[136] Petty, Political Arithmetic, p. 45.

[137] Sir Henry Pollexfen, Discourse of Trade, 1697, p. 49; Walter Harris, Remarks on the Affairs and Trade of England and Ireland, 1691, pp. 43-4; The Querist, 1737 (in The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., ed. A. C. Fraser, 1871, p. 387); Thomas Alcock, Observations on the Defects of the Poor Laws, 1752, pp. 45 seqq. (quoted Furniss, op. cit., p. 153).

[138] Arthur Young, Eastern Tour, 1771, vol. iv, p. 361.

[139] Harrison, The Description of Britaine, 1587 ed., bk. ii, chap. x, Of Provision made for the Poor.

[140] H. Hunter, Problems of Poverty: Selections from the ... Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., 1912, p. 202.

[141] For the influence of Chalmers’ idea on Senior, and, through him, on the new Poor Law of 1834, see T. Mackay, History of the English Poor Law, vol. iii, 1899, pp. 32-4. Chalmers held that any Poor Law was in itself objectionable. Senior, who described Chalmers’ evidence before the Committee on the State of the Poor in Ireland as “the most instructive, perhaps, that ever was given before a Committee of the House of Commons,” appears to have begun by agreeing with him, but later to have adopted the principle of deterrence, backed by the test workhouse, as a second best. The Commissioners of 1832-4 were right in thinking the existing methods of relief administration extremely bad; they were wrong in supposing distress to be due mainly to lax administration, instead of realizing, as was the fact, that lax administration had arisen as an attempt to meet the increase of distress. Their discussion of the causes of pauperism is, therefore, extremely superficial, and requires to be supplemented by the evidence contained in the various contemporary reports (such, e.g., as those on the hand-loom weavers) dealing with the industrial aspects of the problem.

[142] W. C. Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism, 1919, pp. 560-2. Defoe comments on the strict business standards of the Quakers in Letter xvii (Of Honesty in Dealing) in The Complete English Tradesman. Mr. Ashton (Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution, p. 219) remarks, “The eighteenth century Friend no less than the medieval Catholic held firmly to some doctrine of Just Price,” and quotes examples from the conduct of Quaker iron-masters.

INDEX

Transcriber’s Note