a labourer ought to have was fixed, from time to time, by the price of the quartern loaf, which might vary from 6d. to 2s.[1]
By this system it was admitted that every man in the country had a right to an adequate maintenance, whether he was idle or industrious, honest or dishonest; and that he ought to receive public aid in proportion to the number of his family. English people are frightened at the word Socialism. Who ever conceived a worse type of Socialism than this?
When the Parliamentary Commission of 1833 inquired into the effect of this system, they could not find words strong enough to paint their dismay. They found the poor's rates in 1830 had reached an annual amount of six to seven millions sterling; that in some parts of the country, nearly all the labourers were paupers; that the rascally idler was better off than the honest and laborious; the latter, one after the other, being driven to the conviction that the man who worked hard was a fool; they found, however, that employers liked the system, because it enabled them to give low wages, knowing the deficiency would be made up by the parish.
Never, perhaps, in history has there been a state of things so ridiculously immoral.
X.
Descending into Hell.
In that remarkable parable— where Jesus Christ sets forth the judgment of the nations—He gives but one test of righteousness, and that test turns on the absolute identification of Himself with the poor and needy. "Forasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."
If this be so, what truer word can be said of the history just narrated than that "Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth crucified among us." And not only "crucified," but "dead and buried," His very soul being made an offering for sin. For that
- ↑ The highest price reached was 1s. 11d. during the scarcity of 1799.— Tooke's Prices, v. 77.
