There is hardly a question connected with the march of civilization more difficult to answer satisfactorily than this: What is to be done with the Poor?
In our own day, when subdivision of labour has been carried to an unheard of extent, when property follows the natural law of accumulation in masses, and society numbers the proletarian as an inevitable unit among its constituents, the question presents itself in a threatening and dangerous form, with difficulty surrounding it on every side, and anarchy scowling in the background, hardly to be appeased or vanquished. But such circumstances as those we live under are rare, and almost unexampled in history: even the later and depraved days of Roman civilization offer but a very insufficient pattern of a similar condition[1007]. Above all it would
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be difficult to find any parallel for them in countries where land is abundant, and the accumulation of property slow: there may be pauperism in New York, but scarcely in the valley of the Mississippi. The cultivator may live hardly, poorly; but he can live, and as increasing numbers gather round him and form a market for his superfluous produce, he will gradually become easy, and at length wealthy. It is however questionable whether population will really increase very fast in an agricultural community where a sufficient provision is made for every family, and where there is an unlimited fund, and power of almost indefinite extension. On the contrary, it seems natural under these circumstances that the proportion between the consumers and the means of living should long continue to be an advantageous one, and no pressure will be felt as long as no effort is made to give a false direction to the energies of any portion of the community.
But this cannot possibly be the case in a system which limits the amount of the estate or hýd. Here a period must unavoidably arise where population advances too rapidly for subsistence, unless a manufacturing effort on an extensive scale is made, and made with perfect freedom from all restraints, but those which prudence and well-regulated views of self-interest impose. If want of rapid internal communication deprive the farmer of a market, and compel him to limit his produce to the requirements of his own family, there cannot be a doubt not only that he will be compelled to remain in a stationary and not very easy position,
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but that a difficulty will arise as to the disposal of a redundant population. Many plans have been devised to meet this difficulty; a favourite one has been at all times, to endeavour to find means of limiting population itself, instead of destroying all restrictions upon occupation. The profoundest thinkers of Greece, considering that a pauper population is inconsistent with the idea of state, have positively recommended violent means to prevent its increase[1008]: infanticide and exposition thus figure among the means by which Plato and Aristotle consider that full and perfect citizenship is to be maintained. I have already touched upon some of the means by which our forefathers attempted this regulation: emigration was as popular a nostrum with them as with us: service in the comitatus, even servitude on the land, were looked to as an outlet, and slavery probably served to keep up something of a balance: moreover it is likely that a large proportion of the population were entirely prevented from contracting marriage: of this last
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number the various orders of the clergy, and the monks must have made an important item. It is even probable that the somewhat severe restrictions imposed upon conjugal intercourse may have had their rise in an erroneous view that population might thus be limited or regulated[1009]. But still, all these means must have furnished a very inadequate relief: even the worn-out labourer, especially if unfree, must have become superfluous, and if he was of little use to his owner, there was little chance of his finding a purchaser. What provision was made for him?
The condition of a serf or an outlaw from poverty is an abnormal one, but only so in a Christian community. In fact it seems to me that the State neither contemplates the existence of the poor, nor cares for it: the poor man’s right to live is derived from the moral and Christian, not from the public law: so little true is the general assertion that the poor man has a right to be maintained upon the land on which he was born. The State exists for its members, the full, free and independent citizens, self-supported on the land; and except as self-supported on the land it knows no citizens at all. Any one but the holder of a free hýd must either fly to the forest or take service, or steal and become a þeóv. How the pagan Saxons contemplated this fact it is impossible to say, but at the period when
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we first meet with them in history, two disturbing causes were in operation; first the gradual loosening of the principle of the mark-settlement, and the consequent accumulation of landed estates in few hands; secondly the operation of Christianity.
This taught the equality of men in the eye of God, who had made all men brothers in the mystery of Christ’s passion. And from this also it followed that those who had been bought with that precious sacrifice were not to be cast away. The sin of suffering a child to die unbaptized was severely animadverted upon. The crime of infanticide could only be expiated by years of hard and wearisome penance; but the penance unhappily bears witness to the principle,—a principle universally pagan, and not given up, even to this day, by nations and classes which would repudiate with indignation the reproach of paganism, though thoroughly imbued with pagan habits. In the seventh century we read of the existence of poor, and we read also of the duty of assisting them. But as the State had in fact nothing to do with them, and no machinery of its own to provide for them, and as the clergy were ex officio their advocates and protectors, the State did what under the circumstances was the best thing to do, it recognized the duty which the clergy had imposed upon themselves of supporting the poor. It went further,—it compelled the freeman to supply the clergy with the means of doing it.
