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There may occur cases where farmers will continue to employ labourers for the mere purpose of preventing them from coming on the poor-rates, but these are exceptions. If the desire of gain will not cause the employment of capital, assuredly poor- rates wall not. A poor-law adds to pauperism, by inviting to idleness. It drags down the man who pays, and demoralises him who receives.
The poor-rate was quite inadequate to support the burden thrown upon it by the suspension of public works, but there was another claim upon it which could not wait. When the elections were over and the Government majority secure, the Treasury called on the poor-law guardians to levy immediately a special rate for the repayment of a million and a quarter lent by the State in a previous year.
Warden related that it was her intention to drive out to the very lowest of the suburbs, in order to assure herself, with her own eyes, of the conditions of life among the poor. On the previous day she had read the annual report of a private charitable society of which her husband was a member. She had purposely refrained from applying to the police or the poor-law authorities for information.
On that subject I do not see the difficulties which beset the propositions in the regard of the Poor-laws." Now it is the very reverse. He sees difficulties in reclaiming the waste lands of Ireland, but finds none in putting into operation the most objectionable part of the Poor-Law system outdoor relief; for, his Labour-rate Act was, substantially, a gigantic system of outdoor relief.
At the same time the doctrine has arisen, and is now sedulously propagated in England, that the State ought to undertake to provide at the public expense for all old persons, or at least for all deserving old persons, who have not succeeded in obtaining a sufficient livelihood for themselves; that this provision should not be regarded as an eleemosynary grant, but as a positive right; and that, in order to free it from the taint of pauperism, and take away from the recipient all reluctance to receive it, a new fund should be created, entirely distinct from poor-law relief, and administered by some other tribunal than the poor-law guardians.
The one-sidedness appears in his proposal to abolish the poor-law simply. That became the most conspicuous and widely accepted doctrine. All men of 'sense, said Sydney Smith certainly a qualified representative of the class in 1820, agree, first, that the poor-law must be abolished; and secondly, that it must be abolished very gradually.
This was a mischievous abuse of the old poor-law times, which made people dispose of every one's money save their own. Frank Fordyce, while by far the most earnest, hardworking clergyman in the neighbourhood, worked off his superfluous energy on scientific farming, making the glebe and the hereditary estate as much the model farm as Hillside was the model parish.
"Good morning, Hippetts," said the doctor, who being a Poor-Law Guardian, and a wealthy inhabitant of the place, was received with smiles by the important master. "Good morning, sir. Called to look round." "No, Hippetts, no," said the doctor, in the tone and manner of one making an inquiry about some ordinary article of merchandise; "got any boys?" "Boys, sir; the house swarms with them."
Now, I hope that these figures, upon the estimate and authority of the Government poor-law commissioner, will be sufficient, at all events, to do away with the imputation that Lancashire, at this crisis, is not doing its duty.
The committees which have most clearly pointed out the dangers of old-age pensions have also urged, that within the lines of our present poor-law system it is quite possible to do much, by an improved classification, to distinguish among the recipients of poor-law relief between the respectable and the worthless.
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