Book iii.) the prolific power of nature seems always ready to exert

nearly its full force; but within the limit of possibility, there is nothing, perhaps, more improbable, or more out of the reach of any government to effect, than the direction of the industry of its subjects in such a manner as to produce the greatest quantity of sustenance that the earth could bear. It evidently could not be done without the most complete violation of the law of property, from which everything that is valuable to man has hitherto arisen. Such is the disposition to marry, particularly in very young people, that if the difficulties of providing for a family were entirely removed, very few would remain single at twenty-two. But what statesman or rational government could propose that all animal food should be prohibited, that no horses should be used for business or pleasure, that all people should live upon potatoes, and that the whole industry of the nation should be exerted in the production of them, except what was necessary for the mere necessaries of clothing and houses. Could such a revolution be effected, would it be desirable; particularly as, in a few years, notwithstanding all their exertions, want, with less resource than ever, would inevitably recur.”

“The attempts,” says our author, “to employ the poor on any great sale in manufactures have almost invariably failed, and the stock and materials have been wasted. In those few parishes which, by better management of larger funds, have been enabled to persevere in this system, the effect of these new manufactures in the market must have been to throw out of employment many independent workmen, who were before engaged in fabrications of a similar nature. This effect has been placed in a strong point of view by Daniel De Foe, in an address to Parliament, entitled _Giving Alms no Charity_. Speaking of the employment of parish children in manufactories, he says, ‘For every skein of worsted these poor children spin there must be a skein the less spun by some poor family that spun it before.’ Sir F. M. Eden, on the same subject, observes, that whether mops and brooms are made by parish children or by private workmen, no more can be sold than the public is in want of.”

“It will be said, perhaps, that the same reasoning might be applied to any new capital brought into competition in a particular trade or manufacture, which can rarely be done without injuring, in some degree, those that were engaged in it before. But there is a material difference in the two cases. In this, the competition is perfectly fair, and what every man on entering his business must lay his account to. He may rest secure that he will not be supplanted, unless his competitor possess superior skill and industry. In the other case, the competition is supported by a great bounty, by which means, notwithstanding very inferior skill and industry on the part of his competitors, the independent workman may be undersold, and unjustly excluded from the market. He himself is made to contribute to this competition against his own earnings, and the funds for the maintenance of labour are thus turned from the support of a trade which yields a proper profit to one which cannot maintain itself without a bounty. It should be observed in general that when a fund for the maintenance of labour is raised by assessment, the greatest part of it is not a new capital brought into trade, but an old one, which before was much more profitably employed, turned into a new channel. The farmer pays to the poor’s rates for the encouragement of a bad and unprofitable manufacture what he would have employed on his land with infinitely more advantage to his country. In the one case, the funds for the maintenance of labour are daily diminished; in the other, daily increased. And this obvious tendency of assessments for the employment of the poor to decrease the real funds for the maintenance of labour in any country, aggravates the absurdity of supposing that it is in the power of a government to find employment for all its subjects, however fast they may increase.”

It is strange how the present generation begins to forget the truths that were clearly seen by the one immediately preceding. We have had a proof of this in the late agitation for Protection _versus_ Free Trade. And on November 5th, 1881, there was another example so given in the case of a deputation of ratepayers of Newington, who waited on Mr. Dodson, the President of the Local Government Board, to ask him to administer out-door relief instead of building a new workhouse at Champion Hill, at a cost of £200,000. The deputation, which actually contained a professor of political economy, Mr. Thorold Rogers, urged that the system of the workhouse test entailed a cost of 7s. a week to the parish, whereas, if persons were relieved at home, 3s. or 4s. would be all that would be required. Well might a French economist write an essay upon “things that are seen, and things that are not seen”!

Mr. Dodson, in his able reply to this deputation, tried to teach again the lesson taught by the Poor Law Commissioners in 1834, that the whole object and system of the Poor Law which was then established in this country was, that it should be strictly administered, with a view simply of testing and checking absolute destitution, and no means, no effectual means, had been devised, of so testing destitution, except by offering the house: and just in proportion as the poor-law was strictly administered, so in proportion the entrance to the house was insisted upon as the condition of relief. In the case of out-door relief it was impossible absolutely to test the case. Out-door relief could not be closely watched. They could not tell, when a man received relief, that he was not receiving aid from other sources, that he was not earning something for himself, and might possibly, if he were left to his own resources, earn more. This was a system, he said, which in that way acted as a check upon exertion and upon providence; and he need not say that anything which acted as a check on these could not result but in the increase of pauperism, the demoralisation of the working classes, and in increased charges upon the ratepayers. Of course, he knew that it was very tempting, when a case came before them, to relieve a man by out-door relief. They might give him 1s. 6d. and a loaf, or 2s.; and if they brought him into the house it would of course cost 4s. or 5s., and thus the ratepayers would not, for the moment, have so much to pay. But the system of the workhouse was not so expensive as that, for we knew that not more than one man in ten would go into the house. Where ten would accept out-door relief, they could not get more than one or two who would accept in-door relief. And, besides, they must further remember this, that if they increased the rates by this system, they were making the prudent and industrious man, who maintained himself and his family by his own labour, support the idlers and vagrants who did not make similar exertions. He knew how tempting it was to wish to save the money of the ratepayers, and at the same time to gratify the feelings of humanity to the poor by giving out-door relief, since it often appeared hard and cruel to compel people to enter the workhouse, and, as it was said, to “break up their homes.” But he, Mr. Dodson, reminded his hearers that, as guardians, they had the administration of the ratepayers’ money, and not the administration of a benevolent fund. They were not administering a Charity, but were the stewards for the ratepayers, and were bound to administer the Poor Law in the manner which, not superficially and for the moment, was the most really economical. The workhouse test was known by experience to be, in the long run, the only truly economical and feasible way of administering relief to the destitute. For what, he asked, was the whole history of the modern English Poor Law? What was the condition of England before 1830, when that law was loosely administered? It was a system ruinous to the indigent classes, and destructive to the ratepayers. The Poor Law Commissioners had shown that the only way in which the people could be guaranteed against starvation was by enforcing the workhouse test, and thus avoiding the creation of a pauper class too numerous to be alleviated.

It is gratifying to find that Mr. Dodson is so well instructed in the affairs of the office in which he holds sway. Doubtless, he is also aware of the grand difficulty which opposes all State assistance of the poor at their own houses, and which consists in the utter recklessness still so prevalent among the uneducated classes as to the size of their families. To give out-door relief in the present state of public opinion would merely be to offer a premium upon large families, and this could, of course, only result in early death, degradation of the family, and a relapse into barbarism. Even in Australia it has been found possible to raise up a pauper class by such unwise out-door doles, which are no charity at all, but merely a means to degrade and enslave the poorest classes.