The great experiment of Poor Law amendment, which has now for seven years been in progress among our southern neighbors, appears to us to have been insufficiently attended to, and therefore to have been imperfectly understood in this part of the island. We do not believe that many of our Scottish readers are fully aware of the origin of the English Poor Laws, of the changes which they underwent, of the abuses which they created, of the remedy which has been applied; or of the obstacles which have diminished the success of that great measure, and now threaten its efficiency. And yet these are subjects of the deepest interest, even to those who study legislation merely as a science. A series of lawsare exhibited, persevered in for centuries, by a nation always eminent for practical wisdom, of which the result has almost invariably been failure, or worse than failure; which in scarcely a single instance have attained their objects, and in most cases have produced effects precisely opposite to the intentions of their framers;—have aggravated whatever they were intended to diminish, and produced whatever they were intended to prevent. From us, as Scotchmen, they merit peculiar attention, not only from the resemblance of our poor laws to the earlier English statutes; but from the probability that, as the connection between the two countries becomes more intimate, we shall at no distant period follow the example, whatever it may be, of the larger country to which we are united; and participate in the evils and advantages of the system which she may finally adopt. This fate already threatens Ireland. It is scarcely probable that Scotland can avoid it.Each of the subjects to which we have alluded, would require a volume for its complete development; but we are constrained to give to them such consideration as is admissible within the limits of an article of moderate length.The Committee of the House of Commons which considered the Poor Laws in 1817, commence their able Report by stating, that "the principle of a compulsory provision for the impotent, and for setting to work the able-bodied, originated, without doubt, in motives of the purest humanity." From this statement, plausible as it is, we utterly dissent. We believe that the English poor laws originated in selfishness, ignorance, and pride. Better motives, without doubt, though misdirected by almost equal ignorance, dictated the changes which were made in those laws during the 18th century—the fourth which elapsed from their commencement; but we are convinced that their origin was an attempt substantially to restore the expiring system of slavery. The evils of slavery are now understood; it is admitted that it destroys all the nobler virtues, both moral and intellectual; that it leaves the slave without energy, without truth, without honesty, without industry, without providence; in short, without any of the qualities which fit men to be respected or even esteemed. But mischievous as slavery is, it has many plausible advantages, and freedom many apparent dangers. The subsistence of a slave is safe; he cannot suffer from insufficient wages, or from want of employment; he has not to save for sickness or old age; he has not to provide for his family; he cannot waste in drunkenness the wages by which they were to be supported; his idleness or dishonesty cannot reduce them to misery; they suffer neither from his faults nor his follies. We believe that there are few of our Highland parishes in which there is not more suffering from poverty than would be found in an equal Russian population. Again, the master thinks that he gains by being able to proportion the slave's subsistence to his wants. In a state of freedom, average wages are always enough to support, with more or less comfort, but still to support, an average family. The unmarried slave receives merely his own maintenance. A freeman makes a bargain; he asks whatever his master can afford to pay. The competitionamong employers forces them to submit to these terms; and the highly paid workman often wastes his extra wages in idleness and debauchery. And when employment is abundant; that is, when his services are most wanted, he often tries to better himself by quitting his master. All this is disagreeable to masters who have been accustomed to the apparent economy of servile labor, and to its lethargic obedience.The great motive of the framers of the earlier English poor laws was to remedy the latter class of inconveniences; those which affect, or appear to affect the master. The motive of the framers of the later acts again, beginning with George I., was to remedy the first class of evils: those which affect the free laborer and his family.The first set of laws were barbarous and unskillful, and their failure is evident from their constant re-enactment or amendment; with different provisions and severer penalties. The second set had a different fate—they ultimately succeeded, in many districts, in giving to the laborer and to his family the security of servitude. They succeeded in relieving him and those who, in a state of real freedom, would have been dependent on him, from many of the penalties imposed by nature on idleness, improvidence, and misconduct. And by doing this, they in a great measure effected, though certainly against the intentions of the legislature, the object which had been vainly attempted by the earlier laws. They confined the laborer to his parish; they dictated to him who should be his master; and they proportioned his wages, not to his services, but to his wants. Before the poor lawamendment act, nothing but the power of arbitrary punishment was wanting in the pauperized parishes to a complete system of prædial slavery.Our limits will not allow us to do more than to state very briefly the material parts of the numerous statutes, beginning by the statute of laborers, 23d Edward III., (1349,) and ending by the 39th Eliz. cap. 4, (1597,) which were passed for the supposed benefit of masters.The 23d Ed. III. requires all servants to accept the wages which were usually given five or six years before, and to serve by the year, not by the day; it fixes a positive rate of wages in many employments; forbids persons to quit the places in which they had dwelt in the winter, and search employment elsewhere in the summer; or to remove, in order to evade the act, from one county to another. A few years after, in 1360, the 34th Ed. III. confirmed the previous statute, and added to the penalties, which it imposed on laborers or artificers absenting themselves from their services, that they should be branded on the forehead with the letter F. It imposed also a fine of £10 on the mayor and bailiffs of a town which did not deliver up a laborer or artificer who had left his service.Twenty-eight years after, in 1388, was passed the 12th Rich. II., which has generally been considered as the origin of the English poor laws. By that act the acts of Ed. III. are confirmed—laborers are prohibited, on pain of imprisonment, from quitting their residences in search of work, unless provided with testimonials stating the cause of their absence, and the time of their returning, to be issued by justices of the peace at their discretion.And, "because laborers will not, nor, for a long season, would not, serve without extrageous and excessive hire," prices are fixed for their labor; and punishments awarded against the laborer who receives more, and the master who gives more. Persons who have been employed in husbandry until twelve years of age, are prohibited from becoming artisans. Able-bodied beggars are to be treated as laborers wandering without passports. Impotent beggars are to remain where they are at the time of the proclamation of the act; or, if those places are unwilling or unable to support them, they are, within forty days, to repair to the places where they were born, and there dwell during their lives.We have said that this act has been treated as the origin of the English poor laws. It has been so considered in consequence of the last clause, which is the first enactment recognizing the existence of the impotent poor. But this enactment makes no provision for them; though, by requiring them to be stationary in a given spot for the rest of their lives, it seems to assume that they would be supported there. It gives them, however, no claim, nor is there a clause in the whole act intended to benefit any persons except the employers of labor, and principally of agricultural labor—that is to say, the land-owners who made the law. If the provisions of the act could have been enforced, the agricultural laborers, and they formed probably four-fifths of the population of England, though nominally free, would have been as effectuallyascripti glebæas any Polish serf. And, to make a nearer approximation to slavery, in the next year(1389), the 13th Rich. II. was passed; which directs the justices of every county to make proclamation every half year, at their discretion, according to the price of food, what wages every artificer and laborer shall receive by the day. This act, with some intervals, during which the legislature attempted itself to fix the prices of labor, remained substantially in force until the present century. A further attempt to reduce husbandry laborers to a hereditary caste of serfs, was made by the 7th Hen. IV. cap. 17. (1405,) which, after reciting that the provisions of the former acts were evaded by persons apprenticing their children to crafts in towns—so that there is such a scarcity of husbandry laborers thatgentlemenare impoverished—forbids persons not having 20s. a-year in land to do so, under penalty of a year's imprisonment.It appears, however, that the laborers did not readily submit to the villenage to which the law strove to reduce them; for from this time the English statute book is deformed by the enactments against able-bodied persons leaving their homes, or refusing to work at the wages offered to them, or loitering, (that is to say, professing to be out of work,) which, to use the words of Dr. Burn, "make this part of English history look like the history of the savages in America. Almost all the severities have been inflicted, except scalping."[2]A new class of criminals, designated by the terms "sturdy rogues" and "vagabonds," was created. Among these were included idle and suspect persons, living suspiciously.[3]Personshaving no land or craft whereby they get their living.[4]Idle persons calling themselves serving-men, having no masters. Persons who, after having been sent home, absent themselves from such labor as they shall be appointed to.[5]Able-bodied poor persons who do not apply themselves to some honest labor or other; or serve even for meat and drink, if nothing more is to be obtained.[6]Persons able to labor, not having land or master, nor using any lawful employment. Laborers using loitering, and refusing to work for reasonable wages.