Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land/Essay 8
ESSAY VIII.
I trust that it fully appears from the above evidence, even that of the Edinburgh Review, the great opponent of the poor-laws of England, that those laws, so generally reprobated at present, were not for 190 years attended with any of the oppressive and disastrous consequences which have of late years attended their administration. The cause of those evils must then be sought for in something extraneous to the laws themselves, some essential difference in the mode of administration, which I shall endeavour to point out. The evils may be traced to three sources.
1. The dishonest system pursued by the manufacturers and agriculturists, whereby they combine to reduce wages below the minimum necessary for the support of those they employ, and force the overseers to make up the difference.
2. The support, by a regular weekly stipend, of masses of able-bodied men, without exacting any labour in return, and without regard to character or conduct; whereby thieves, rogues, and pickpockets are enabled to live in idleness, and enjoy in many instances more of the necessaries of life than the honest and industrious poor; thus destroying all stimuli to industry or regard to character.
3. Supporting at a heavy expense the mothers of hosts of illegitimate children; thus offering a premium to lewdness.
Of each in turn: and first, of the dishonest combination to reduce wages.
"A practice had obtained, of labourers being engaged at half or even one-third of the usual rate of wages, upon an understanding with their employers, that the difference would be made up to them from the parochial funds."—Information received from his Majesty's Commissioners, as to the Administration of the Poor-laws, p. 163.
"The elders [a self-elected body of magistrates] of Hartland, in Devonshire, meet once in the beginning of the month, and dine at the parish expense, asking friends to dine with them. Some time after dinner, the paupers who cannot get work are brought in one by one, are put up to auction, and the elders bid according to the value they fix upon them; the difference with what is necessary for their subsistence being made up from the rates."—Idem, p. 166.
"By combining together, as they almost uniformly do, the farmers in agricultural parishes can reduce the rate of wages to any limit they please. They are enabled to do this, because the parish, by granting such a supplementary allowance to the labourer as will support him and his family, prevents him from emigrating to another district, as he would most certainly do, were his employers to attempt artificially to depress his wages in a county unfettered by this system."—E. R. vol. xlvii. p. 322.
"Its effect is to force the occupiers of villas, as well as shopkeepers, tradesmen, &c., or those who do not employ labourers, to pay a portion of the wages of those who do: and thus to place every farmer, who might be disposed to act on a more liberal system, in a relatively disadvantageous situation! The farmers are in this way led to encourage a system which fraudulently imposes a heavy burden upon others."—Ibid.
"Instead of securing a refuge for the really destitute, the poor-laws have been perverted in the southern counties to the very worst purposes: they have been made a means of reducing wages to the lowest level, of pauperising the whole population, and of throwing a large proportion of the expense of labour upon those who do not employ a single labourer. This perversion began in 1795."—E. R. vol. liii. p. 46.
"Persons who have no need of farm labour are obliged to contribute to the payment of work done for others. This must be the case wherever the labourers, necessarily employed by the farmers, receive from the parish any part of the wages, which, if not so paid, would be paid by the farmers themselves."—E. R. vol. liii. p. 50.
"And for what object are three fourths of mankind thus degraded and kept down? The immediate gain is the master's; but that is only a temporary advantage, followed by a train of bad consequences, from which the masters and the whole community suffer."—E. R. vol. xxii. p. 198.
"We have had silk-masters who have made rapid fortunes by giving their men low wages, and driving them on the parish for the rest of their means of subsistence."—Commissioners' Report on the Poor-laws, p. 277.
"Wherever this pernicious system has been fully matured, it has, as might have been anticipated, produced an entire revolution in the manners and habits of the working classes. Every incentive to individual exertion it has abolished; every motive of sobriety, steadiness, honesty, it has utterly destroyed. Among them exists no longer any anxiety about the interests of their employer, or any regard for their own character: for what motive is there to induce a labourer to work hard, when he is aware that he will be paid, not in proportion to the quantity of work done by him, but according to a general standard established in the parish!"—Q. R. vol. xxxiii. p. 449.
Next, of the support by the overseers of the idle, the lazy, the worthless, of thieves, and able-bodied rogues and vagabonds.
"The assistant-overseer and the other parish officer, allowed, that no attention whatever was ever paid to character; but that the most notorious drunkards swearers, and thieves, with wives and families, were all duly relieved by the arithmetic of the magistrates' scale. I asked them, if they never took these men before the bench for punishment. Their answer was that they had so often been reprimanded, and triumphed over, (to use their own expression), that they had given it up in despair, and relieved all alike, bad and good, meritorious and profligate."—Commissioners' Report, p. 108.
"The greatest thief in the parish has the magistrate's allowance; the honest but unfortunate, get nothing more."—Idem, p. 9
"Being secure of good wages for mere nominal work, the ill-disposed and idle throw themselves wilfully on the parish; the effect is most ruinous on the small householders, who, being already on the verge of pauperism, may be converted, by a slight addition to their burden, from payers to receivers of rates."—Idem, p. 15.
"In the month of December, 1832, four healthy young men, receiving from 12s. to 14s. per week from the parish, refused to work at thrashing for a farmer, at 2s. 6d. and a quart of ale per day; and the only punishment indicted on them by the parish officers, was taking off half a day's pay, 1s.!! at the same time, a poor widow, aged 75, could obtain but 1s. per week for her support from the vestry!!"—Idem, p. 16.
"Out-door paupers have nearly the same amount of wages allowed them without work, that could have been obtained by independent labourers by hard work; the pauper having in addition to the money payments, frequent allowances of clothes from the parish, and payments on account of rent, and 'other advantages!'"—Idem, p. 218.
