poor-laws.—work-houses.—sufferings of the poor from the climate.—dangerous state of england during the scarcity.—the poor not bettered by the progress of civilization.
with us charity is a religious duty, with the english it is an affair of law. we support the poor by alms; in england a tax is levied to keep them from starving, and, enormous as the amount of this tax is, it is scarcely sufficient for the purpose. this evil began immediately upon the dissolution of the monasteries. they who were accustomed to receive food at the convent door, where they could ask it without shame because it was given as an act of piety, had then none to look up to for bread. a system of parish taxation 295was soon therefore established, and new laws from time to time enacted to redress new grievances, the evil still outgrowing the remedy, till the poor-laws have become the disgrace of the statutes, and it is supposed that at this day a tenth part of the whole population of england receive regular parish pay.
the disposal of this money is vested in certain officers called overseers. the office is so troublesome that the gentry rarely or never undertake it, and it usually devolves upon people rather below the middle rank, who are rigidly parsimonious in the distribution of their trust. if they were uniformly thus frugal of the parish purse, it would be laudable, or at least excusable; but where their own enjoyments are concerned, they are inexcusably lavish of the money collected for better purposes. on every pretext of parish business, however slight, a dinner is ordered for the officers. while they indulge themselves they deal hardly by the poor, and give reluctantly 296what they cannot withhold. the beadsman at the convent door receives a blessing with his pittance, but the poor man here is made to feel his poverty as a reproach; his scanty relief is bestowed ungraciously, and ungraciously received; there is neither charity in him that gives, nor gratitude in him that takes. nor is this the worst evil: as each parish is bound to provide for its own poor, an endless source of oppression and litigation arises from the necessity of keeping out all persons likely to become chargeable. we talk of the liberty of the english, and they talk of their own liberty; but there is no liberty in england for the poor. they are no longer sold with the soil, it is true; but they cannot quit the soil, if there be any probability or suspicion that age or infirmity may disable them. if in such a case they endeavour to remove to some situation where they hope more easily to maintain themselves, where work is more plentiful, or provisions cheaper, the overseers 297are alarmed; the intruder is apprehended as if he were a criminal, and sent back to his own parish. wherever a pauper dies, that parish must be at the cost of his funeral: instances therefore have not been wanting, of wretches in the last stage of disease having been hurried away in an open cart upon straw, and dying upon the road. nay, even women in the very pains of labour have been driven out, and have perished by the way-side, because the birth-place of the child would be its parish. such acts do not pass without reprehension; but no adequate punishment can be inflicted, and the root of the evil lies in the laws.
the principle upon which the poor-laws seem to have been framed is this: the price of labour is conceived to be adequate to the support of the labourer. if the season be unusually hard, or his family larger than he can maintain, the parish then assists him; rather affording a specific relief, than raising the price of labour, because 298if wages were increased, it would injure the main part of the labouring poor instead of benefiting them: a fact, however mortifying to the national character, sufficiently proved by experience. they would spend more money at the alehouse, working less and drinking more, till the habits of idleness and drunkenness strengthening each other, would reduce them to a state of helpless and burthensome poverty. parish pay, therefore, is a means devised for increasing the wages of those persons only to whom the increase is really advantageous, and at times only when it is really necessary.
plausible as this may at first appear, it is fallacious, as all reasonings will be found which assume for their basis the depravity of human nature. the industrious by this plan are made to suffer for the spendthrift. they are prevented from laying by the surplus of their earnings for the support of their declining years, lest others not so provident should squander it. but 299the consequence is, that the parish is at last obliged to support both; for, if the labourer in the prime of his youth and strength cannot earn more than his subsistence, he must necessarily in his old age earn less.
when the poor are incapable of contributing any longer to their own support, they are removed to what is called the workhouse. i cannot express to you the feeling of hopelessness and dread with which all the decent poor look on to this wretched termination of a life of labour. to this place all vagrants are sent for punishment; unmarried women with child go here to be delivered; and poor orphans and base-born children are brought up here till they are of age to be apprenticed off; the other inmates are those unhappy people who are utterly helpless, parish idiots and madmen, the blind and the palsied, and the old who are fairly worn out. it is not in the nature of things that the superintendants of such institutions as these should be gentle-hearted, 300when the superintendance is undertaken merely for the sake of the salary; and, in this country, religion is out of the question. there are always enough competitors for the management, among those people who can get no better situation; but, whatever kindliness of disposition they may bring with them to the task, it is soon perverted by the perpetual sight of depravity and of suffering. the management of children who grow up without one natural affection—where there is none to love them, and consequently none whom they can love—would alone be sufficient to sour a happier disposition than is usually brought to the government of a workhouse.
