THE SAFE ALTERNATIVE.
MHE subject of Poor Law reform is too vast to be treated in detail in a Spectator article. If, however, we were asked to indicate our alternative to the proposals embodied in the Minority Report Bill, we should say: " Go back to the principles of 1834, or, still better, to the principles of Robert Chalmers." Mr. Balfour talked about the useful- ness of making experiments. If he will read the Report of 1834, Chalmers's " Parochial System," and the rest of that great man's writings on the question of the relief of destitution by the State, he will find that before 1834 we made all the experiments now foreshadowed by him, and with disastrous results. Between the years 1794-1834 the " right to work," at any rate in rural districts, was fully conceded, with the result that our rural population was trodden into the mud. Though the paupers could sing— "Then drive away sorrow and banish all care,
For the Parish is bound to maintain ns "— and though no man, if he preferred idleness to work, need fear starvation, we robbed the poor of rural England of
their greatest asset, the asset of character and independ- ence. We made them the dole slaves of the State. We endowed them with a pauper taint which it took years to eradicate, but which, happily, has been eradicated. Yet we are now hankering to return to the old evil ways. The Commissioners of 1834 soon learnt from the evidence which they heard that poverty, in Chalmers's words, is a moral evil, and can only be cured by moral instruments. Yet we are asked to try once more the materialistic cure. Remember that the Minority Report in reality recommends a materialistic cure, although it is concealed under bureau- cratic aliases and scientific sophistries. By altering the name you do not alter the thing. A man who cannot support himself and his family, but has to take aid from the State, is a pauper, no matter whether he gets his aid in the workhouse, or whether he flits from public Committee to public Committee and picks up his doles from five different pauperising bodies. Chalmers in a passage as wise as it is eloquent speaks of the five fountains of benevolence. The Minority Report offers us as a substitute the five fountains of pauperisation. On some future occasion we shall deal more fully with what we hold that Parliament ought to do, but we may summarise our policy very shortly. In the first place, let us say that we reject altogether the notion that we must here and at once carry out the proposals of either the Minority or the Majority Report. We must do neither. To adopt the Minority Report either in whole or in part would be productive of the most terrible evils. To adopt the Majority Report as it stands would, in our opinion, be unwise,—though we admit the care and wisdom with which it was put together, and the soundness of the underlying principles. In the present condition of our finances, local and Imperial, to carry out the recommendations of the Majority Report in tote would mean a great increase in expenditure, though of course nothing like such a vast increase as would be required by the Minority Report. What we would do is this. We would accept the recommendations of the Committee which some four years ago dealt with the question of tramps and vagrants, and recommended their penal and reformatory treatment in labour colonies. Next, we would carry out the recommendations of the Commission on the feeble-minded, recommendations which may be roughly described as in favour of segregating the feeble-minded and preventing the horrible manufacture, or perhaps we should say breeding, of paupers which is involved in the system, or want of system, which we now pursue. Thirdly, we would deal at once on special lines with the question of London pauperism. The problem in London is a problem differing not only in degree but in kind from that of the rest of the country. We would place the administra- tion of the Poor Law in London in the hands of statutory Commissioners, on the analogy of the Metropolitan Police, and thereby get rid of all the Boards of Guardians which now dribble out Poor Law doles. We should thus auto- matically bring about the unification of the Poor-rate without the premiums upon thriftless expenditure which now exist. When once the Poor Law Commissioners were working throughout the Metropolitan area, we would make them the sole authority for dispensing State aid to the destitute, whether adults or children. After the experiment of administering the Poor Law in London by Commissioners had been at work for seven or eight years, we should have very useful data upon which to work when the time was ripe for dealing with the rest of the country.
Finally, we would improve and systematise Poor Law administration throughout the rest of the United Kingdom by developing the system of supervision which now exists. If necessary, we would increase the powers of the Local Government Board, and we would make those powers more effective by adding to the number of inspectors, and by giving them power to insist on Poor Law administration being regulated by certain fixed. principles. In cases where Boards of Guardians could not or would not make the necessary reforms, we would appoint an official Chairman whose business it should be to keep the Board up to the mark. We cannot enter here into all the details, but we are convinced that a very great deal might be done which is not now done by the Local Government Board to meet the very just criticisms of the Majority Report in regard to Poor Law administration by inefficient Boards of Guardians.
Before we leave the subject of the Poor Law we desire to call attention to an admirable pamphlet written by Sir Arthur Clay, and issued by the British Constitution Association, 23 Charing Cross. In recommending this pamphlet we are not recommending anything dry or technical. It is a clearly printed and admirably written brochure of some thirty pages, in which the true princi- ples of Poor Law reform are laid down. Those who are unacquainted with the principles of the 1834 Report will learn them here, and they will learn also much else that it is essential for them to know, written by one who is a master of his subject, and, what is still better, has a heart to feel for the miseries of the poor and the suffering. Let no man think that Sir Arthur Clay, or the band of men with whom he is associated, take the line they do in regard to Poor Law reform because they are cruel or stony- hearted pedants. When they protest against pauperisation it is because they know its horrors at first hand. They want to shield their countrymen from wretchedness and degradation, and they know that the only way to do so is to conserve the greatest of national assets,—the character and independence of the people. Here is Sir Arthur Clay's admirable summary of the lessons of the Report of 1834 :— " The lesson taught by this grievous experience was that State relief of the poor must—if social disaster is to be avoided—be so administered as to offer no temptation to men to apply for assistance, except when forced to do so by necessity. On this teaching was founded the great principle which inspired the Act of 1834."
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