"A man lately married a girl, who left her place for that purpose on Wednesday. They applied for relief on the Saturday. It will appear from the scale, that, on marriage there is an immediate increase of 3s. per week."—Idem, p. 3.
"There is a butcher who occupies, I think, 20 acres of land, who has five or six cows and a horse. A son of this butcher, an able-bodied man, is constantly on the parish."—Idem, p.84.
"So long as this continues a parish of its present small extent, with its present number of poor, the property must be an encumbrance to the proprietor; for he can expect no rent, the rates assessed upon the land far exceeding its value, amounting, as they last year have done, to more than 32s. in the pound at rack rent."—Idem, p. 88.
"Of this population [6468] there were 420 able-bodied persons receiving relief, 360 were regular, and 60 casual. A short time since, 1000 persons were receiving relief."—Idem, p. 186.
"The English peasant no longer looks on parish relief as a degradation: such a feeling is extinct."—Idem, p. 200.
"Mr. Cliff, the assistant-overseer of Burghfield parish, stated: 'Whilst the allowance system went on, it was a common thing for young people to come to me for parish relief two or three days after they were married: nay, I have had them come to me just as they came out of the church, and apply to me for a loaf of bread to eat, and for a bed to lie on that night!!"—Idem, p. 236.
"A woman says she was not bred up to work, and won't work; she does not even choose to knit; and during the last month she received 6s., 4s., 4s., and 3s. in the four weeks, week by week."—Idem, p. 121.
"Those labourers who have families, say, 'We can get 10s. or 12s. per week from the parish; why should we slave ourselves for this sum?"—Idem, p. 123.
"This system secures subsistence to all; to the idle as well as to the industrious; to the profligate as well as to the sober; and, as far as human interests are concerned, all inducements to obtain a good character are taken away."—E. R. vol. xlvii. p. 321.
Under the third head, the encouragement afforded to the mothers of illegitimate children, the following disgusting facts are abundantly sufficient.[1]
"A woman of Swaffham was reproached by the magistrate with the burdens that she had brought upon the parish, upon the occasion of her appearing before him to present the parish with her seventh bastard! She replied, 'I am not going to be disappointed in my company with men to save the parish.' This woman now receives 14 s, a week for her seven bastards, being two shillings a head for each. Mr. Sewell informed me that had she been a widow, with seven legitimate children, she would not have received so much by 4s. or 5s. a week, according to their scale of allowance to widows. A bastard child is thus about twenty-five per cent. more valuable to a parent than a legitimate one!!!"—Commissioners' Report, p. 393.
"One woman named Smith has three children by three different fathers. She has never been punished, and the parish allows her 6s. per week. Women are very rarely punished; has only known one or two instances in his memory of the parish. Bastards very common."—Idem, p. 394.
"An unmarried girl, upon leaving the workhouse after her fourth confinement, said to the master, 'Well, if I have the good luck to have another child, I shall draw a good sum from the parish, and with what I can earn myself, will be better off than any married woman in the parish."—Idem, p. 395.
"Bastardy is very much increasing in Badford; believes that one third of all the number applying to the parish, old and young, are bastards."—Idem, p. 396.
"Is bastardy pretty much the same in your parish as in the rest of the county?—Yes; very bad. There are two women who have four children each, and each by three different fathers. The order on the father varies, from 1s. 6d. to 3s. 6d., according to his circumstances. But the women extort money by threatening to swear the child first to one, then to another."—Idem, p. 385.
"In the first place, I appeal to the experience of all overseers in rural districts, whether the instances of marriages taking place among the labouring classes, without previous pregnancy, are not so very rare as to constitute no exception to the general assertion, that pregnancy precedes marriage."—Idem, p. 392.
"There are twenty-five bastards supported by the parish at 1s. 6d. per week."—Idem, p. 105.
"There are at the present time eleven bastards on the weekly list. The parish receives for two only.
"It is well known that for from £3 to £4, and a treat, many men consent to be sworn to as the fathers of illegitimate children, knowing that the parish cannot enforce payment against them, and that, generally speaking, it will not be attempted."—Idem, p. 122.
"Nine out of ten of the orders of removal which the parish receives, are cases of bastardy. Mr. Barnet knows whole families in the town which are bastards from generation to generation. He has observed that magistrates generally favour the mothers of bastards in their complaints against overseers."—Idem, p. 397.
"The English law has abolished female chastity, self-respect, proper pride, and all the charities of domestic life, derived from and connected with its existence. It has destroyed, likewise, the beneficial influence which this virtue in women reflects on the character of men."—Idem, p. 399.
"In referring to the printed lists, it will be observed, that out of sixty illegitimate children, the allowance from the father is only recovered for twelve."—Idem, p. 403.
"A woman has brought three illegitimate children on the parish, and for the last she was committed to prison for three weeks. She told the vestry that she would, if put to jail again, swear the child to the overseer: she is now pregnant a fourth time. This same individual says openly to the vestry, 'If you don't give me some relief (enough, in fact, to support her in idleness), I will bring you some more bastards to keep.'"—Idem, p. 122.
Philadelphia, July 10, 1833.
- ↑ I had strong doubts about the propriety of publishing the odious, offensive, and immoral statements under this head; and should have pretermitted them, but that it would be doing manifest injustice to the argument. The clamour against the poor laws arises wholly from a want of discrimination between their proper administration and their abuse. It is therefore imperiously necessary to display, in their utter deformity, the monstrous abuses by which a charitable, benevolent, and sagacious system has, after a period of 190 years' admirable administration, been degraded, dishonoured, and rendered so unpopular as to create a loud outcry for its abolition.