Practicable Socialism, New Series

by S. A. Barnett; Mrs. S. A. Barnett

Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands scientific treatment”.

During the next two centuries great strides were made in the directions indicated by each of these three principles. The right to punish persons who would not work “for the ordinary wages” was extended from that legalized in Elizabeth’s time of being “openly whipped till his body was bloody,” to the drastic statute of the reign of Charles II, when it became lawful to transport the beggars and rogues “to any of the English plantations beyond the seas,” while the effort to create the shame of pauperism was made by the legislators of William III, who commanded that every recipient of public charity should wear “a large ‘P’ on the shoulder of the right sleeve of his habilement”. Pity was shown to the old, for whom refuges were provided and work such as they could perform arranged; the lame were apprenticed; the lives of the illegitimate protected; the blind relieved; the children whose parents could not or would not keep them were set to work or supported; lunatics were protected; and infectious diseases recognized.

The whole gamut of the woes of civilization as they gradually came into being were brought into relation with the State, whose sphere of duty to relieve suffering or assuage the consequences of sin was ever enlarging, until, in the reign of George III, we find it including penitentiaries, and the apprenticing of lads to the King’s ships. The organization to meet these needs grew apace; guardians were appointed, unions were formed, workhouses were built (the first erected at Bristol in 1697), a system of inspection was instituted, relieving officers were established, areas definitely laid down, and the function of officials prescribed. But abuses crept in, and in 1691 we find that an Act recites “that overseers, upon frivolous pretences, but chiefly for their own private ends, do give relief to what persons and number they think fit”. And yet another Act was passed to enable parish authorities to be punished for paying the poor their pittances in bad coin.

Still, it is probable that out of the two principles (roughly consistent with the unwritten laws of God in nature) there would have been evolved some practicable method of State-administered relief, had it not happened that the high cost of provisions (following the war with France) and the consequent sufferings of the “industrious indigent” so moved the magistrates at the end of the eighteenth century, that in 1795 they decided to give out-relief to every labourer in proportion to the number of his family and the price of wheat, without reference to the fact of his being in or out of employment. The effect was disastrous. The rich found no call to give their charity, and the poor no call to work. The rates ate up the value of the land, and farms were left without tenants, because it became impossible to pay the rates, which often reached £1 per acre. But an even worse effect was the demoralization of society. The stimulus towards personal effort and self-control was removed, for the idle and incompetent received from the rates what their labour or character failed to provide for them; and wages were reduced because employers realized that their workmen would get relief. Drink and dissipation, deception and dependence, cheating and chicanery, became common.

Society threatened in those years to break up. It is a curious comment that a humane poor law stands out as chief amid the dissolving forces, so blind is pity if it be not instructed.

This condition of things pressed for reform, and in 1832 a Poor Law Commission was appointed, which has left an indelible mark on English life.

The Commissioners, like able physicians, diagnosed the disease, and dealt directly with its cause, prescribing for its cure remedies which may be classed under two heads:—

I.—The Principle of National Uniformity.

II.—The Principle of Less Eligibility.

The principle of national uniformity—that is, identity of treatment of each class of destitute persons from one end of the kingdom to the other—had for its purpose the reduction of the “perpetual shifting” from parish to parish, and the prevention of discontent in persons who saw the paupers of a neighbouring parish treated more leniently than themselves.