THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO THE POOR.
IF all men in a State were well-off, and almost equally welloff—as might happen, though it has not happened yet— would the majority have any claims ? The question will sound to most readers a little ridiculous, or even unintelligible ; but there are men in England, and men of influence too, to whom it should be a serious one. Their democracy is really partisanship for the poor. They are so impressedwith the miseries of poverty, the claims of poverty, and the disadvantages of poverty, that for them the poor of England --we do not mean the paupers—are the People of England ; and they judge every question with reference mainly to the result of the decision upon persons with less than £2 a week. They hardly regard other classes, and fall gradually into a condition of suspicious irritability, perpetually believing that the " rights " of their favourite corporation, which is to them almost a Church, are being disregarded. So far as this spirit leads them to insist upon legal equality, and equality in taxpaying, and the rmuoval of disabilities arising from poverty, we have nothing to say, and are, in fact, when a substantive question comes up, strongly -on that side. Justice, for example, is a right of all persons in a community ; and consequently it is right that men should be allowed to plead in • formd pauperis, and it might be right, but for practical difficulties, to abolish all fees of Court whatever, and to distribute justice without any special tax. That was Bentham's dream; and as a counsel of perfection we should raise no cavil, except that litigation is in itself a mode of war, and bad, not good, and that legal debts would often be resisted if resisting them in Court did not entail costa. It is most just that the poor should pay no more taxes than the rich ; and, therefore, an income-tax, or a " death-duty " on property, unless shown to press too heavily on the wages-fund, is right, the poor without it paying too large a proportion of their wages. And it is just that primary education, by which we mean the power of acquiring education,—the three R's, in fact,—should be placed within the reach of all, as without it they could net use even their equal rights. So far we are clear, though we see some of the inconvenient consequences of these principles,—as, for example, the curious questions that might be raised about equality of taxation upon the luxuries of the rich and the poor ; but many of the new Radical philanthropists go much further than this. Some undoubtedly would "moralise wealth" compulsorily—that is, would compel men by law as far as possible, and by the pressure -of an angry opinion, to treat all their surplus wealth as a sort of .trust-fund for the poor. They would, in effect, make it imIpossible for any one to eat pines until all had apples. The Echo goes even further than this ; and on Thursday held up Mrs. Harold Browne, the wife of the Bishop of Winchester, to detestation, because she suggested a minute subscription from the ladies of Hampshire for a wedding-gift to Princess Beatrice. The money should, it is intimated, be given to the poor. Judas Iscariot said the same thing. The effect of such advice, so enforced by popular clamour, would be first of all to annihilate property, for property so held is only a harassing trust ; and, secondly, to establish a new morality Wholly alien from the Christian, which, in making of theft a great crime, and of charity a great virtue, implicitly declared propeity0if rightfully held, to be also freely held. (Indeed, in the parable of the labourers, Christ went farther than this,
explicitly maintaining the right of the employer to pay low wages, if only previously agreed on.) For many men, charity is by no means the best employment of money, either in their own mental interests or the concrete interests of the poor, they being better men while employing their money in active work, while the poor are the better for the work distributed. The only duty towards the poor which the State has a right to make compulsory—beyond those implied above—is the duty of keeping them alive, which is moral as well as political ; and the duty of keeping them in health, which is, besides being kindly, visibly expedient. We perform these duties in England pretty nearly, though some forms of aid, surgical aid in particular, might be more liberally given, and though an argument for a free grant of pure water might be defensible ; but to go beyond this, and especially to go beyond it in the direction of relaxing obligations, is not to do a duty to the poor, bat to raise them into a new privileged, and therefore unjust, class. When Mr. Chamberlain says that poor parents should not pay anything for their children's education, he may conceivably be right on grounds of expediency,—at least, till an educated generation has arisen ; but he is all the same granting a privilege, such as was once granted in many Colleges to "founders' kin," and which, if granted to a minority, he would bitterly resent. He would say, for example, if anybody proposed to educate the children of public benefactors for nothing, that public benefactors must fulfil their natural obligations voluntarily incurred. Very good ; then why not the poor? Poverty is no charter of release from human obligations, any more than from human necessities. Providence does not exempt the poor from toothache, or give them fewer children than other people. The project which has entered into many minds of exempting the poor wholly from taxation—as could be done in England, but for the liking for alcohol—is positively evil ; the exemption of a poor class from a bounden duty being as evil as the old exemption of nobles or clerics. The State probably gives more protection to the poor than the rich, for the rich could hire guards or pay black-mail ; and the poor have, like the rich, a peremptory obligation towards the community. The true object is not to release the poor from their duties, but to see that an unfair share of duties is not put on their shoulders,—an object which should be equally kept in view about the rich. The freeholder or landlord can be robbed just as much as the crossing-sweeper, and has just the same right to exemption from robbery.
