10 OCTOBER 1846, Page 14

POOR-LAW REFORM.

NATURE OF A REAL POOR-LAW.

POVERTY is a misfortune incident to the bulk of every people voluntary pauperism is a social offence—a species of industrial. bankruptcy spontaneously incurred. The two things are quite distinct ; and therefore the legal enactments relating to them should also be distinct. Those enactments need not be separated. in different statutes ; for as pauperism is an offence te which the poor especially are prone, it may well be considered as part of a general law relating to the poor. But in that case, the general. law should have two totally distinct functions,—an aiding or en-, abling function, and one restrictive and penal.

No one will deny that if there be a poor-law it ought to be

effectual for its purpose; some may deny that them ought to be any law for the aid f the poor. Let us meet that objection before we proceed : let us consider what right the poor have to relief. The right will not be denied by many at this day ; but it is better that it should be thoroughly sifted, rather than suffered to rest on mere good feeling weakened by doubts as to the sub- stantial beneficence of aid.

The right to relief is denied by the fundamental position of the sect in political economy called after Mr. Malthus. Their leader lays down the principle thus-

" A man born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents, and if society does not want his labour, has no claim of rightto the

smallest portion of food; and, in fact, has no business to be where be is. At mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She Mlle him to be gone} and will quickly execute. her own orders if he do not-work upon the companion

of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appar, demanding the same favour." There is as much dogmatic presumption in this passage as in any of the unreasoning dogmas which it was meant to supersede. Without at all concurring in the abuse heaped on the head of Mr. Malthus, it is easy enough to descry the flaws in his social theory. His ingenious and striking work drew attention to some very interesting problems which ought not to be neglected ; but the writer made small way towards a solution, because he had not sufficient data derived from observation and reflection. That he hurried prematurely to conclusions, is merely to say that he shared a propensity common to all active minds. The passage quoted above is full of presumptions. Some lie upon the very surface. It is presumed that you can ascertain the precise number for whom Nature has "vacant covers " ; that any existing generation is a distinct and ascertainable occupant, undisturbed by the changes of birth and death ; that the individual man too many can be distinguished from the rest. It is assumed that "Nature " makes a distinction between the superfluous unlabouring rich man, who is suffered to occupy a prominent place at the " mighty feast," and the superfluous poor man, whom she tells to be gone—kills with starvation and the diseases of poverty. It is assumed that the intentions of " Nature" and the results of an artificial state of society are the same thing.

It is remarkable that the passage which we have quoted above— often cited, often assailed—has been withdrawn from the later

editions of Mr. Malthus's essaK ; as though the author shrank from standing by that true but distinct and emphatic summary of his theory.

Presumptions may be pardoned in a theoretical and spe- culative book, but the modest and earnest statesman will not venture to act upon them. Until such refinements are proved by reasoning much more severe than any in Mr. Malthus's volumes, the true statesman will act upon much simpler views. He will not hazard distinctions as to the right of his fellow creatures to exist. If he were to do that, the readiest, the most effective, and the most rational poor-law, would be an act of decimation. The statesman appointed by the people to manage for them will do

the best that he can for all. He will reflect, that civilization is presumed to be good because it is presumed on the whole to

better the condition of all. In a state of nature, each one born upon the land is endowed with the chance of getting his share of produce out of the land by the sweat of his brow. In this coun- try, were each soul of the present population to enjoy his share of the land, he would have about two and a quarter acres—each family would have its dozen acres or so. But where there is no law, there is confusion ; the strong oppresses the weak ; and the chance of enjoying the two and a quarter acres, or the produce thereof, would be precarious. Moreover, in various ways, the

tollssession of the land as property increases its productive power, or the benefit of society at large, not exceptingthe labouringclass. The amount actually realized by the aggregate sixteen millions of population from the thirty-six millions of acres in England and

Wales exceeds beyond all comparison what would be the aggregate produce of the land divided into two-and-a-quarter or twelve-acre parcels. Society therefore debars the man from the land upon which he is born, undertaking to give him more than the equiva- lent. What is the equivalent I—Society, perfectly constructed, would insure to the poor man subsistence in return for labour. All human institutions, however, are imperfect ; and in this arti- ficial institution of property in land, it often happens that the

poor man fails to attain his equivalent. To remedy that imper- fection, to give that security, we take to be the office of a poor- law. Such was the principle of the Forty-third of Elizabeth.

To that purpose the poor-law should be limited. It should not attempt to regulate morals on other points, but should leave them to the appropriate influences or penalties. What better education cannot effect may elsewhere be attempted by penalties—such, for example, as the disqualifications which attach to illicit maternity. But the enabling part of the poor-law should look alone to the two points—destitution, and willingness to work. The plan of spurring on the working classes to industry by making the workhouse diet a foil to domestic diet, is an attempt quite beyond the true province of a poor-law. It is imprac- ticable, because authorities cannot safely declare, of malice pre- pense, that they will give to the destitute poor worse food than that with which the independent labourer must often be content : snch food tends to deteriorate the physical faculties; which it is neither just nor politic for a poor-law expressly to do. Insuffi- cient diet may even in itself amount to a claim to aid ; and for the poor-law to run a race with poverty in identical results, is manifestly absurd. It will give a sufficient and wholesome, therefore a moderately and reasonably palatable subsistence, in return for a fair amount of work.

