English Economic History: Select Documents

by Unknown

The eighteenth century system produced great local variety, some examples of which are given from the survey published by Eden in 1797 (Nos. 6 and 7). The official workhouse, the farming of the poor to a contractor, the employment of the poor within the workhouse, and the relief of the rates by the Roundsman system of servile labour are described (Nos. 6 and 7. See also No. 8).

The Poor Law Commission of 1834 (No. 9) was the culminating point of a reaction against the results of the previous half century. Its intention was to make a clean sweep of tradition and to reassert the principle of uniformity. Its authors, in the spirit of their age, hoped to make their reform negatively, by cutting away influences which corrupted human nature. The extracts (No. 9) show their leading principles and recommendations. The Act of 1834 (No. 10) embodied their conclusions, leaving a large discretion to a new central authority. The Regulations and Orders (No. 11) of these Commissioners and their successors, the Poor Law and Local Government Boards, were, henceforward, the chief directing force of Poor Relief policy.

AUTHORITIES

Nicholls' History of the English Poor Law, Mackay, ditto (a continuation), and Fowle, The Poor Law, are general modern descriptions. Webb, English Poor Law Policy, is an historical criticism of the system from 1834; see also Kirkman Gray, Philanthropy and the State. The eighteenth century is described in Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times; Webb, English Local Government, The Parish and the County; Redlich and Hirst, Local Government in England, Vol. I; Hammond, The Village Labourer, c. 7; Hasbach, The English Agricultural Labourer, c. 3 and c. 4, and Mantoux, La Révolution Industrielle. Ashby, The Poor Law in a Warwickshire Village (in Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, Vol. III), provides illustrations.

Bibliographies in Hasbach and Cunningham, op. cit.

Contemporary (1) Documentary Sources.—The best collection of contemporary statistics, of paupers, diet, cost, etc., in the eighteenth century is given in Eden, The State of the Poor. The Report of the 1834 Commission (XXVII and XXVIII) describes conditions and the new policy. See also Report of Committees on the Poor Law, 1817 (VI) and 1819 (III), and Report of Committee on Labourers' Wages, 1824 (VI).

(2) Literary authorities.—Illustrations of contemporary opinion can be found for different periods in Defoe, Giving Alms no Charity, Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor (1795-1808), Rose, Observations on the Poor Law. A municipal system is described in Cary, The Proceedings of the Corporation of Bristol. A general survey was made in the middle of the eighteenth century by Burn, History of the Poor Laws, and at the end by Eden, The State of the Poor.

1. Settlement Law [Statutes, 14 Charles II, c. 12], 1662.

An Act for the better relief of the poor of this kingdom.

Whereas the necessity, number and continual increase of the poor, not only within the Cities of London and Westminster with the liberties of each of them, but also through the whole kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales, is very great and exceeding burdensome, being occasioned by reason of some defects in the law concerning the settling of the poor and for want of a due provision of the regulations of relief and employment in such parishes or places where they are legally settled, which doth enforce many to turn incorrigible rogues and others to perish for want, together with the neglect of the faithful execution of such laws and statutes as have formerly been made for the apprehending of rogues and vagabonds and for the good of the poor. For remedy whereof and for the preventing the perishing of any of the poor, whether old or young, for want of such supplies as are necessary, may it please your most Excellent Majesty that it may be enacted ... that whereas by reason of some defects in the law poor people are not restrained from going from one parish to another and therefore do endeavour to settle themselves in those parishes where there is the best stock, the largest commons or wastes to build cottages, and the most woods for them to burn and destroy and when they have consumed it then to another parish, and at last become rogues and vagabonds to the great discouragement of parishes to provide stocks where it is liable to be devoured by strangers ... it shall and may be lawful upon complaint made by the churchwardens or overseers of the poor of any parish to any Justice of Peace, within forty days after any such person or persons coming so to settle, as aforesaid in any tenement under the yearly value of ten pounds for any two justices of the peace whereof one to be of the Quorum of the division where any person or persons that are likely to be chargeable to the parish shall come to inhabit, by their warrant to remove and convey such person or persons to such parish where he or they were last legally settled either as a native householder sojourner apprentice or servant for the space of forty days at the least unless he or they give sufficient security for the discharge of the said parish to be allowed by the said Justices.