[7]The first attempt on the part of a person dependent on his labor for his support to assert free agency, by changing his abode, or by making a bargain for his services, or even by refusing to work for "bare meat and drink," rendered him liable to be whipped and sent back to his place of birth, or last residence, for three years; or, according to some statutes, for one year, there to be at the disposal of the local authorities. The second attempt subjected him, at one time, to slavery for life, "to be fed on bread and water and refuse meat, and caused to work by beating, chaining, or otherwise;" and for the third, he was to suffer death as a felon.We have seen that the 12th Rich. II. required the impotent poor to remain for life where they were found at the proclamation of the act, or at the places of their birth. The subsequent statutes require them to proceedeither to their places of birth, or last places of residence, for three years. The law assumed, as we have already remarked, that they would be supported there by voluntary alms; and as respects the able-bodied, it assumed that an able-bodied slave, for such the laborer given up to the local authorities was, could always be made worth his maintenance; that maintenance being, of course, the lowest that could keep him in working order. It appears, however, that casual alms were found an insufficient, or an inconvenient provision for the impotent; that the local authorities were not sufficiently severe taskmasters of the able-bodied; and that the keeping them at work required some fund, by way of capital. The 27th Hen. VIII. cap. 25, (1536,) therefore, requires the parishes to which the able-bodied should be sent, "to keep them to continual labor in such wise that they may get their own living by the continual labor of their own hands;" on pain that every parish making default shall forfeit twenty shillings a-month. It directs the churchwardens, and two others of every parish, to collect alms and broken meat, to be employed in supporting the impotent poor, and "setting and keeping to work the sturdy vagabonds;" and forbids other almsgiving, on pain of forfeiting ten times the amount. This is the first attempt at making charity legal and systematic; and it was obviously a part of the scheme for confining the laboring population to their own parishes. It seems to have been supposed that voluntary alms, systematically distributed, would provide wholly for the impotent, and form a fund which, aided by the fruits of their forced labor, wouldsupport the "sturdy vagabonds;" and, therefore, that no one could have an excuse for changing his residence.In the early part of Elizabeth's reign was passed a statute, 5th Eliz. cap. 3, (1562,) inflicting the usual penalties, whipping, slavery, and death, on sturdy vagabonds; that is to say, on those who, having no property but their labor, presumed to act as if they had a right to dispose of it; and containing the usual provisions for confining the impotent poor to their parishes. In one respect, however, it was a great step in advance; for it contains for the first time a provision enabling the justices to tax, at their discretion, those who refused to contribute to the relief of the impotent and the keeping at work the able-bodied. Concurrently with this statute, and indeed as a part of it, for it is the next chapter on the roll of parliament, was passed the 5th Eliz. cap. 4. This statute requires all persons brought up to certain specified trades, at that time the principal trades of the country, and not possessed of property, or employed in husbandry, or in a gentleman's service, to continue to serve in such trades; and orders that all other persons, between twelve years old and sixty, not being gentlemen, or students in a school or university, or entitled to property, and not engaged in maritime or mining operations, be compelled to serve in husbandry with any person that will require such person to serve, within the same county. Females, in corporate towns, between the ages of twelve and forty, and unmarried, are to be disposed of in service by the corporate authorities, at such wages, and in such sort and manner, as the authorities think meet. The hours of work are fixed by the statute; and the justices are, twicea-year, after "conferring together respecting the plenty or scarcity of the time," to fix the wages. Persons directly or indirectly paying more, are to be punished by imprisonment and fine; persons receiving more, by imprisonment. No person is to depart from one parish to another, or from one hundred or county to serve in another hundred or county, without a license from the local authorities.When we recollect that disobedience to these enactments exposed a man or a woman to be included in the proscribed class of vagabonds, punishable by whipping, branding, slavery, and death, it must be admitted that, whatever might be the practice, thelawgave little freedom to the laboring classes.The 14th Eliz. cap. 5, (1572,) carried on the same legislation against the able-bodied, merely aggravating the penalty, by subjecting the offenders (that is, all persons who would not work for what the justices should think reasonable wages) to whipping and burning for the first offence, and to the penalties of felony for the second. It made a further approach to the present system, by directing the fund "for setting to work the rogues and vagabonds," and relieving the impotent, to be raised by a general assessment.Twenty-five years afterwards, the two acts of the 39th Eliz. cap. 3 and 4, were passed, which for the first time divided into separate statutes the punishment of the able-bodied, and the relief of the impotent. By the second of these acts, vagabonds (including, we repeat, persons able to labor, having no lord or master, not using any lawful employments, and laborers refusing to work for common wages) are to be whipped, but not branded,sent back to their parishes: if they appear to be such as will not be reformed, they are to be transported, or adjudged perpetually to the galleys.The other act, the 39th Eliz. cap. 3, differs so slightly from the 43d Eliz. cap. 2, that it requires no further attention.The 43d of Eliz. directs, that the churchwardens and two or more householders, to be appointed by the justices, shall take order, with the consent of the justices, for setting to work children, and all persons having no means to maintain themselves, and using no ordinary or daily trade of life to get their living by; and to raise a fund by taxation of the inhabitants for such setting to work, and for the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, and blind poor not able to work. And the justices are directed to send to the House of Correction, or common jail, "such as shall not employ themselves to work, being appointed thereunto as aforesaid."It appears from this statement, that the 43d of Elizabeth deserves neither the praise nor the blame which have been lavished on it. So far from having been prompted by benevolence, it was a necessary link in one of the heaviest chains in which a people calling itself free has been bound. It was part of a scheme prosecuted for centuries, in defiance of reason, justice, and humanity, to reduce the laboring classes to serfs, to imprison them in their parishes, and to dictate to them their employments and their wages. Of course, persons confined to certain districts by penalties of whipping, mutilation, and death, must be supported; and, if they were capable of labor, it was obvious that they ought to be made to contribute to the expense of their maintenance.Thence arose the provisions for relieving the impotent, and setting to work the able-bodied. But those provisions do not, on the other hand, deserve the censure passed on them by the Committee of the House of Commons in 1817. They were not of a nature to induce the industrious to relax their efforts. They held out no temptations to idleness. The able-bodied, who were the objects of the 43d Elizabeth, were those "who, having no means to maintain themselves, used no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by;" such persons were, by the previous acts, criminals; the work to which they were to be put was forced work; and if they did not employ themselves in it, "being thereunto appointed as aforesaid," the justices were to commit them to jail. The industrious laborer was not within the spirit or the words of the act. This was, indeed, the complaint of Lord Hale: "The plaster," says his Lordship, "is not so large as the sore. There are many poor who are able to work if they had it, and had it at reasonable wages, whereby they might support themselves and their families. These are not within the provisions of the law."[8]And it was long before the legislature assented to any extension of the 43d Elizabeth. The 8th and 9th Will. III. cap. 30, passed nearly a century afterwards, "To the intent that the money raisedonlyfor the relief ofsuch as are impotent as well as poor, may not be misapplied," requires all persons receiving relief, and their families, to wear a badge, containing a large Roman P, and thefirst letter of the name of the parish from which they received relief; the object being not, as has been supposed, to degrade the pauper, but to afford an easy means of detecting the overseer who had relieved an able-bodied person.The oppressive legislation of the Plantagenets and Tudors was unsuccessful. The provisions on which its efficacy depended, namely, the regulation of wages by the justices, the punishment of those who refused to work for such wages, or who paid more than such wages, and the punishment of those who left their parishes without license, became gradually obsolete. Legally considered, they remained in force until the present century. Sir Frederic Eden has collected regulations of wages by the justices, from the 35th of Eliz. (1593) down to 1725. And the last which he gives, that regulating wages for the county of Lancaster in 1725, contains an exposition of the law by the justices, in the spirit of the times of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth: "That the transgressors may be inexcusable when punished, we, the said justices, publish these denunciations, penalties, punishments, and forfeitures which the statutes impose. No servant that hath been in service before, ought to be retained without a testimonial that he or she is legally licensed to depart, and at liberty to serve elsewhere, to be registered with the minister of the parish whence the servant departs. The master retaining a servant without such testimonial forfeits five pounds. The person wanting such testimonial shall be imprisoned till he procure it. If he do not produce one within twenty-one days, to be whipped as a vagabond. The person that gives more wages than isappointed by the justices shall forfeit five pounds, and be imprisoned ten days; the servant that takes more to be imprisoned twenty-one days. Every promise or gift whatever to the contrary shall be void. We, the said justices, shall make strict enquiries, and see the defaults against these ancient and useful statutes severely corrected and punished."