The worst form of relaxation suggested in the interest of the poor is, however, another. We see traces of a feeling everywhere, and sometimes see suggestions, that the poor are not equally bound with the rich to discharge pecuniary obligations, and that the State should not compel them to do it. It is said, for example, that the State should not help in the eviction of a poor tenant ; that it should not force payment of high interest on small loans even under contract ; that it should itself conduct the pawnbroking business for the poor at three per cent. ; and that it should greatly diminish the powers of the County Courts, especially as to imprisonments. We contend that the obligation to pay an agreed rent, or an agreed interest, or an agreed fine on redemption of a pledge, or an agreed amount of purchase-money, is exactly as peremptory on the poor as on the rich. Either may be bankrupt, of course, and either overcharged, and the State may grant relief in either case ; but it must give the same relief to all. The man who exacts the rent may be hard, or unkind, or even, in extreme cases, almcst a criminal for exacting it ; but his right is clear, and the State cannot consider his motives. The State may exempt the homestead from seizure, or distraint, or entry for debt, as we believe it does in some States of the Union ; but then it must do it for all, and with notice that it is about to do it. To announce, as it does now, that it will levy debts if payment is refused, and then decline to levy them because the debtor is poor, is breach of faith, and, in fact, robbery of the Haves for the benefit of the Havenots. There is nothing whatever in poverty to justify a man in buying a chair and not paying for it, or in hiring a room and not paying the rent if he has the money, any more than there is to justify him in stealing the chair or forcibly entering the house. Positive inability is recognised, and properly, by the law ; but if comparative want of means justifies non-payment, why is it wrong for a small tradesman to cheat a diamonddealer of his gems, or for anybody whatever to forge upon Messrs. Rothschild ? The argument that a man must have shelter is true ; but the claim for shelter is on • the community, not on the individual landlord, who ought no more to be robbed of his rent by what is virtually a special
tax, than the baker ought to be robbed of his bread, or the little dealer of his salt. Both those articles are as indispensable as the shelter. To justify such conduct is to dethrone justice altogether, and substitute for it not pity—for there is no pity felt for the wronged creditor—but unreasonable feeling for class. It is, moreover, to inflict frightful injury upon the poor. Already they are heavily overcharged for rooms, goods, and loans ; and the reason is that it is so hard to get payment from them, and bad debts are so many. Exonerate the poor from their liabilities, or even create an impression that they will be favoured by Courts in settling them, and charges must be doubled. If a man can get a guinea an acre for a farm of a hundred acres, in one block, be must already charge 30s. an acre for a hundred patches, merely to recoup expenses and risks ; but if, besides these, the hundred tenants of single acres are to pay or not as they will, five pounds an acre would not make the owner equally secure. The loss of credit taxes the poor far more heavily than the rich, and every relaxation of the law tends to loss of credit. The power of imprisoning possessed by the Small-Cause Court—though we fully admit indefensible in argument, unless strictly limited to those who can pay, but will not—probably saves the poor upon many classes of things twenty per cent, all round. It is not, however, on the argument from expediency—though that is irresistible—that we uphold impartial procedure, but on that of morality, which draws,and can draw, no distinction between rich and poor. If the " cadger " agreed to pay, and can pay, he is bound to pay as much as the millionaire ; and to refuse to make him pay, except upon the ground of inability, is for the State a breach of faith.
A good many of our readers will, we imagine, think we are repeating old platitudes without necessity,—reprinting the Commandments, as the old news-writers used to do, rather than leave blank spaces ; but they do not read as many newspapers or as many philosophic Radical speeches as we are forced to do. We do not apprehend that much harm will be done, for there is a rough common-sense among Englishmen, as well as a rough morality, which will keep them from excesses in the direction of the idea that property is theft. But we do fear that there may be a struggle on some points, such as the right of eviction ; that the enjoyment of property will be seriously lessened ; and that the rich will be driven out of their present kindly feeling for the poor into the feeling we notice on the Continent, where each man regards his debtor, and especially his tenant, as his enemy, and insists on the utmost rigour of the law. Who will remit rent in bad years, if in good years he is only to have his rent if the tenant chooses, and to be pointed out as a villainous oppressor because he asks for it ?
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