CHAPTER IX.

OF POOR LAWS.

In Chapter V. of Mr. Malthus’s book iii., we have these luminous remarks of his on Poor Laws, which have been so often quoted by statesmen and philanthropists:—

“It is,” says our author, “a subject often started in conversation, and mentioned always as a matter of great surprise, that, notwithstanding the immense sum which is annually collected for the poor in this country, there is still so much distress among them. But a man who looks a little below the surface of things would be much more astonished if the fact were otherwise than it is showed to be, or even if a collection universally of eighteen shillings in the pound, instead of four, were materially to alter it. Suppose that by a subscription of the rich, the eighteen pence or two shillings which men earn now were made up to four shillings, it might be imagined, perhaps, that they would then be able to live comfortably, and have a piece of meat every day for their dinner. But this would be a very false conclusion. The transfer of three additional shillings a day to each labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all to have a moderate share. What would then be the consequence? The competition among the buyers in the market of meat would rapidly raise the price from 8d. or 9d. to two or three shillings in the pound, and the commodity would not be divided among many more people than at present.

“When an article is scarce, and cannot be distributed to all, he that can show the most valid patent, that is, he that offers the most money, becomes the possessor ... and when subsistence is scarce in proportion to the number of the people, it is of little consequence whether the lowest members of the society possess two shillings or five. They must, at all events, be reduced to live upon the hardest fare and in the smallest quantity.

“A collection from the rich of eighteen shillings in the pound, even if distributed in the most judicious manner, would have an effect similar to that resulting from the supposition which I have just made; and no possible sacrifices of the rich, particularly in money, would for any time prevent the recurrence of distress among the lower members of society, whoever they were. Great changes might, indeed, be made. The rich might become poor and some of the poor rich; but while the present proportion between population and food continues, a part of society must necessarily find it difficult to support a family, and this difficulty will naturally fall on the least fortunate members.”

Malthus mentions that in a great scarcity which occurred in England in 1801, no less than ten millions sterling were given away in charity. In one case cited by our author, a man with a family received fourteen shillings a week from his parish. His common earnings were ten shillings a week, and his weekly revenue therefore twenty-four. Before the scarcity he had been in the habit of purchasing a bushel of flour a week, with eight shillings perhaps, and consequently had two shillings out of his ten to spare for other necessaries. During the scarcity he was enabled to purchase the same quantity at nearly three times the price. He paid twenty-two shillings for his bushel of flour, and had as before two shillings remaining for other wants.

The price of labour, says Malthus, when left to find its natural level, is a most important political barometer, explaining the relations between the supply of provisions and the demand for them: between the quantity to be consumed and the number of consumers: and, taken on the average, it further expresses clearly the wants of society respecting population—that is, whatever may be the number of children to a marriage necessary to maintain exactly the present population, the price of labour will be just sufficient to support this number, or be above it or below it, according to the state of the real funds for the maintenance of labour, whether stationary, progressive, or retrograde. “Instead, however, of considering it in this light, we consider it as something which we may raise or depress at pleasure, something which depends principally upon his Majesty’s justices of the peace. When an advance in the price of provisions already expresses that the demand is too great for the supply, in order to put the labourer in the same position as before, we raise the price of labour; that is, we increase the demand, and are then much surprised that the price of provisions continues rising. In this we act much in the same manner, as if, when the quicksilver in the common glass stood at ‘stormy,’ we were to raise it by some mechanical pressure to ‘settled fair,’ and then be greatly astonished that it continued raining.”

“In the natural order of things, a scarcity must tend to lower, instead of to raise, the price of labour. Many men who would shrink at the proposal of a maximum would propose themselves that the price of labour should be proportioned to the price of provisions, and do not seem to be aware that the two proposals are very nearly of the same nature, and that both tend directly to famine. It matters not whether we enable the labourer to purchase the same quantity of provisions which he did before by fixing their price, or by raising in proportion the price of labour.”

These arguments of Mr. Malthus were a death-blow to the frightful system of the rate in aid of wages which at the early part of the present century was fast turning England into the most pauper-ridden country in Europe.

In Chapter VI. of Book iii., Malthus remarks that, independently of any considerations respecting a year of deficient crops, it is evident that an increase of population without a proportional increase of food must lower the value of each man’s earnings. The food must necessarily be distributed in smaller quantities, and consequently a day’s labour will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions. An increase in the price of provisions will arise either from an increase of population faster than the means of subsistence, or from a different distribution of the money of the society.