The great experiment of Poor Law amendment, which has now for seven years been in progress among our southern neighbors, appears to us to have been insufficiently attended to, and therefore to have been imperfectly understood in this part of the island. We do not believe that many of our Scottish readers are fully aware of the origin of the English Poor Laws, of the changes which they underwent, of the abuses which they created, of the remedy which has been applied; or of the obstacles which have diminished the success of that great measure, and now threaten its efficiency. And yet these are subjects of the deepest interest, even to those who study legislation merely as a science. A series of lawsare exhibited, persevered in for centuries, by a nation always eminent for practical wisdom, of which the result has almost invariably been failure, or worse than failure; which in scarcely a single instance have attained their objects, and in most cases have produced effects precisely opposite to the intentions of their framers;—have aggravated whatever they were intended to diminish, and produced whatever they were intended to prevent. From us, as Scotchmen, they merit peculiar attention, not only from the resemblance of our poor laws to the earlier English statutes; but from the probability that, as the connection between the two countries becomes more intimate, we shall at no distant period follow the example, whatever it may be, of the larger country to which we are united; and participate in the evils and advantages of the system which she may finally adopt. This fate already threatens Ireland. It is scarcely probable that Scotland can avoid it.
Each of the subjects to which we have alluded, would require a volume for its complete development; but we are constrained to give to them such consideration as is admissible within the limits of an article of moderate length.
The Committee of the House of Commons which considered the Poor Laws in 1817, commence their able Report by stating, that "the principle of a compulsory provision for the impotent, and for setting to work the able-bodied, originated, without doubt, in motives of the purest humanity." From this statement, plausible as it is, we utterly dissent. We believe that the English poor laws originated in selfishness, ignorance, and pride. Better motives, without doubt, though misdirected by almost equal ignorance, dictated the changes which were made in those laws during the 18th century—the fourth which elapsed from their commencement; but we are convinced that their origin was an attempt substantially to restore the expiring system of slavery. The evils of slavery are now understood; it is admitted that it destroys all the nobler virtues, both moral and intellectual; that it leaves the slave without energy, without truth, without honesty, without industry, without providence; in short, without any of the qualities which fit men to be respected or even esteemed. But mischievous as slavery is, it has many plausible advantages, and freedom many apparent dangers. The subsistence of a slave is safe; he cannot suffer from insufficient wages, or from want of employment; he has not to save for sickness or old age; he has not to provide for his family; he cannot waste in drunkenness the wages by which they were to be supported; his idleness or dishonesty cannot reduce them to misery; they suffer neither from his faults nor his follies. We believe that there are few of our Highland parishes in which there is not more suffering from poverty than would be found in an equal Russian population. Again, the master thinks that he gains by being able to proportion the slave's subsistence to his wants. In a state of freedom, average wages are always enough to support, with more or less comfort, but still to support, an average family. The unmarried slave receives merely his own maintenance. A freeman makes a bargain; he asks whatever his master can afford to pay. The competitionamong employers forces them to submit to these terms; and the highly paid workman often wastes his extra wages in idleness and debauchery. And when employment is abundant; that is, when his services are most wanted, he often tries to better himself by quitting his master. All this is disagreeable to masters who have been accustomed to the apparent economy of servile labor, and to its lethargic obedience.
The great motive of the framers of the earlier English poor laws was to remedy the latter class of inconveniences; those which affect, or appear to affect the master. The motive of the framers of the later acts again, beginning with George I., was to remedy the first class of evils: those which affect the free laborer and his family.
The first set of laws were barbarous and unskillful, and their failure is evident from their constant re-enactment or amendment; with different provisions and severer penalties. The second set had a different fate—they ultimately succeeded, in many districts, in giving to the laborer and to his family the security of servitude. They succeeded in relieving him and those who, in a state of real freedom, would have been dependent on him, from many of the penalties imposed by nature on idleness, improvidence, and misconduct. And by doing this, they in a great measure effected, though certainly against the intentions of the legislature, the object which had been vainly attempted by the earlier laws. They confined the laborer to his parish; they dictated to him who should be his master; and they proportioned his wages, not to his services, but to his wants. Before the poor lawamendment act, nothing but the power of arbitrary punishment was wanting in the pauperized parishes to a complete system of prædial slavery.
Our limits will not allow us to do more than to state very briefly the material parts of the numerous statutes, beginning by the statute of laborers, 23d Edward III., (1349,) and ending by the 39th Eliz. cap. 4, (1597,) which were passed for the supposed benefit of masters.
The 23d Ed. III. requires all servants to accept the wages which were usually given five or six years before, and to serve by the year, not by the day; it fixes a positive rate of wages in many employments; forbids persons to quit the places in which they had dwelt in the winter, and search employment elsewhere in the summer; or to remove, in order to evade the act, from one county to another. A few years after, in 1360, the 34th Ed. III. confirmed the previous statute, and added to the penalties, which it imposed on laborers or artificers absenting themselves from their services, that they should be branded on the forehead with the letter F. It imposed also a fine of £10 on the mayor and bailiffs of a town which did not deliver up a laborer or artificer who had left his service.
Twenty-eight years after, in 1388, was passed the 12th Rich. II., which has generally been considered as the origin of the English poor laws. By that act the acts of Ed. III. are confirmed—laborers are prohibited, on pain of imprisonment, from quitting their residences in search of work, unless provided with testimonials stating the cause of their absence, and the time of their returning, to be issued by justices of the peace at their discretion.And, "because laborers will not, nor, for a long season, would not, serve without extrageous and excessive hire," prices are fixed for their labor; and punishments awarded against the laborer who receives more, and the master who gives more. Persons who have been employed in husbandry until twelve years of age, are prohibited from becoming artisans. Able-bodied beggars are to be treated as laborers wandering without passports. Impotent beggars are to remain where they are at the time of the proclamation of the act; or, if those places are unwilling or unable to support them, they are, within forty days, to repair to the places where they were born, and there dwell during their lives.
We have said that this act has been treated as the origin of the English poor laws. It has been so considered in consequence of the last clause, which is the first enactment recognizing the existence of the impotent poor. But this enactment makes no provision for them; though, by requiring them to be stationary in a given spot for the rest of their lives, it seems to assume that they would be supported there. It gives them, however, no claim, nor is there a clause in the whole act intended to benefit any persons except the employers of labor, and principally of agricultural labor—that is to say, the land-owners who made the law. If the provisions of the act could have been enforced, the agricultural laborers, and they formed probably four-fifths of the population of England, though nominally free, would have been as effectuallyascripti glebæas any Polish serf. And, to make a nearer approximation to slavery, in the next year(1389), the 13th Rich. II. was passed; which directs the justices of every county to make proclamation every half year, at their discretion, according to the price of food, what wages every artificer and laborer shall receive by the day. This act, with some intervals, during which the legislature attempted itself to fix the prices of labor, remained substantially in force until the present century. A further attempt to reduce husbandry laborers to a hereditary caste of serfs, was made by the 7th Hen. IV. cap. 17. (1405,) which, after reciting that the provisions of the former acts were evaded by persons apprenticing their children to crafts in towns—so that there is such a scarcity of husbandry laborers thatgentlemenare impoverished—forbids persons not having 20s. a-year in land to do so, under penalty of a year's imprisonment.