In the last years of the sixth century, Gregory the Great informed Augustine that it was the custom of the Roman church to cause a fourth part of
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all that accrued to the altar from the oblations of the faithful to be given to the poor; and this was beyond a doubt the legitimate substitute for the old mode of distribution which the Apostles and their successors had adopted while the church lurked in corners and in catacombs, and its communicants stole a fearful and mysterious pleasure in its ministrations under the jealous eyes of imperial paganism. As soon however as the accidental oblations were to a great degree replaced by settled payments (whether arising out of land or not[1010]), and these were directed to be applied in definite proportions, we may venture to say that the State had a poor-law, and that the clergy were the relieving officers. The spirit of Gregory’s injunction is that a part of all that accrues shall be given to the poor; and this applies with equal force to tithes, churchshots, bóts or fines, eleemosynary grants, and casual oblations. In this spirit, it will be seen, the Anglosaxon clergy acted, and we may believe that no inconsiderable fund was provided for distribution. The liability of the tithe is the first point upon which I shall produce evidence. The first secular notice of this is contained in the following law of Æðelred, an. 1014:—“And concerning tithe, the
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king and his witan have chosen and said, as right it is, that the third part of the tithe which belongs to the church, shall go to the reparation of the church, and a second part to the servants of God, and the third to God’s poor and needy men in thraldom[1011].”
But if positive public enactment be rare, it is not so with ecclesiastical law, and the recommendations of the rulers of the Anglosaxon church. The Poenitentials, Confessionals, and other works compiled by these prelates for the guidance and instruction of the clergy abound in passages wherein the obligation of providing for the poor out of the tithe is either assumed or positively asserted. In the ‘Capitula et Fragmenta’ of Theodore, dating in the seventh century, it is written, “It is not lawful to give tithes save unto the poor and pilgrims[1012],” which can hardly mean anything but a prohibition to the clergy, to make friends among the laity by giving them presents out of the tithe; but which shows what were the lawful or legitimate uses of tithe. Again he says[1013],—“If any one administers
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the xenodochia of the poor, or has received the tithes of the people, and has converted any portion thereof to his own uses,” etc.
In the Excerptions of archbishop Ecgberht we find the following canon:—“The priests are to take tithes of the people, and to make a written list of the names of the givers, and according to the authority of the canons, they are to divide them, in the presence of men that fear God. The first part they are to take for the adornment of the church; but the second they are in all humility, mercifully to distribute with their own hands, for the use of the poor and strangers; the third part however the priests may reserve for themselves[1014].”
In the Confessional of the same prelate we find the following exhortation, to be addressed by the priest to the penitent:—“Be thou gentle and charitable to the poor, zealous in almsgiving, in attendance at church, and in the giving of tithe to God’s church and the poor[1015].”
In the canons enacted under Eádgár, but which are at least founded upon an ancient work of Cummianus, there is this entry:—“We enjoin that the priests so distribute the people’s alms, that they do both give pleasure to God, and accustom the people to alms[1016];” to which however there is an addition which can scarcely well be understood of anything but tithe: “and it is right that one part be delivered to the priests, a second part for the need of the church, and a third part for the poor.”
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The Canons of Ælfríc have the same entry, and the same mode of distribution as those of Ecgberht: “The holy fathers have also appointed that men shall pay their tithes into God’s church. And let the priest go thither, and divide them into three: one part for the repair of the church; the second for the poor; the third for God’s servants who attend to the church[1017].”
Thus according to the view of the Anglosaxon church, ratified by the express enactment of the witan, a third of the tithe was the absolute property of the poor. But other means were found to increase this fund: not only was the duty of almsgiving strenuously enforced, but even the fasts and penances recommended or imposed by the clergy were made subservient to the same charitable purpose. The canons enacted under Eádgár provide[1018], that “when a man fasts, then let the dishes that would have been eaten be all distributed to God’s poor.” And again the Ecclesiastical Institutes declare[1019]: “It is daily needful for every man that he give his alms to poor men; but yet when we fast, then ought we to give greater alms than on other days; because the meat and the drink, which we should then use if we did not fast, we ought to distribute to the poor.”
