bourgeoisie had a right to relief. How could their conduct or their wants be ascertained, if they dwelt in other parishes, with whose authorities their own parish had no relation? Was it not almost inevitable that relief would be demanded with insolence and spent in idleness and debauchery?

In some places in the mountains (such as Sieventhal and Grindelwald), the relief was given in kind; but with the increased circulation of money, money-relief has become general, and is exclusively afforded to out-parishioners. The facility with which such relief is mis-applied has favoured mis-management, and may be said to engender pauperism.

These fatal results have become more strongly felt as the number of the poor has augmented. In many places the growing embarrassment occasioned great and praiseworthy remedial efforts. The administration was made more regular, and inspectors and other officers appointed. Some country parishes erected alms-houses at an expense apparently beyond their means. But many of these fine institutions disappointed the hopes of their founders: we shall presently see why. These new measures and institutions were each the private affair of each parish; they failed because they were isolated. The beneficial measures of one parish were not supported by its neighbours. They followed their old routine, and opposed improvement by obstacles and dislike. Superintendence, which is essential to the administration of poor laws, was ineffectual, because it was applied only to the parishioners of the single commune which enforced it.

During the last half century, other countries have acquired knowledge relative to alms-houses for the poor, and have adopted the results of the inquiries and experience of their neighbours. This has not been the case with our own establishments: their very origin was erroneous. They were the products of a philanthropy which proposed entirely to remedy all human misery. They were founded in villages, and proportioned each to the existing wants of the village. Their resources seldom permitted the adoption of the first condition of good administration, namely, classification. And even when we find a spacious building, we see heaped, pell-mell, children by the side of the old and infirm, and the sick mixed with able-bodied idlers. Even whole families are found in this assemblage of the good and bad, the sick and the healthy, the useful and the mischievous. In such establishments provision ought to have been made for the education of the children, the cure of the sick, the support of the aged, and the employment of the able-bodied. Each class of inmates required a separate treatment. The instant this principle is neglected, and classification abandoned, the institution not only loses its utility, but becomes actually mischievous. But each single establishment was governed by a single authority, unfit for the management of several dissimilar classes of inmates. In general, one uniform system was applied to them all. A further obstacle to the success of these establishments was the frequent change of their governors. As they were ill-paid and often subject to disagreeable contests with the local authorities, it was difficult to get good officers, and still more so to keep them. (p. 221.)

Unfavourable as our representation of these establishments has been, the picture of the treatment of the poor in the other parts of the canton is still more gloomy and painful. In these districts (superintendence being absent) all that is not left to accident is regulated by habit, or by a routine without apparent motives.