It appears, however, that the laborers did not readily submit to the villenage to which the law strove to reduce them; for from this time the English statute book is deformed by the enactments against able-bodied persons leaving their homes, or refusing to work at the wages offered to them, or loitering, (that is to say, professing to be out of work,) which, to use the words of Dr. Burn, "make this part of English history look like the history of the savages in America. Almost all the severities have been inflicted, except scalping."[2]A new class of criminals, designated by the terms "sturdy rogues" and "vagabonds," was created. Among these were included idle and suspect persons, living suspiciously.[3]Personshaving no land or craft whereby they get their living.[4]Idle persons calling themselves serving-men, having no masters. Persons who, after having been sent home, absent themselves from such labor as they shall be appointed to.[5]Able-bodied poor persons who do not apply themselves to some honest labor or other; or serve even for meat and drink, if nothing more is to be obtained.[6]Persons able to labor, not having land or master, nor using any lawful employment. Laborers using loitering, and refusing to work for reasonable wages.[7]
The first attempt on the part of a person dependent on his labor for his support to assert free agency, by changing his abode, or by making a bargain for his services, or even by refusing to work for "bare meat and drink," rendered him liable to be whipped and sent back to his place of birth, or last residence, for three years; or, according to some statutes, for one year, there to be at the disposal of the local authorities. The second attempt subjected him, at one time, to slavery for life, "to be fed on bread and water and refuse meat, and caused to work by beating, chaining, or otherwise;" and for the third, he was to suffer death as a felon.
We have seen that the 12th Rich. II. required the impotent poor to remain for life where they were found at the proclamation of the act, or at the places of their birth. The subsequent statutes require them to proceedeither to their places of birth, or last places of residence, for three years. The law assumed, as we have already remarked, that they would be supported there by voluntary alms; and as respects the able-bodied, it assumed that an able-bodied slave, for such the laborer given up to the local authorities was, could always be made worth his maintenance; that maintenance being, of course, the lowest that could keep him in working order. It appears, however, that casual alms were found an insufficient, or an inconvenient provision for the impotent; that the local authorities were not sufficiently severe taskmasters of the able-bodied; and that the keeping them at work required some fund, by way of capital. The 27th Hen. VIII. cap. 25, (1536,) therefore, requires the parishes to which the able-bodied should be sent, "to keep them to continual labor in such wise that they may get their own living by the continual labor of their own hands;" on pain that every parish making default shall forfeit twenty shillings a-month. It directs the churchwardens, and two others of every parish, to collect alms and broken meat, to be employed in supporting the impotent poor, and "setting and keeping to work the sturdy vagabonds;" and forbids other almsgiving, on pain of forfeiting ten times the amount. This is the first attempt at making charity legal and systematic; and it was obviously a part of the scheme for confining the laboring population to their own parishes. It seems to have been supposed that voluntary alms, systematically distributed, would provide wholly for the impotent, and form a fund which, aided by the fruits of their forced labor, wouldsupport the "sturdy vagabonds;" and, therefore, that no one could have an excuse for changing his residence.
In the early part of Elizabeth's reign was passed a statute, 5th Eliz. cap. 3, (1562,) inflicting the usual penalties, whipping, slavery, and death, on sturdy vagabonds; that is to say, on those who, having no property but their labor, presumed to act as if they had a right to dispose of it; and containing the usual provisions for confining the impotent poor to their parishes. In one respect, however, it was a great step in advance; for it contains for the first time a provision enabling the justices to tax, at their discretion, those who refused to contribute to the relief of the impotent and the keeping at work the able-bodied. Concurrently with this statute, and indeed as a part of it, for it is the next chapter on the roll of parliament, was passed the 5th Eliz. cap. 4. This statute requires all persons brought up to certain specified trades, at that time the principal trades of the country, and not possessed of property, or employed in husbandry, or in a gentleman's service, to continue to serve in such trades; and orders that all other persons, between twelve years old and sixty, not being gentlemen, or students in a school or university, or entitled to property, and not engaged in maritime or mining operations, be compelled to serve in husbandry with any person that will require such person to serve, within the same county. Females, in corporate towns, between the ages of twelve and forty, and unmarried, are to be disposed of in service by the corporate authorities, at such wages, and in such sort and manner, as the authorities think meet. The hours of work are fixed by the statute; and the justices are, twicea-year, after "conferring together respecting the plenty or scarcity of the time," to fix the wages. Persons directly or indirectly paying more, are to be punished by imprisonment and fine; persons receiving more, by imprisonment. No person is to depart from one parish to another, or from one hundred or county to serve in another hundred or county, without a license from the local authorities.
When we recollect that disobedience to these enactments exposed a man or a woman to be included in the proscribed class of vagabonds, punishable by whipping, branding, slavery, and death, it must be admitted that, whatever might be the practice, thelawgave little freedom to the laboring classes.
The 14th Eliz. cap. 5, (1572,) carried on the same legislation against the able-bodied, merely aggravating the penalty, by subjecting the offenders (that is, all persons who would not work for what the justices should think reasonable wages) to whipping and burning for the first offence, and to the penalties of felony for the second. It made a further approach to the present system, by directing the fund "for setting to work the rogues and vagabonds," and relieving the impotent, to be raised by a general assessment.
Twenty-five years afterwards, the two acts of the 39th Eliz. cap. 3 and 4, were passed, which for the first time divided into separate statutes the punishment of the able-bodied, and the relief of the impotent. By the second of these acts, vagabonds (including, we repeat, persons able to labor, having no lord or master, not using any lawful employments, and laborers refusing to work for common wages) are to be whipped, but not branded,sent back to their parishes: if they appear to be such as will not be reformed, they are to be transported, or adjudged perpetually to the galleys.
The other act, the 39th Eliz. cap. 3, differs so slightly from the 43d Eliz. cap. 2, that it requires no further attention.
The 43d of Eliz. directs, that the churchwardens and two or more householders, to be appointed by the justices, shall take order, with the consent of the justices, for setting to work children, and all persons having no means to maintain themselves, and using no ordinary or daily trade of life to get their living by; and to raise a fund by taxation of the inhabitants for such setting to work, and for the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, and blind poor not able to work. And the justices are directed to send to the House of Correction, or common jail, "such as shall not employ themselves to work, being appointed thereunto as aforesaid."
It appears from this statement, that the 43d of Elizabeth deserves neither the praise nor the blame which have been lavished on it. So far from having been prompted by benevolence, it was a necessary link in one of the heaviest chains in which a people calling itself free has been bound. It was part of a scheme prosecuted for centuries, in defiance of reason, justice, and humanity, to reduce the laboring classes to serfs, to imprison them in their parishes, and to dictate to them their employments and their wages. Of course, persons confined to certain districts by penalties of whipping, mutilation, and death, must be supported; and, if they were capable of labor, it was obvious that they ought to be made to contribute to the expense of their maintenance.Thence arose the provisions for relieving the impotent, and setting to work the able-bodied. But those provisions do not, on the other hand, deserve the censure passed on them by the Committee of the House of Commons in 1817. They were not of a nature to induce the industrious to relax their efforts. They held out no temptations to idleness. The able-bodied, who were the objects of the 43d Elizabeth, were those "who, having no means to maintain themselves, used no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by;" such persons were, by the previous acts, criminals; the work to which they were to be put was forced work; and if they did not employ themselves in it, "being thereunto appointed as aforesaid," the justices were to commit them to jail. The industrious laborer was not within the spirit or the words of the act. This was, indeed, the complaint of Lord Hale: "The plaster," says his Lordship, "is not so large as the sore. There are many poor who are able to work if they had it, and had it at reasonable wages, whereby they might support themselves and their families. These are not within the provisions of the law."[8]
And it was long before the legislature assented to any extension of the 43d Elizabeth. The 8th and 9th Will. III. cap. 30, passed nearly a century afterwards, "To the intent that the money raisedonlyfor the relief ofsuch as are impotent as well as poor, may not be misapplied," requires all persons receiving relief, and their families, to wear a badge, containing a large Roman P, and thefirst letter of the name of the parish from which they received relief; the object being not, as has been supposed, to degrade the pauper, but to afford an easy means of detecting the overseer who had relieved an able-bodied person.
