WHIG DEFENCE OF THE "INEFFECTUAL."
A CONTEMPORARY, more inclined to criticism than to exposition, spins a longish lucubration upon a text taken from our last num- ber. We observed—"It may be a question whether there ought to be a provision for the poor; none, that if a provision be under- dertaken, it ought to be effectual": on which the Globe remarks— "Now whence arises the possibility of this question I For three hundred years, and something more, there has been this legal provision. How does it happen, at the end of that period, that it may still be a question, whether there ought to be Surely, if the Spectator is right in thinking that this may still be considered an open question, the reason must be that—for three hundred years—the provision for the poor has not been effectual.' We cannot conceive a doubt whether such a provision should be made, unless experience had seemed to show that it could not be made effectually. . . . We are compelled to suppose, then, that neither the 43d of Elizabeth, nor any succeeding statute, which made legal provision for the poor, made that provision effectua4 So protracted a failure suggests the question, whether such provision can effectually be made."
In the first -place, our acute contemporary wholly misses the question really stated in the sentence that he quotes. There is something amusing in the simplicity which can make so accom- plished a politician unaware of the fact, that many rigorous economists do consider a provision for the poor as an absolute evil,—a thankless, nasty affair, which is forced on us by ignorant prejudice, but which is best to be meddled with as little as pos- sible—not at all, if that were possible. But without going into that wide and primary question, there is another—what shall be the extent of the provision ; and whatever you determine—what- ever classes you include or exclude—there can, we think, be no question that what you do undertake should be performed effectually in the terms of the undertaking. The whole drift of the arguments in the Globe is, that as the country has been fail- ing for three hundred years, perhaps failure can't be helped; nay, perhaps it is as well to go on being ineffectual.
The question of whose existence the Globe makes such a studied wonderment—that of " a legal provision for the poor "—is taken for proof that there is doubt as to the practicability of an effectual relief for the poor : he maintains that the practicability has never been proved, and that therefore the existing statute is not to be blamed, "till the experience of this or any other country" "shall have afforded any practical and experimental evidence that it can be made so." Now we have never demanded a legal provision for the poor; and its practicability is a very wide question, more nearly allied to Communism than to the English Poor-law : but what we were considering was the English Poor-law as it stands, and the defects in its operation on the classes to which it does relate, from the confusion of those classes generally in one method of treatment. The inquiries of 1833-4 failed in investigating two branches of the complicated subjects then before the Commis- sioners—the practicability of making workhouses self-supporting, and the practicability of drawing a distinction between the desti- tute person and the pauper of malice prepense. We have never
blamed the Commissioners for that neglect, because the mattes before them was vast, and their attention was naturally directed
to other points, most especially to the practicability of keeping down the continually rising rates by repelling the rising tide of pauperism through measures for making the relief repulsive. But we maintain that the law as they improved it—and in many se. spects it was greatly improved—does fail in checking deliberate
pauperism, because it confounds the destitute with the fraudulent, and does fail in keeping down expenses, because it necessitates immense workhouse establishments for classes that need no such check, and because it has not settled the question whether or not it is practicable to make the workhouse self-supporting. As to evidence on these points, it does exist in sufficient abund: ance to establish a prima facie case for further inquiry. The Commissioners of 1833-4 were so much engaged in the endeavour to devise modes for repelling the whole body of paupers, that the necessity was not impressed upon them of drawing the distinction between the destitute and the voluntary pauper, by making a de- mand upon the poor-fund by the latter a 'distinct offence. The whole experience of the working of our Poor-laws, however, both before and after the change of 1834, attests the necessity of that dia. tinction ; which is recognized in Mr. Buller's minute of August last, on wayfarers and vagrants, and still more emphatically in the reception which that document has met with from Boards of Guardians, as being ineffectual for its purpose, without new en- actments of law and new powers for Guardians. At present you treat him who fraudulently seeks relief out of the poor-fund, and who is thus a criminal, half penally and half charitably ; and you treat him who is destitute through misfortune by the same half penal law : you distribute the punishment for the criminal half upon the offender and half upon the man injured. Again, the experience of Guardians has shown the supereroga- tory character of many " checks" in the case of aged people, who could be better and more economically maintained out of the house.
And there are many scattered evidences which justify, or rathee demand a further inquiry, whether or not the workhouse can be made self-supporting. In the case of the Glasgow Bridewell- before the distresses of 1842, which, we believe, induced the managers to make a change in deference to popular clamour against "competition "—we saw persons supported at a nett an- nual cost of 2/. a head, including the interest of the building debt and the whole expenses of the establishment. The teMpo- rary success of the workhouse at Eastbourne (reported in the vo- lume for 1843), where the paupers were employed in industrial occupations, the works of the Charlton paupers on Chat Moss (1843), and the local experiments in the Stockport Workhouse (1842), are but a few of many such evidences that warrant further inquiry—an investigation passed over in 1833-4, and wholly neglected in the subsequent fifteen years. We agree with the Globe that the practicability of making the law more perfect in these respects cannot be held as proved, till "expe- rience" "shall have afforded practical and experimental evidence that it can be made so " ; but we say that this country is as well able to make the "experiment," or at least to inquire, as any other, and that we cannot collect evidence to settle the questions of "three centuries," until we begin. Meanwhile, no inde- pendent reasoner can rest content with the potential conclusion, that perhaps it is inevitable, and perhaps desirable, to keep the law in a state that renders it "ineffectual."
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