Poor-Laws.—Work-Houses.—Sufferings of the Poor from the Climate.—Dangerous State of England during the Scarcity.—The Poor not bettered by the Progress of Civilization. With us charity is a religious duty, with the English it is an affair of law. We support the poor by alms; in England a tax is levied to keep them from starving, and, enormous as the amount of this tax is, it is scarcely sufficient for the purpose. This evil began immediately upon the dissolution of the monasteries. They who were accustomed to receive food at the convent door, where they could ask it without shame because it was given as an act of piety, had then none to look up to for bread. A system of parish taxation 295was soon therefore established, and new laws from time to time enacted to redress new grievances, the evil still outgrowing the remedy, till the poor-laws have become the disgrace of the statutes, and it is supposed that at this day a tenth part of the whole population of England receive regular parish pay.
The disposal of this money is vested in certain officers called overseers. The office is so troublesome that the gentry rarely or never undertake it, and it usually devolves upon people rather below the middle rank, who are rigidly parsimonious in the distribution of their trust. If they were uniformly thus frugal of the parish purse, it would be laudable, or at least excusable; but where their own enjoyments are concerned, they are inexcusably lavish of the money collected for better purposes. On every pretext of parish business, however slight, a dinner is ordered for the officers. While they indulge themselves they deal hardly by the poor, and give reluctantly 296what they cannot withhold. The beadsman at the convent door receives a blessing with his pittance, but the poor man here is made to feel his poverty as a reproach; his scanty relief is bestowed ungraciously, and ungraciously received; there is neither charity in him that gives, nor gratitude in him that takes. Nor is this the worst evil: as each parish is bound to provide for its own poor, an endless source of oppression and litigation arises from the necessity of keeping out all persons likely to become chargeable. We talk of the liberty of the English, and they talk of their own liberty; but there is no liberty in England for the poor. They are no longer sold with the soil, it is true; but they cannot quit the soil, if there be any probability or suspicion that age or infirmity may disable them. If in such a case they endeavour to remove to some situation where they hope more easily to maintain themselves, where work is more plentiful, or provisions cheaper, the overseers 297are alarmed; the intruder is apprehended as if he were a criminal, and sent back to his own parish. Wherever a pauper dies, that parish must be at the cost of his funeral: instances therefore have not been wanting, of wretches in the last stage of disease having been hurried away in an open cart upon straw, and dying upon the road. Nay, even women in the very pains of labour have been driven out, and have perished by the way-side, because the birth-place of the child would be its parish. Such acts do not pass without reprehension; but no adequate punishment can be inflicted, and the root of the evil lies in the laws.
The principle upon which the poor-laws seem to have been framed is this: The price of labour is conceived to be adequate to the support of the labourer. If the season be unusually hard, or his family larger than he can maintain, the parish then assists him; rather affording a specific relief, than raising the price of labour, because 298if wages were increased, it would injure the main part of the labouring poor instead of benefiting them: a fact, however mortifying to the national character, sufficiently proved by experience. They would spend more money at the alehouse, working less and drinking more, till the habits of idleness and drunkenness strengthening each other, would reduce them to a state of helpless and burthensome poverty. Parish pay, therefore, is a means devised for increasing the wages of those persons only to whom the increase is really advantageous, and at times only when it is really necessary.
Plausible as this may at first appear, it is fallacious, as all reasonings will be found which assume for their basis the depravity of human nature. The industrious by this plan are made to suffer for the spendthrift. They are prevented from laying by the surplus of their earnings for the support of their declining years, lest others not so provident should squander it. But 299the consequence is, that the parish is at last obliged to support both; for, if the labourer in the prime of his youth and strength cannot earn more than his subsistence, he must necessarily in his old age earn less.
When the poor are incapable of contributing any longer to their own support, they are removed to what is called the workhouse. I cannot express to you the feeling of hopelessness and dread with which all the decent poor look on to this wretched termination of a life of labour. To this place all vagrants are sent for punishment; unmarried women with child go here to be delivered; and poor orphans and base-born children are brought up here till they are of age to be apprenticed off; the other inmates are those unhappy people who are utterly helpless, parish idiots and madmen, the blind and the palsied, and the old who are fairly worn out. It is not in the nature of things that the superintendants of such institutions as these should be gentle-hearted, 300when the superintendance is undertaken merely for the sake of the salary; and, in this country, religion is out of the question. There are always eno............