The oppressive legislation of the Plantagenets and Tudors was unsuccessful. The provisions on which its efficacy depended, namely, the regulation of wages by the justices, the punishment of those who refused to work for such wages, or who paid more than such wages, and the punishment of those who left their parishes without license, became gradually obsolete. Legally considered, they remained in force until the present century. Sir Frederic Eden has collected regulations of wages by the justices, from the 35th of Eliz. (1593) down to 1725. And the last which he gives, that regulating wages for the county of Lancaster in 1725, contains an exposition of the law by the justices, in the spirit of the times of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth: "That the transgressors may be inexcusable when punished, we, the said justices, publish these denunciations, penalties, punishments, and forfeitures which the statutes impose. No servant that hath been in service before, ought to be retained without a testimonial that he or she is legally licensed to depart, and at liberty to serve elsewhere, to be registered with the minister of the parish whence the servant departs. The master retaining a servant without such testimonial forfeits five pounds. The person wanting such testimonial shall be imprisoned till he procure it. If he do not produce one within twenty-one days, to be whipped as a vagabond. The person that gives more wages than isappointed by the justices shall forfeit five pounds, and be imprisoned ten days; the servant that takes more to be imprisoned twenty-one days. Every promise or gift whatever to the contrary shall be void. We, the said justices, shall make strict enquiries, and see the defaults against these ancient and useful statutes severely corrected and punished."
Free society is a recent and small experiment. The English Poor Laws and the English poor, constitute its only history; for only in England has the experiment been made on a large scale for several centuries. If we have not proved its total and disastrous failure in England, in our Sociology, and in this chapter, we are resolved to prove it before we have done.
It is a favorite political maxim of Englishmen, that taxation and representation should go hand in hand; and that none shall be taxed without their own consent. Yet in Great Britain, the working men, who pay every cent of tax, are not represented at all, have no vote in elections, and are taxed without and against their own consent; whilst the capitalist class, who pay no taxes, but, as Gerrit Smith truly says, are the mere conduits, that pass them from the laborers to the government. This vampire capitalist class impose all the taxes, and pay none. Alas! poor human nature! It is ever grasping at truth, and hugging itself.
FOOTNOTES:[2]History of the Poor Laws, p. 120.[3]11 Hen. VII. cap. 2.[4]22 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.[5]27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.[6]1 Ed. VI. cap. 3.[7]3 and 4 Ed. VI. cap. 16. 14 Eliz. cap. 5. 39 Eliz. cap. 4.[8]See Lord Hale's paper at length, in "Burn's History of the Poor Laws," p. 144.
[2]History of the Poor Laws, p. 120.
[2]History of the Poor Laws, p. 120.
[3]11 Hen. VII. cap. 2.
[3]11 Hen. VII. cap. 2.
[4]22 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
[4]22 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
[5]27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.
[5]27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.
[6]1 Ed. VI. cap. 3.
[6]1 Ed. VI. cap. 3.
[7]3 and 4 Ed. VI. cap. 16. 14 Eliz. cap. 5. 39 Eliz. cap. 4.
[7]3 and 4 Ed. VI. cap. 16. 14 Eliz. cap. 5. 39 Eliz. cap. 4.
[8]See Lord Hale's paper at length, in "Burn's History of the Poor Laws," p. 144.
[8]See Lord Hale's paper at length, in "Burn's History of the Poor Laws," p. 144.
Each of the many French revolutions was occasioned by destitution almost amounting to famine among the laboring classes. Each was the insurrection of labor against capital. But until the revolution of 1848, the revolutionists were unconscious alike of their motives and their objects. They believed, till then, that political changes would remedy the evils which oppressed them. After the revolution of 1830, philosophers and statesmen, seeing the inadequacy of change of dynasty or of political policy, to alleviate the distresses of the great working classes, began to search deeper for the causes of social embarrassment. Suddenly the discovery was made, not only in France, but throughout Western Europe, that the disease was social, not political. That it was owing to the too unequal distribution of capital, and to its exploitation of labor. The ablest minds saw, as well in England as in France, that in transferring the reins of government from the hands of hereditary royalty and nobility, to those of the capitalist class, that the people had exchanged a few mastersfor thousands of extortioners. Never did so vast a moral, intellectual and social movement arise so suddenly, and spread so rapidly. The thing became the rage and fashion. Even in America, our Northern folks affected a disease, which they did not feel, just as Alexander's courtiers aped his wry neck; and anti-rentism and land monopoly became the constant theme of conversation, lectures, speeches, books and essays. In France and in England, prior to 1830, there had been a few Socialists, such as Fourier and St. Simon, Owen and Fanny Wright—but they were little heeded, and generally considered about half crazy. Immediately thereafter, by far the greater portion of the literary mind of Europe imbibed, in whole or in part, the doctrines of these early Socialists. The infection soon reached the lower classes, and occasioned revolution, intended to be social as well as political, throughout Western Europe. The Provisional Government in France, which immediately succeeded to the expulsion of Louis Philippe, was composed entirely of Socialists, and its programme and attempted measures were thoroughly socialistic.
The subject of the condition of the laboring classes in Europe, and especially in France, was handled with an accuracy of detail and a breadth of scientific expression in a review of our own work in the Literary Messenger of March, 1855, of which we are incapable. The author, ProfessorH. of Virginia, is our corresponding acquaintance only. Informed by letter that he would review us, and that he concurred in the general truth of our theory, we suggested to him in reply, that he should, from his vast stores of learning, strengthen our main positions. He thought the suggestion a good one, and fulfilled our request, with an ability and learning, that no other man, on so short a notice, could have done. As we have prompted, if not caused his toil, we make no apology for appropriating so much of his review as seems to be a reply to our suggestion:
From the principles as laid down in theory and exemplified in practice, we proceed to the effects. That religion has been undermined, morals contaminated, crime increased, misery extended, deepened and multiplied, want and starvation augmented, society agitated, and orderly government endangered by the progress of the so-called prosperity of the free labor system, is evident, without further proof, to any one who reads contemporary literature, who pays attention to the statements of newspapers, and of Poor Law Reports, who notes the cases brought before the police or criminal courts, or is cognizant from any source of information, of the actual condition of the multitude and of the poor in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Prussia, and parts of Switzerland, and in New England and the Northern States. The connection of the results with the causes, is ably traced by Mr. Fitzhugh, but not with sufficientcare, minuteness and precision; and the actual character and enormity of the results is exhibited by him, and by an indefinite array of the most various and unexceptionable testimony. The History of the Working Classes, by Robert du Var, which we have joined with the Sociology for the South, as the text for the present observations, is full of evidence to this effect with regard to France; and for the other countries specified, ample testimony may be easily obtained. The Boston papers will suffice to illustrate the wretchedness of the laboring classes in New England: the New York Herald and Tribune, the works of Stephen Pearl Andrews, and of Greeley himself, will render the same service for the other Northern States: Alton Locke, Mary Barton, Mayhew's London Labor and the London Poor, the debates in Parliament, the Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners, and the English Reviews, will amply illustrate the condition of Great Britain and Ireland; and for Germany, reference may be made to Hacklander's Europarsches Sclavenleben, a work which has followed the example of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and portrayed the condition of the inferior classes in Europe, as a much more legitimate object of European sympathy and consideration than American Slavery. Where the evidence is so abundant and voluminous, selection would be as unnecessary as it would be tedious. It is within the reach of every one who desires to consult it; and we need not load our pages with extracts to prove what has been frequently and sufficiently proved before, and what is so notoriously true as to be undeniable. A few quotations to illustrate the condition of free labor societies we mayindeed quote at a later period, in connection with a different division of the argument; but they are wholly unnecessary to confirm the allegation of the wretchedness and depravity which are consuming the vitals of the principal free societies of the Nineteenth Century. They are rendered still more unnecessary by the fact that the acceptability of Socialism in all of those communities, betrays the extent of both the misery and the social disease to be cured; and the confession of the multitude of recent writers on social topics, admits not merely the evils which we have specified, and their dependence on the theory and practice of free societies, but acknowledges also the truth of the general conclusion, that the free societies enumerated have unquestionably failed, they have not produced the permanent or general blessings anticipated from them, they have produced overwhelming social disaster, multiplied indefinitely the woes and the vices of the poor, threatened all society and government and national existence in those communities, and announced a future so dark that little more than its gloom and spectral shapes can be distinctly recognized.We regard Mr. Fitzhugh's employment of these admissions by European writers and Northern reformers, as constituting the most important position of his argument, and the most characteristic novelty in his defence