In such places no regular system is to be looked for. The most usual modes of affording relief are allowances in money, or payment of board. In some places, as in Emmenthal, the parochial charges are thrown on the large estates, and the proprietors are forced in turn, and gratuitously, to maintain the paupers who are allotted to them. In many other places it has long been the custom to send round the poor to be maintained in turn by the settled inhabitants (bourgeois), some of whom, though forced to receive paupers, are themselves in indigent, or even in distressed circumstances.
Not less sad or even revolting is the practice which prevails in some poor and ill-judging parishes of getting rid of their poor by allotting them to those who will take them on the lowest terms. The parochial authorities offer an allowance to those who will receive such and such paupers. The allowance at first proposed is very small; but it is ready money, and public competition enables the parish to make it still smaller. The poor victim falls into the hands of a rapacious and needy family. We may conceive how deplorable his situation must always be. That it is sometimes supportable can be attributed only to a benevolence not yet entirely stifled in the hearts of our people. Cases even have occurred in which the proprietors, by allowing their inmates to work for themselves, have given them habits of industry, and bred up their children to be good workmen. But these exceptions only render the general rule more apparent.
Relief in money produces effects equally pernicious. It is the result of the law which enables every family which is, or believes itself to be, in want, to demand a relief which cannot be refused. Small sums are given sometimes for payment of rent, sometimes to meet other wants, whether the applicant live in the parish or elsewhere—and without control or superintendence. What can, what must be the consequences? (p. 222.)
We cannot wonder, then, that the administration of the poor laws in the canton of Berne has become so irregular and so mischievous. The effects of the subdivision of the inhabitants into so many corporations have become more and more apparent. The principle of permanent and hereditary unions necessarily clashed with the principle of mobility and change which governs all our social relations. The welfare of the public necessarily gave way to that of the particular corporations, and the private interests of the corporations or parishes rendered them selfish and mutually hostile. Obstacles were opposed to every change of residence, and consequently the industry and enterprise of the labouring classes were paralyzed, and the parishes felt the results of their own measures when an unemployed and dispirited population was thrown upon them. It was to be expected that in time this population would look for support to the relief to which they had a legal right; it was natural that in time they would get a taste for an idle and consequently vicious existence. We could support our remarks by many instances of whole families which have subsisted like parasites from year to year, and from generation to generation, on the parochial funds; whose status it is to be paupers; and the cases in which they have emerged from this condition are few.
The government appears to have been struggling with these evils ever since the beginning of this century. The first ordonnance which has been forwarded to us is that of the 22d December, 1807.
The following are its most material enactments (pp. 191, 192):—
The parishes and parochial corporations (bourgeoisies) in the town and in the country are required, as heretofore, to afford protection and relief to their needy fellow-citizens.
No one can claim parochial relief unless he is without property, and either physically incapable of work, or out of employ without his own fault.
Parishes may continue their previous modes of regulating and fixing their accounts with respect to the poor.
They may likewise relieve their poor as they think fit, by regular money relief, by putting them out to board, by collecting them in a single establishment, or placing them in hospitals, or distributing among themselves the children of the indigent. But it is forbidden for the future that, except in cases of emergency, and with the sanction of the district authorities, they should be sent round from house to house to be maintained. Persons arrested for begging, and taken to their parish, shall be sentenced by the parochial authorities, after having given notice to the district judge. The punishment may be eight days’ imprisonment on bread and water, or fifteen days’ hard labour[8].