A HISTORY

OF

THE ENGLISH POOR LAW

IN CONNECTION WITH

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY, AND THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE

INTRODUCTION

THE laws of any period throw much light upon the habits and condition of the people at the time, and some knowledge of this condition and these habits is necessary for judging of the character and suitableness of the laws-each, in fact, reflecting light upon the other, and each requiring to be viewed with reference to the other. If this be true in a general sense, it is more especially true with regard to the laws immediately affecting the poorer classes; and therefore an inquiry into the origin and progress of the English Poor Laws, necessarily involves an inquiry into the state of the country and the condition of the people at the several periods when these laws were enacted, without which it would be impossible to judge of their fitness, or form an accurate estimate of their results.

In every country, and in all states of society, destitution has existed, and from the nature of things ever will exist; and on the relative proportion which the destitute bear to the entire population, and on the

VOL. I.-1

manner in which this destitute class is dealt with, the general condition of the whole will in no small degree depend. For this destitute class in England the Poor Law has been chiefly framed-not at once, nor, in the several stages of its progress, always wisely, but from time to time, and as it were casually, when legislative interposition appeared to be called for to remedy some existing evil, or to prevent the occurrence of some evil which was apprehended.

The establishment of a Poor Law in any shape, or any systematic organisation for affording relief to the destitute, must be regarded as indicating a considerable advance in civilisation, and in the appreciation of duties arising out of a common interest for securing a common good. Sir Matthew Hale declares the relief of the poor to be "an act of great civil prudence and political wisdom, for that poverty is in itself apt to emasculate the minds of men, or at least it makes men tumultuous and unquiet. Where there are many poor, the rich,"

1

he says, "cannot long or safely continue such, for necessity renders men of phlegmatic and dull natures stupid and indisciplinable, and men of more fiery or active constitutions rapacious and desperate." It is accordingly an admitted maxim of social policy, that the first charge on land must be the maintenance of the people reared upon it. This is the principle of the English Poor Law. Society exists for the preservation of property, but subject to the condition that the abundance of the few shall only be enjoyed by first making provision for the necessities of the many.

In the early age of a community, the prime object, after supplying the wants of nature, would be the protection of life and property from assault, whether by persons acting under the influence of violent and selfish passions, or labouring under the pressure of actual want;

1 Sir Matthew Hale's plan for the relief of the poor is given at length in Dr. Burn's History of the Poor Laws.

and we accordingly find that severe laws, and usages not less imperative than laws, existed in the early history of every people, having for their object the guarding of life and the protection of property, and imposing heavy penalties on transgressors in respect of either. But man will not submit to starve, where the means of supplying his necessities can be obtained in any way, whether by force or by fraud. Necessity is above law, and, as far as the really necessitous are concerned, the dread of punishment has ever been found insufficient to protect property, or to deter from the commission of crime.

It may be presumed that the natural impulse to aid the distressed, which is common to the whole human race, would in the infancy of a community be sufficient to protect it against the consequences of extreme necessity in any of its members; and that when in the progress of society this impulse failed through the excess of demands upon it, the influence of religion would be invoked in furtherance of the same object. Thus, in all the earlier nations of the world, we find the practice of charity or almsgiving authoritatively inculcated as a religious observance. Even hospitality appears to have come under the same category— wayfarers were entertained, not so much because the state of society rendered such entertainment necessary for enabling persons to travel from one place to another, as from its being enjoined as a religious duty.

At a still later period, the Church of Rome constituted itself the general receiver and dispenser of alms in all the countries subject to its influence. Its charitable distributions were not confined to the poor alone, but were extended as well to the idle and the profligate, who, naturally preferring subsistence without labour to that obtained by their own industry, roved about from one religious establishment to another, resorting most frequently and in the greatest number

to wherever alms were most easily and abundantly obtained. As the funds of these establishments were enlarged by successive donations, their almsgiving was proportionally increased, and the idle mendicants likewise increased in number, and became a burthen and a source of danger to the rest of the community.

Fuller,' in his Church History, printed in 1656, after lauding the hospitality of abbeys as "beyond compare," thus speaks of these institutions: "Some," he says, "will object that this their hospitality was but charity mistaken, promiscuously entertaining some who did not need, and more who did not deserve it. Yea, these abbeys did but maintain poor which they made. For some vagrants, accounting the abbey alms their own inheritance, served an apprenticeship, and afterwards wrought journeywork, to no other trade than begging; all whose children were, by their father's copie, made free of the same company. Yea, we may observe that generally such places wherein the great abbeys were seated swarm most with poor people at this day, as if beggary were entailed on them, and that laziness not as yet got out of their flesh, which so long since was bred in their bones." And Mr. Hallam, in his Constitutional History, remarks: "There can be no doubt that many of the impotent poor derived support from their charity; but the blind eleemosynary spirit inculcated by the Romish Church is notoriously the cause, not the cure, of beggary and wretchedness.

1 Fuller's Church History, 2nd sec., p. 298. The words in italics are so printed in the original.

2 At a far earlier period it was found "that the liberality of certain Roman ladies, and other rich Christians, brought a great number of mendicants to Rome; and it is said that there was a decree made on this account by Valentinian the Younger, and directed to the prefect of Rome, in the year 382 (Cod. Theod. xiv. tit. 18), in which he requires that their age and strength be inquired into, that the disabled might be provided for; but as for the strong, they were to be delivered up to the informer if they were of servile extraction, and if they were free they were to be compelled to cultivate the ground." See Fleury's Ecclesiastical History, revised translation, by the Rev. J. H. Newman, p. 51.