of the South. The testimonies which he adduces are very strong and pointed, but they may be easily multiplied, and will gain an accession of strength from such multiplications. For years we have carefully collected similar acknowledgments from foreign writers, and cheerfully contribute them to the cause of the South, and thefortification of Mr. Fitzhugh's position. And let it be remembered, that neither in the Sociology for the South, nor in the quotations which will be shortly introduced here, is the sole or principal obligation due to Chartists, Socialists, Communists, or Agrarians of any sort. From such authors some admissions have been received, but the chief contributions are derived from those who have been the most strenuous supporters of past social arrangements, and who, notwithstanding a great diversity of views, abilities, studies, and opportunities of knowledge, still represent the sober conservative sense of their respective communities. We regret that Mr. Fitzhugh should have extended so much countenance to the Socialists, and should have partially identified Socialism and Slavery, but the strongest part of his testimonies to the failure of free societies, is derived from other declarations than theirs, and we shall imitate his example.We begin, however, with a Socialist, but almost the only one whom we shall summon to the stand:"The French Revolution was an abortion. The trading classes (la bourgeoisie) organized themselves in the name of capital, and, instead of becoming a man, the serf became a prolétaire. What then was his situation? The most painful of all, the most intolerable which can be conceived. Like all the prolétaires, the trading classes had shouted: 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The result has been that every thing which was prolétaire—that is to say, all those who have no capital, groan under the most cruel usage (exploitation.) They cannot be freemen, nor brothers, nor equals. Not free, because their daily bread depends on a thousand accidents producedand engendered by the competition of capitalists among themselves; not brothers, because, with hearts crushed and lacerated by the evils which overwhelm them, they cannot love those whose creed is so fatal to them; not equals, because capital being the supreme law, it is only through it that any participation or concurrence in social power is possible."[9]An apology is due for not attempting to translate the term prolétaires in the above passage, but every one familiar with the condition of modern free societies, is aware that it is absolutely untranslateable. It is an indispensable word in modern times, and the impossibility of avoiding its use is a stronger proof of the failure of free societies, than the invention of the phrase Sociology, which Mr. Fitzhugh regards in this light. It ought to be unhesitatingly introduced into the English language; it can boast of a very respectable Latin descent; it occurs in the XII Tables, and originally signified a person of the lowest class, too poor to pay taxes, and unable to serve the State otherwise than by raising children and thus increasing the population[10]—a very doubtful service in modern Europe.We return to Mr. Robert du Var:"It must be remarked, that what is called pauperism, this sore, this ulcer, which infests, and more and more consumes the body social, could not exist in the same degree amongst the nations of antiquity. It is a phenomenon which could only arise as the consequence of the transformation of slavery into serfdom, and of serfdom into free labor (prolétariat.) * * * In antiquity, every one, whether free or not, citizen or slave, was always connected with some centre which ensured at least his material support."[11]"As a result of the individual liberty, independent of any central power, proclaimed by Christianity, favored and developed by the instincts of the Northern barbarians, legitimated and transformed into a social doctrine by the institution of Communes, was formed and agglomerated throughout Europe an innumerable population, having no material connection with the regular society, and having for itself nothing but the most naked liberty, that is to say, misery, poverty, isolation. Thence issued the poor, the beggars, the thieves—in one word, parias of every description, with whom society was compelled to compound, willingly or reluctantly, by the foundation of establishments intended to palliate the bleeding wound of the pauperism which had been engendered by liberty."[12]"From whatever point the modern system is regarded, it seems impossible not to recognize that the Politico-economical rule of free competition is the negation, as its name indicates, of all ties and communion of interests between the members of society. Free competition is afree field open to every individual, provided or not with the elements necessary and indispensable to its manifestations; free competition, in a word, is liberty, but liberty without other rule than the material and moral force, of which each one may be able to dispose in the presence of the thousand causes which produce a difference in the position of individuals."[13]"But, we say that a system which thus arms, morally, the poor against each other, is a barbarous system, and contrary to civilization: it is barbarous, inasmuch as it developes all the bad tendencies of the human heart: it is contrary to civilization, because, instead of facilitating harmonious relations among men, it inclines them to mutual repulsion and hostility."[14]This is a sufficient sample of M. Robert du Var's testimony. The greater part of his work is to the same effect: and there is a singular accordance between his censures of Political Economy,[15]and those uttered by Mr. Fitzhugh. They merit especial attention.We will cite another Socialist, M. Vidal:"The ox, the horse, the hog eat according to their hunger: their desires are even anticipated: they have their subsistence assured. It is the same thing in the case of the slave. For the ox, the horse, the hog, the slave, belong to a master, and their loss is the loss of the owner:res perit domino, says the Digest. But with the hired laborer it is different! He belongs to himself.His death is the loss of his family whom he maintained, and who will no longer find the means of living. What matter to an employer is the death of a hired laborer? Are there not every where millions of arms always ready to offer themselves at reduced wages?"[16]Let us turn to evidence of a different character. Here is Sir Robert Peel's testimony to the condition of Ireland before 1844, previous to the potato-rot and the famine:"It may be assured that the fourth class of houses, (according to the census,) are generally unfit for human habitation; and yet it would appear that in the best circumstanced county, in this respect, the county of Down, 24.7 per cent., or one-fourth of the population, live in houses of this class: while in Kerry, the population is 66.7 per cent., or about two-thirds of the whole; and, taking the average of the whole population of Ireland, as given by the census commissioner, we find that in the rural districts about 43 per cent. of the families, and in the civic districts, about 36 per cent. inhabit houses of the fourth class. * * *"The lowest, or fourth class, remember, comprises all mud cabins, having but one room."[17]Mr. Kay, from whom the foregoing remarks of Sir Robert Peel are quoted, thus comments upon a murder committed in open day in Ireland. The two murderers had escaped:"Why," he asks, "were not these men apprehended? Because of the rottenness that there is in the state of society in these districts; because of the sympathy which there is on the part of the great bulk of the population with those who, by these dreadful acts of vengeance, are supposed to be the conservators of the rights of the tenant, and supposed to give him that protection which imperial legislation has denied. The first thing that ever called my attention to the condition of Ireland, was the reading an account of one of these outrages. I thought of it for a moment, but the truth struck me at once: and all I have seen since confirms it. When law refuses its duty—when government denies the right of a people—when competition is so fierce for the little land, which the monopolists grant to cultivation in Ireland—when, in fact, for a bare potato, millions are scrambling, these people are driven back from law and from the usages of civilization to that which is termed the law of nature, and, if not of the strongest, the law of the vindictive; and in this case the people of Ireland believe, to my certain knowledge, that it is only by these acts of vengeance, periodically committed, that they can hold in suspense the arm of the proprietor and the agent, who, in too many cases, if he dared, would exterminate them."[18]A pretty result, this, for free labor and free competition, and abolitionism, to have arrived at. But Ireland was always esteemedun mauvais sujet. Let us cross St. George's Channel:"The English peasant is thus deprived of almost every motive to practice economy, and self-denial, beyond what suffices to provide his family with food and clothing. Once a peasant in England, and a man cannot hope that he himself, or his children, will ever be anything better, than a mere laborer for weekly hire."This unhappy feature of an English peasant's life was most powerfully, and only too justly depicted in those articles of 'The Times,' to which I have referred above. It was there shown that during the last half century, every thing has been done to deprive the peasant of any interest in the preservation of public order; of any wish to maintain the existing constitution of society; of all hope of raising himself in the world, or of improving his condition of life; of all attachment to his country; of all feelings of there really existing any community of interest between himself and the higher ranks of society; and of all consciousness that he has anything to lose by political changes; and that every thing has been done to render him dissatisfied with his condition, envious of the richer classes, and discontented with the existing order of things."[19]This, too, is a pretty picture, which is not relieved by the further information that,"In the year 1770, there were, it is said, in England alone, 250,000 freehold estates in the hands of 250,000 different families. In the year 1815, at the close of the revolutionary war, the whole of the lands of Englandwere concentrated in the hands of only 32,000 proprietors."