4. Results of poor relief in later times.
We have been so accustomed to hear of the evils of the law of settlement and the abuses of the relief granted in aid of wages, that we perhaps fail to consider the better effects of the existence of a system of poor relief.
4 a. The increased union of rich and poor.
In the first place the method of administration has helped to unite the different classes of the nation together. The rich may have known little about the poor but the country gentlemen as justices have been obliged to know something. Besides every ratepayer has suffered when any cause has permanently depressed the labouring class. All have to pay more poor rates and so are led to discuss, and if possible to remedy, abuses and grievances. In this way the evils of bad administration of relief have been checked and interest in all matters affecting the poor has been stimulated.
But the existence of the poor law may have had even more important effects.
4 b. Decrease of bitterness in competition and increase of order.
Many are affected by the poor law who never receive relief; it takes away some of the horror of failure from all who may if unfortunate need help of the kind and so renders the struggle for existence less brutal to the whole of the labouring class.
In the seventeenth century this assistance to the poor helped to make England a peaceful community and it has probably had the same effect ever since.
The earlier centuries of our history were not distinguished by the quiet and orderly habits of the people. Whenever, as in the reigns of Henry III. and Richard II., we had little war abroad there was disorder at home. In the sixteenth century we have seen every season of scarcity produce riots, insurrections or rebellion. In 1529 Norfolk and Kent were in insurrection, in 1586 Gloucestershire was discontented, in 1596 the peasants of Oxfordshire took up arms; while in 1549 the economic distress was mainly responsible for the rebellion which caused the fall of the Duke of Somerset and nearly produced a revolution. Even in ordinary times property was not safe; bands of vagrants roamed the country who compelled the inhabitants to grant them relief; petty thefts were committed and were neither detected nor punished, sometimes robbery even was successfully attempted in open daylight and was unrepressed. In Scotland a like state of things lasted at least as late as the end of the seventeenth century and indeed much later still. Louise Michelle on her visit to England was more struck by English poor relief than by any other English institution: she said that a like system in France would have prevented the French revolution. The distress of the masses of the people and the existence of a large number of hungry men always ready to join the forces of disorder, are at all times a danger to the stability of governments. It may well be therefore that the law-abiding characteristics of the nation and the absence of violent changes in the political constitution have been at least partly due to the regular relief which has been granted under the English poor law. Ever since its provisions were first thoroughly put in execution through the efforts of the Privy Council and of the justices in the reign of Charles I. no man has been able truthfully to plead that he was driven to crime or desperation by absolute want.