to this society of wretchedness the labouring poor of england look on, as their last resting-place on this side the grave; and rather than enter abodes so miserable, they endure the severest privations as long as it is possible to exist. a feeling of honest pride makes them shrink from 301a place where guilt and poverty are confounded; and it is heart-breaking for those who have reared a family of their own, to be subjected in their old age to the harsh and unfeeling authority of persons younger than themselves, neither better born nor better bred. they dread also the disrespectful and careless funeral which public charity, or rather law, bestows; and many a wretch denies himself the few sordid comforts within his reach, that he may hoard up enough to purchase a more decent burial, a better shroud, or a firmer coffin, than the parish will afford.
the wealth of this nation is their own boast, and the envy of all the rest of europe; yet in no other country is there so much poverty—nor is poverty any where else attended with such actual suffering. poor as our own country is, the poor spaniard has resources and comforts which are denied to the englishman: above all, he enjoys a climate which rarely or never subjects him to physical suffering. perhaps 302the pain—the positive bodily pain which the poor here endure from cold, may be esteemed the worst evil of their poverty. coal is every where dear, except in the neighbourhood of the collieries; and especially so in london, where the number of the poor is of course greatest. you see women raking the ashes in the streets, for the sake of the half-burnt cinders. what a picture does one of their houses present in the depth of winter! the old cowering over a few embers—the children shivering in rags, pale and livid—all the activity and joyousness natural to their time of life chilled within them.—the numbers who perish from diseases produced by exposure to cold and rain, by unwholesome food, and by the want of enough even of that, would startle as well as shock you. of the children of the poor, hardly one-third are reared.
during the late war the internal peace of the country was twice endangered by scarcities. many riots broke out, though 303fewer than were apprehended, and though the people on the whole behaved with exemplary patience. nor were the rich deficient in charity. there is no country in the world where money is so willingly given for public purposes of acknowledged utility. subscriptions were raised in all parts, and associations formed, to supply the distressed with food, either gratuitously, or at a cheaper rate than the market price. but though the danger was felt and confessed, and though the military force of london was called out to quell an incipient insurrection, no measures have been taken to prevent a return of the evil. with all its boasted wealth and prosperity, england is at the mercy of the seasons. one unfavourable harvest occasions dearth: and what the consequences of famine would be in a country where the poor are already so numerous and so wretched, is a question which the boldest statesman dares not ask himself. when volunteer forces were raised 304over the kingdom, the poor were excluded; it was not thought safe to trust them with arms. but the peasantry are, and ought to be, the strength of every country; and woe to that country where the peasantry and the poor are the same!
many causes have contributed to the rapid increase of this evil. the ruinous wars of the present reign, and the oppressive system of taxation pursued by the late premier, are among the principal. but the manufacturing system is the main cause; it is the inevitable tendency of that system to multiply the number of the poor, and to make them vicious, diseased, and miserable.
to answer the question concerning the comparative advantages of the savage and social states, as rousseau has done, is to commit high treason against human nature, and blasphemy against omniscient goodness; but they who say that society ought to stop where it is, and that it has 305no further amelioration to expect, do not less blaspheme the one, and betray the other. the improvements of society never reach the poor: they have been stationary, while the higher classes were progressive. the gentry of the land are better lodged, better accommodated, better educated than their ancestors; the poor man lives in as poor a dwelling as his forefathers when they were slaves of the soil, works as hard, is worse fed, and not better taught. his situation, therefore, is relatively worse. there is, indeed, no insuperable bar to his rising into a higher order—his children may be tradesmen, merchants, or even nobles—but this political advantage is no amendment of his actual state. the best conceivable state for man is that wherein he has the full enjoyment of all his powers, bodily and intellectual. this is the lot of the higher classes in europe; the poor enjoys neither—the savage only the former. if, therefore, religion 306were out of the question, it had been happier for the poor man to have been born among savages, than in a civilized country, where he is in fact the victim of civilization.