[20]"What is the result? The labor market in the manufacturing towns is constantly overstocked; the laborers and shopkeepers find new and eager competitors constantly added to the list; competition in the towns is rendered unnaturally intense; profits and wages are both unnaturally reduced; the town work-houses and the town gaols are crowded with inmates; the inhabitants are overburthened with rates; and the towns swarm with paupers and misery."I know not what others may think, but to me it is a sad and grievous spectacle, to see the enormous amount of vice and degraded misery which our towns exhibit, and then to think, that we are doing all we can to foster and stimulate the growth and extension of this state of things, by that system of laws, which drives so many of the peasants of both England and Ireland to the towns, and increases the already vast mass of misery by so doing."I speak with deliberation, when I say, that I know of no spectacle so degraded, and if I may be allowed to use a strong word, so horrible, as the back streets and suburbs of English and Irish towns, with their filthy inhabitants; with their crowds of half-clad, filthy, and degraded children, playing in the dirty kennels; with their numerous gin-palaces, filled with people, whose hands and faces show how their flesh is, so to speak, impregnated with spirituous liquors—the only solaces, poor creatures, that they have!—and with poor young girls, whom a want of religious training in their infancy, and misery, has driven to the most degraded and pitiful of all pursuits."[21]"Of 1600, [pauper children in London,] who were examined, 162 confessed that they had been in prison, not merely once, nor even twice, but some of them several times; 116 had run away from their homes; 170 slept in the "lodging-houses;" 253 had lived altogether by beggary; 216 had neither shoes nor stockings; 280 had no hat or cap, or covering for the head; 101 had no linen; 349 had never slept in a bed; many had no recollection of ever having been in a bed; 68 were the children of convicts."[22]"The further we examine, the more painful, disgusting and incredible does the tale become."We see on every hand stately palaces, to which no country in the world offers any parallel. The houses of our rich are more gorgeous and more luxurious than those of any other land. Every clime is ransacked to adorn or furnish them. The soft carpets, the heavy rich curtains, the luxuriously easy couches, the beds of down, the services of plate, the numerous servants, the splendid equipages, and all the expensive objects of literature, science, and the arts, which crowd the palaces of England, form but items in anensembleof refinement andmagnificence, which was never imagined or approached, in all the splendor of the ancient empires."But look beneath all this display and luxury, and what do we see there? A pauperized and suffering people."To maintain a show, we have degraded the masses, until we have created an evil so vast, that we now despair of ever finding a remedy."[23]We may now dismiss Mr. Kay—this testimony is sufficiently direct and sufficiently ample: and yet it would have been easy to have introduced many more and stronger statements made by him, which have been omitted because they were loo long to be quoted. Mr. Kay is neither Chartist nor Socialist. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, a Barrister-at-law, and has traveled over Europe for eight years, under an appointment from the Senate of the University of Cambridge, as Traveling Bachelor of the University, commissioned "to travel through Western Europe in order to examine the social condition of the poorer classes of the different countries."[24]The evidence of such a man should be authoritative, but we will continue our quotations:"It is undeniable that morality has declined in our days with the progress of knowledge."[25]"One word more, and we have done. On many questions of practical duty, men are now affecting to be wiserand better than the Bible. Plans of social progress and improvement are rife, that have an air of transcendental refinement about them, unknown to the homely morality of the Word of God. We are becoming too sentimental to endure that even the murderer shall be put to death. And now we are for bettering God's ordinance of marriage itself; and we see a fine, romantic, tender charm in an alliance of brothers and sisters, on which God has stamped his curse. What may such things betoken? Are they ominous of such unbridled lawlessness and lust as marked the days before the Flood? Are they signs of the days not unlike these that are to precede the coming of the Son of Man?"[26]"The task of restoring health and soundness to a society so fearfully diseased as ours unquestionably is, is on all hands acknowledged to be at once the noblest and the most imperative to which citizens or statesmen can now direct their energies."[27]"Society, such as it now is in England, will not continue to endure, &c."[28]"The last battle of civilization is the severest: the last problem the knottiest to solve. Out of all the multitudinous ingredients and influences of the past; out of the conquest of nature, and the victory of freedom; out of the blending and intermixture of all previous formsof polity and modifications of humanity, has arisen a complex order of society, of which the disorders and anomalies are as complex as its own structure. We are now summoned to the combat, not with material difficulties, nor yet with oppressors nor with priests, but with an imperfect and diseased condition of that social world of which we form a part; with pains and evils appalling in their magnitude, baffling in their subtlety, perplexing in their complication, and demanding far more clear insight and unerring judgment, than even purity of purpose, or commanding energy of will. This conflict may be said to date from the first French Revolution; and it has been increasing in intensity ever since, till it has reached to a vividness and solemnity of interest, which surpasses and overshadows the attractions of all other topics, &c. &c."[29]"England's rapidly accelerating decline is a very remarkable and mournful phenomenon; it is a mortal sickness for which there is no remedy. I liken the English of the present day to the Romans of the third century after Christ."[30]The analogy might be extended to nearly all of modern civilization."Tremendous catastrophes have come to pass, and there is no resistance; not a semblance of great men, no joy or enthusiasm, no hopes for the future, except that the time will one day come, when by means of mutual instruction every peasant boy shall be able to read. Thetruth of the thing is the unveiled destitution of the populace, who are resolved to bear it no longer, and this again paves the way for a revision of property; which is not, indeed, something new under the sun, but has been unheard of for centuries past, and even now seems quite inconceivable to our politicians, who have set property, in the place of God, in the Holiest of Holies, &c., &c."[31]We cannot venture to extend our extracts, though we have the materials before us to increase them ten—nay, twenty-fold. We contribute these merely as a confirmation of Mr. Fitzhugh's position, that, really and confessedly, Free Society has proved a calamitous and irremediable failure in the principal communities of Christendom.
From the principles as laid down in theory and exemplified in practice, we proceed to the effects. That religion has been undermined, morals contaminated, crime increased, misery extended, deepened and multiplied, want and starvation augmented, society agitated, and orderly government endangered by the progress of the so-called prosperity of the free labor system, is evident, without further proof, to any one who reads contemporary literature, who pays attention to the statements of newspapers, and of Poor Law Reports, who notes the cases brought before the police or criminal courts, or is cognizant from any source of information, of the actual condition of the multitude and of the poor in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Prussia, and parts of Switzerland, and in New England and the Northern States. The connection of the results with the causes, is ably traced by Mr. Fitzhugh, but not with sufficientcare, minuteness and precision; and the actual character and enormity of the results is exhibited by him, and by an indefinite array of the most various and unexceptionable testimony. The History of the Working Classes, by Robert du Var, which we have joined with the Sociology for the South, as the text for the present observations, is full of evidence to this effect with regard to France; and for the other countries specified, ample testimony may be easily obtained. The Boston papers will suffice to illustrate the wretchedness of the laboring classes in New England: the New York Herald and Tribune, the works of Stephen Pearl Andrews, and of Greeley himself, will render the same service for the other Northern States: Alton Locke, Mary Barton, Mayhew's London Labor and the London Poor, the debates in Parliament, the Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners, and the English Reviews, will amply illustrate the condition of Great Britain and Ireland; and for Germany, reference may be made to Hacklander's Europarsches Sclavenleben, a work which has followed the example of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and portrayed the condition of the inferior classes in Europe, as a much more legitimate object of European sympathy and consideration than American Slavery. Where the evidence is so abundant and voluminous, selection would be as unnecessary as it would be tedious. It is within the reach of every one who desires to consult it; and we need not load our pages with extracts to prove what has been frequently and sufficiently proved before, and what is so notoriously true as to be undeniable. A few quotations to illustrate the condition of free labor societies we mayindeed quote at a later period, in connection with a different division of the argument; but they are wholly unnecessary to confirm the allegation of the wretchedness and depravity which are consuming the vitals of the principal free societies of the Nineteenth Century. They are rendered still more unnecessary by the fact that the acceptability of Socialism in all of those communities, betrays the extent of both the misery and the social disease to be cured; and the confession of the multitude of recent writers on social topics, admits not merely the evils which we have specified, and their dependence on the theory and practice of free societies, but acknowledges also the truth of the general conclusion, that the free societies enumerated have unquestionably failed, they have not produced the permanent or general blessings anticipated from them, they have produced overwhelming social disaster, multiplied indefinitely the woes and the vices of the poor, threatened all society and government and national existence in those communities, and announced a future so dark that little more than its gloom and spectral shapes can be distinctly recognized.