Speaking of the Poor Laws of 1805, he says: “The Poor Laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the poor in two ways. Their first obvious tendency is to increase population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family without parish assistance. They may be said, therefore, to create the poor which they maintain; and as the provisions of the country must, in consequence of the increased population be distributed to every man in smaller proportions, it is evident that the labour of those who are not supported by parish assistance will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions than before, and consequently many of them must be driven to apply for assistance.

“Secondly, the quantity of provisions consumed in workhouses, upon a part of the society that cannot be considered the most valuable part, diminishes the shares that would otherwise belong to the more industrious and more worthy members, and this, in the same manner, forces more to become dependent. If the poor in the workhouses were to live better than they do now, this new distribution of the money of the society would tend more conspicuously to depress the condition of those out of the workhouse, by occasioning an advance in the price of provisions.”

Fortunately for England, says our author, a spirit of independence still remains among the peasantry. The poor laws are strongly calculated to eradicate this spirit. “They have succeeded in part: but had they succeeded as completely as might have been expected, their pernicious tendency would not have been so long concealed.”

The following paragraph has often been cited by violent democrats as a proof of the hard-heartedness of Malthus. At present, few of the ultra-liberal party in this country are ill-instructed enough to vituperate any one for his opinions in this matter. “Hard as it may appear,” he continues, “in individual cases, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful. Such a stimulus seems to be absolutely necessary to promote the happiness of the general mass of mankind: and every general attempt to weaken this stimulus, however benevolent its intention, will always defeat its own purpose. If men be induced to marry from the mere prospect of parish provision, they are not only unjustly tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon themselves and children, but they are tempted, without knowing it, to injure all in the same class with themselves.”

It is very probable that the independence of character of the English labouring classes was fatally lowered by the system Malthus complains of, for to this very day, in many counties, the following experience of our author holds good. “The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention; and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it; but all that they earn beyond their present necessities goes, generally speaking, to the alehouse. The poor laws may, therefore, be said to diminish both the power and the will to save among the common people, and thus to weaken one of the strongest incentives to sobriety and industry, and consequently to happiness.”

No wonder that Thomas Chalmers, the great Scottish economist, struggled so hard against the introduction of the English poor laws into Scotland. That poor law in Scotland is at present worse administered than it even is in England, and has done much to create a pauper class. There is, indeed, but little prospect of another poet like Burns arising in modern Scotland. “The Cotters’ Saturday Night” was composed when the parish gave discriminating relief only to the worthy and necessitous.

“These evils,” says Malthus, “attendant on the poor laws seem to be irremediable. If assistance is to be distributed to a certain class of people, a power must be lodged somewhere of discriminating the proper objects, and of managing the concerns of the institutions that are necessary; but any great interference with the affairs of other people is a species of tyranny, and in the common course of things, the exercise of this power may be expected to become grating to those who are driven to ask for support. The tyranny of justices, churchwardens, and overseers, is a common complaint among the poor; but the fault does not lie so much in these persons, who probably before they were in power were not more cruel than other people, but in the nature of all such institutions. I feel persuaded that if the poor laws had never existed in this country, though there might have been a few more instances of very severe distress, the aggregate mass of happiness among the common people would have been much greater than it is at present.”

The famous 43rd of Elizabeth, which has been so often referred to and admired, enacts that the overseers of the poor “shall take order from time to time, by and with the consent of two or more justices, for setting to work the children of all such whose parents shall not by the said persons be thought able to keep and maintain their children; and also such persons married or unmarried, as having no means to maintain them, use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by. And also to raise, weekly or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant, and every occupier of lands in the said parish (in such competent sums as they shall think fit) a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wax, thread, iron, and other necessary ware and stuff, to set the poor to work.”

“What is this,” exclaims Malthus, “but saying that the funds for the maintenance of labour in this country may be increased at will, and without limit, by a _fiat_ of Government, or an assessment of the overseers. Strictly speaking, this clause is as arrogant and as absurd as if it had enacted that two ears of wheat should grow where one only had grown before. Canute, when he commanded the waves not to wet his princely foot, did not, in reality, assume a greater power over the laws of nature. No directions are given to the overseers how to increase the funds for the maintenance of labour; the necessity of industry, economy, and enlightened exertion, in the management of agricultural and commercial capital, is not insisted on for this purpose; but it is expected that a miraculous increase of these funds should immediately follow an edict of the Government, used at the discretion of some ignorant parish officers.”

Mr. Malthus adds to these denunciations of the Poor Law Act of Elizabeth, as carried out in 1805, the following: “If this clause were really and _bonâ fide_ put into execution, and the shame attending the receiving of parish relief worn off, every labouring man might marry as early as he pleased, under the certain prospect of having all his children properly provided for; and, as according to the supposition, there would be no check on population from the consequences of poverty after marriage, the increase of population would be rapid beyond example in old States. After what has been said in the former part of this work, it is submitted to the reader whether the utmost exertions of the enlightened government could, in this case, make the food keep pace with the population, much less a more arbitrary effort, the tendency of which is certainly rather to diminish than to increase the funds for the maintenance of productive labour.”