In like manner, a poor-law will properly make no attempt at regulating the general rate of wages. It can only do so in a negative, indirect, and ineffective way. The whole amount of a

nation's resources may fairly be taken into the consideration as an element in calculating what relief a country can afford to allow its poor ; but that is a separate matter. Wages are regulated by supply and demand, and every attempt at interfering with that proper and natural kind of regulation must be very imperfect Whatever legislators may do, it is better for the administrators of a poor-law to take no account of wages, but to consider solely the condition of the applicant for relief and his willingness to A poor-law should not enforce on poverty the test of confine- ment or of separation from kindred; because those are testa which do not apply, and are mischievous in their operation. The free man will often prefer starvation to confinement ; and that love of independence it should be the object of a poor-law to foster rather than check. A well-devised poor-law would spare rather than seek to fix upon the poor man receiving relief the disgrace and humiliation of avowed pauperism. The love of kindred is the most powerful and sacred spur to independent industry to break through that feeling when the spirits are already broken by excessive poverty, is to manufacture paupers ; while to hold it out as a penalty marred by the mere act of asking relief, is to frighten some of the most deserving and really independent poor into the endurance of helpless destitution. To the confirmed and de- based pauper, independence and love of kindred are shadows, scarcely known by name : he breaks windows in the workhouse, that he may be transferred to the better diet of a prison. These tests therefore do not really mete what they are meant to gauge; and they work most mischievously where they operate most powerfully. Confirmed pauperism—that is, the permanent reliance for sup- port upon parish-relief by those who are able to procure a sub- sistence through independent exertion—is a social offence. None are more interested in the restraint of pauperisin than the industrious poor : for every thing which tends to cripple the re- sources of the country must injure them ; the spread of pau- perism has a direct tendency to demoralize and enfeeble their own class ; and the state of the pauper is one so far resembling their own, that throughout her legislation on the subject Eng- land has made no distinction. Visit the offence penally, but treat it distinctly. Give to the industrious but destitute poor man

i subsistence in return for work. If a man be guilty of pauperism, pronounce him so by a judicial act. Do not, as the present law' does, presume the offence on the part of the whole poor. In order not to visit even the pauper too harshly, it would be easy to arrange some mode of pronouncing upon his case so as to make the accusation flow from his own act. For instance, let every industrious man applying for relief obtain from the proper authority a certificate that he is not a pauper ; the refusal of the certificate conjointly with an act ofpauperism to have a disquali- fying effect. The pauper, so proclaimed, should be, for a term at least, at the disposal of the state, to be detained and otherwise treated, under express regulations, as may seem best to protect the general interests of society against the example, vagrancy; and extortion of the confirmed pauper. In this way would cease those practices of playing fast and loose with authority, those

shameless i bravings of workhouse-regulations, those abandon- ments to all licence in the face of prohibition, which arise under the present law ; because, as the pauper is confounded with the poor man, he can claim and abuse that modicum of liberty which cannot be denied to the poor man. It follows that the labour offered to the poor man applying for relief ought not to have a penal effect—it ought not to be too se: vere. It ought not to be more than a fair accompaniment of the sufficient subsistence tendered with it. It ought not to be work pro formd—for that is exasperating and humiliating to the spirit--1 but substantially useful labour. Two objections have been taken to the performance of real labour by those receiving parish-re, lief,—that it takes work from the independent labourer, and that it tends to force up wages by subtracting hands from the labour. market. These two objections might almost be left to destroy each other. The poor need not complain of a law which, though indirectly subtracting a portion of employment from the market, would secure to the labourer, at the worst, a " fair day's wage for a fair day's work." If the operation of such a law tended to raise wages, so much the better, not only for the workman, not only for the rate-payers, but for the whole country ; the bulk of whose population would be placed in so much the more comfortable con- dition. Nor can it be said that such a law would obstruct the fair working of free competition : it would simply make comps, tition really free, by taking from the employing class, so far at it had any sensible effect, the screw of the penalties for pauperism which are now inflicted on destitution.

Under a just poor-law, we should no longer see such shameful spectacles as the forcing into "the house" of an aged rate-payer whose destitution was caused by absolute incapacity for effective labour—as the sick herded with the idle, the young with the dis- solute. A just law would make some adequate provision for those really "impotent" poor without classing them as paupers or treating them penally. Another important provision would be made by an effective law: The sweeping destitution which at times visits whole classes or districts is temporary, and has been actually met by virtual sus/ pensions of the regular poor-law ; whereas it ought to be met by the most energetic working of the law. With permanent mar chinery and resources, the poor-law ought to make provision for severe temporary exertion. We have touched upon the principles of a law to aid the poor over difficulties, to secure the rights of the poor, to restrain pan.

perism, and to protect the rights of society against that offence : to enter into the details at present would be premature. The Legislature has no past experience in such a law, because the statute we have is not a real poor-law, nor even an efficient law' to restrain pauperism. "