So in certain cases where circumstances rendered the strict performance of penance difficult or impossible, a kind of tariff seems to have been devised, the application of which was left to the
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discretion of the confessor. The proceeds of this commutation were for the benefit of the poor. Thus Theodore teaches[1020]:—“But let him that through infirmity cannot fast, give alms to the poor according to his means; that is, for every day a penny or two or three.... For a year let him give thirty shillings in alms; the second year, twenty; the third, fifteen.”
Again[1021]:—“He that knows not the psalms and cannot fast, must give twenty-two shillings in alms for the poor, as commutation for a year’s fasting on bread and water; and let him fast every Friday on bread and water, and three forties; that is, forty days before Easter, forty before the festival of St. John the Baptist, and forty before Christmas-day. And in these three forties let him estimate the value or possible value of whatsoever is prepared for his use, in food, in drink or whatever it may be, and let him distribute the half of that value in alms to the poor,” etc.
When we consider the almost innumerable cases in which penance must have been submitted to by conscientious believers, and the frequent hindrances which public or private business and illness must have thrown in the way of strict performance, we may conclude that no slight addition accrued from this source to the fund at the disposal of the church for the benefit of the poor. Even the follies and vices of men were made to contribute their quota
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in a more direct form. Ecgberht requires that a portion of the spoil gained in war shall be applied to charitable purposes[1022]; and he estimates the amount at no less than a third of the whole booty. Again, it is positively enacted by Æðelred and his witan that a portion of the fines paid by offenders to the church should be applied in a similar manner: they say[1023], that such money “belongs lawfully, by the direction of the bishops, to the buying of prayers, to the behoof of the poor, to the reparation of churches, to the instruction, clothing and feeding of those who minister to God, for books, bells and vestments, but never for idle pomp of this world.”
More questionable is a command inculcated by archbishop Ecgberht, that the over-wealthy should punish themselves for their folly by large contributions to the poor[1024]: “Let him that collecteth immoderate wealth, for his want of wisdom, give the third part to the poor.”
Upon the bishops and clergy was especially imposed the duty of attending to this branch of Christian charity, which they were commanded to exemplify in their own persons: thus the bishops are admonished to feed and clothe the poor[1025], the clerk who possessed a superfluity was to be excommunicated
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if he did not distribute it to the poor[1026], nay the clergy were admonished to learn and practise handicrafts, not only in order to keep themselves out of mischief and avoid the temptations of idleness, but that they might earn funds wherewith to relieve the necessities of their brethren[1027]. Those who are acquainted with the MSS. and other remains of Anglosaxon art are well-aware how great eminence was attained by some of these clerical workmen, and how valuable their skill may have been in the eyes of the wealthy and liberal[1028].
Another source of relief remains to be noticed: I mean the eleemosynary foundations. It is of course well known that every church and monastery comprised among its necessary buildings a xenodochium, hospitium or similar establishment, a kind of hospital for the reception and refection of the poor, the houseless and the wayfarer. But I allude more particularly to the foundations which the piety of the clergy or laics established without the walls of the churches or monasteries. Æðelstán commanded the royal reeves throughout his realm to feed and clothe one poor man each: the allowance was to be, from every two farms, an amber of meal, a shank of bacon, or a ram worth fourpence, monthly, and clothing for the whole year. The reeves here intended must have been the bailiffs (villici, praepositi, túngeréfan) of the
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royal vills; and, if they could not find a poor man in their vill, they were to seek him in another[1029]. In the churches which were especially favoured with the patronage of the wealthy and powerful, it was usual for the anniversary of the patron to be celebrated with religious services, a feast to the brotherhood and a distribution of food to the poor, which was occasionally a very liberal one. In the year 832 we learn incidentally what were the charitable foundations of archbishop Wulfred. He commanded twenty-six poor men to be daily fed on different manors, he gave each of them yearly twenty-six pence to purchase clothing, and further ordered that on his anniversary twelve hundred poor men should receive each a loaf of bread and a cheese, or bacon and one penny[1030].
Oswulf, who was duke of East Kent at the commencement of the ninth century, left lands to Canterbury charging the canons with doles upon his anniversary: twenty ploughlands or about twelve hundred acres at Stanstead were to supply the canons and the poor on that day with one hundred and twenty wheaten loaves, thirty of pure wheat, one fat ox, four sheep, two flitches, five geese, ten hens, ten pounds of cheese (or if it happened to be a fastday, a weigh of cheese, fish, butter and eggs ad libitum), thirty measures of good Welsh ale, and a tub of honey or two of............