In the year 1880 it was found by the census of our most flourishing colony of New Zealand that the population of those fertile islands had actually been able to double in eleven years. But, as Mr. Malthus observes: “After a country has once ceased to be in the peculiar situation of a new colony, we shall always find that in the actual state of its cultivation, or in that state which may rationally be expected from the most enlightened government, the increase of its food can never allow for any length of time an unrestricted increase of population, and, therefore, the due execution of the clause in the 43rd of Elizabeth, as a permanent law, is a physical impossibility.”

One only circumstance, Mr. Malthus seems to think, in the administration of the English Poor Laws at the commencement of this century prevented them from plunging the country into ruin. This was the condition that they contained that each parish should maintain its own poor. “As each parish,” he says, “is obliged to maintain its own poor, it is naturally fearful of increasing their numbers, and every land-holder is, in consequence, more inclined to pull down than to build cottages. This deficiency of cottages operates necessarily as a strong check to marriage, and this check is probably the principal reason why we have been able to continue the system of the poor laws so long.”

Mr. Malthus’ writings made such a powerful impression on the minds of his contemporaries, that in 1834 an entire revolution took place in the Poor Laws of England and Wales. Mr. Gladstone, in an admirable speech on Free Trade, delivered in Leeds in the summer of 1881, refers to the passing of this Act as the most beneficent change that had preceded the long and earnest struggle which immediately followed upon the principles of Free Trade, and which culminated in 1846 in the abolition of the duties on food supplies. Mr. John Stuart Mill is enthusiastic in his admiration of the Act of 1834. In his magnificent and well-known chapter on Popular Remedies for Low Wages (Book ij. chap. 12, § 2.), he thus speaks of the English Law of 1834:—

“To give profusely to the people, whether under the name of charity or of employment, without placing them under such influences that prudential motives shall act powerfully upon them, is to lavish the means of benefiting mankind without attaining the object. Leave the people in a situation in which their condition manifestly depends upon their number, and the greatest permanent benefit may be derived from any sacrifice made to improve the physical well-being of the present generation, and raise, by that means, the habits of their children. But remove the regulation of their wages from their own control; guarantee to them a certain payment, either by law or by the feeling of the community; and no amount of comfort that you can give them will make either them or their descendents look to their own self-restraint as the proper means for preserving them in that state. You will only make them indignantly claim the continuance of your guarantee to themselves, and their full complement of possible posterity.”

“On these grounds some writers have altogether condemned the English Poor Law, and any system of relief to the able-bodied, at least when uncombined with systematic legal precautions against over-population. The famous Act of the 43rd of Elizabeth undertook, on the part of the public, to provide work and wages for all the able-bodied; and there is little doubt that if the intent of that Act had been fully carried out, and no means had been adopted by the administrators of relief to neutralize its natural tendencies, the poor-rate would by this time have absorbed the whole net produce of the land and labour of the country.”

“It is not at all surprising, therefore, that Mr. Malthus and others should at first have concluded against all Poor Laws whatever. It required much experience, and careful examination of different modes of Poor Law management, to give assurance that the admission of an absolute right to be supported at the cost of other people could exist in law and in fact, without fatally relaxing the springs of industry and the restraints of prudence. This, however, was fully substantiated by the investigations of the original Poor Law Commissioners. Hostile as they are unjustly accused of being to the principle of legal relief, they are the first who fully proved the compatibility of any Poor Law in which a right to relief was recognised with the permanent interests of the labouring class and of posterity.”

“By a collection of facts, experimentally ascertained in parishes scattered throughout England, it was shown that the guarantee of support could be freed from its injurious effects upon the minds and habits of the people, if the relief, though ample in respect to necessaries, was accompanied with conditions which they disliked, consisting of some restraints on their freedom, and the privation of some indulgences.”

“Under this proviso it may be regarded as irrevocably established that the fate of no member of the community need be abandoned to chance; that society can and therefore ought to ensure every individual belonging to it against the extreme of want; that the condition, even of those who are unable to find their own support, need not be one of physical suffering, or the dread of it, but only of restricted indulgences and enforced rigidity of discipline. This is surely something gained for humanity, important in itself, and still more so as a step to something beyond; and humanity has no worse enemies than those who lend themselves, either knowingly or unintentionally, to bring odium on this law, or on the principles in which it originated.”

“In the actual circumstances of every country (says Malthus, p. 180,