We regard Mr. Fitzhugh's employment of these admissions by European writers and Northern reformers, as constituting the most important position of his argument, and the most characteristic novelty in his defence of the South. The testimonies which he adduces are very strong and pointed, but they may be easily multiplied, and will gain an accession of strength from such multiplications. For years we have carefully collected similar acknowledgments from foreign writers, and cheerfully contribute them to the cause of the South, and thefortification of Mr. Fitzhugh's position. And let it be remembered, that neither in the Sociology for the South, nor in the quotations which will be shortly introduced here, is the sole or principal obligation due to Chartists, Socialists, Communists, or Agrarians of any sort. From such authors some admissions have been received, but the chief contributions are derived from those who have been the most strenuous supporters of past social arrangements, and who, notwithstanding a great diversity of views, abilities, studies, and opportunities of knowledge, still represent the sober conservative sense of their respective communities. We regret that Mr. Fitzhugh should have extended so much countenance to the Socialists, and should have partially identified Socialism and Slavery, but the strongest part of his testimonies to the failure of free societies, is derived from other declarations than theirs, and we shall imitate his example.
We begin, however, with a Socialist, but almost the only one whom we shall summon to the stand:
"The French Revolution was an abortion. The trading classes (la bourgeoisie) organized themselves in the name of capital, and, instead of becoming a man, the serf became a prolétaire. What then was his situation? The most painful of all, the most intolerable which can be conceived. Like all the prolétaires, the trading classes had shouted: 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The result has been that every thing which was prolétaire—that is to say, all those who have no capital, groan under the most cruel usage (exploitation.) They cannot be freemen, nor brothers, nor equals. Not free, because their daily bread depends on a thousand accidents producedand engendered by the competition of capitalists among themselves; not brothers, because, with hearts crushed and lacerated by the evils which overwhelm them, they cannot love those whose creed is so fatal to them; not equals, because capital being the supreme law, it is only through it that any participation or concurrence in social power is possible."[9]
An apology is due for not attempting to translate the term prolétaires in the above passage, but every one familiar with the condition of modern free societies, is aware that it is absolutely untranslateable. It is an indispensable word in modern times, and the impossibility of avoiding its use is a stronger proof of the failure of free societies, than the invention of the phrase Sociology, which Mr. Fitzhugh regards in this light. It ought to be unhesitatingly introduced into the English language; it can boast of a very respectable Latin descent; it occurs in the XII Tables, and originally signified a person of the lowest class, too poor to pay taxes, and unable to serve the State otherwise than by raising children and thus increasing the population[10]—a very doubtful service in modern Europe.
We return to Mr. Robert du Var:
"It must be remarked, that what is called pauperism, this sore, this ulcer, which infests, and more and more consumes the body social, could not exist in the same degree amongst the nations of antiquity. It is a phenomenon which could only arise as the consequence of the transformation of slavery into serfdom, and of serfdom into free labor (prolétariat.) * * * In antiquity, every one, whether free or not, citizen or slave, was always connected with some centre which ensured at least his material support."[11]
"As a result of the individual liberty, independent of any central power, proclaimed by Christianity, favored and developed by the instincts of the Northern barbarians, legitimated and transformed into a social doctrine by the institution of Communes, was formed and agglomerated throughout Europe an innumerable population, having no material connection with the regular society, and having for itself nothing but the most naked liberty, that is to say, misery, poverty, isolation. Thence issued the poor, the beggars, the thieves—in one word, parias of every description, with whom society was compelled to compound, willingly or reluctantly, by the foundation of establishments intended to palliate the bleeding wound of the pauperism which had been engendered by liberty."[12]
"From whatever point the modern system is regarded, it seems impossible not to recognize that the Politico-economical rule of free competition is the negation, as its name indicates, of all ties and communion of interests between the members of society. Free competition is afree field open to every individual, provided or not with the elements necessary and indispensable to its manifestations; free competition, in a word, is liberty, but liberty without other rule than the material and moral force, of which each one may be able to dispose in the presence of the thousand causes which produce a difference in the position of individuals."[13]
"But, we say that a system which thus arms, morally, the poor against each other, is a barbarous system, and contrary to civilization: it is barbarous, inasmuch as it developes all the bad tendencies of the human heart: it is contrary to civilization, because, instead of facilitating harmonious relations among men, it inclines them to mutual repulsion and hostility."[14]
This is a sufficient sample of M. Robert du Var's testimony. The greater part of his work is to the same effect: and there is a singular accordance between his censures of Political Economy,[15]and those uttered by Mr. Fitzhugh. They merit especial attention.
We will cite another Socialist, M. Vidal:
"The ox, the horse, the hog eat according to their hunger: their desires are even anticipated: they have their subsistence assured. It is the same thing in the case of the slave. For the ox, the horse, the hog, the slave, belong to a master, and their loss is the loss of the owner:res perit domino, says the Digest. But with the hired laborer it is different! He belongs to himself.
His death is the loss of his family whom he maintained, and who will no longer find the means of living. What matter to an employer is the death of a hired laborer? Are there not every where millions of arms always ready to offer themselves at reduced wages?"[16]
Let us turn to evidence of a different character. Here is Sir Robert Peel's testimony to the condition of Ireland before 1844, previous to the potato-rot and the famine:
"It may be assured that the fourth class of houses, (according to the census,) are generally unfit for human habitation; and yet it would appear that in the best circumstanced county, in this respect, the county of Down, 24.7 per cent., or one-fourth of the population, live in houses of this class: while in Kerry, the population is 66.7 per cent., or about two-thirds of the whole; and, taking the average of the whole population of Ireland, as given by the census commissioner, we find that in the rural districts about 43 per cent. of the families, and in the civic districts, about 36 per cent. inhabit houses of the fourth class. * * *
"The lowest, or fourth class, remember, comprises all mud cabins, having but one room."[17]
Mr. Kay, from whom the foregoing remarks of Sir Robert Peel are quoted, thus comments upon a murder committed in open day in Ireland. The two murderers had escaped:
"Why," he asks, "were not these men apprehended? Because of the rottenness that there is in the state of society in these districts; because of the sympathy which there is on the part of the great bulk of the population with those who, by these dreadful acts of vengeance, are supposed to be the conservators of the rights of the tenant, and supposed to give him that protection which imperial legislation has denied. The first thing that ever called my attention to the condition of Ireland, was the reading an account of one of these outrages. I thought of it for a moment, but the truth struck me at once: and all I have seen since confirms it. When law refuses its duty—when government denies the right of a people—when competition is so fierce for the little land, which the monopolists grant to cultivation in Ireland—when, in fact, for a bare potato, millions are scrambling, these people are driven back from law and from the usages of civilization to that which is termed the law of nature, and, if not of the strongest, the law of the vindictive; and in this case the people of Ireland believe, to my certain knowledge, that it is only by these acts of vengeance, periodically committed, that they can hold in suspense the arm of the proprietor and the agent, who, in too many cases, if he dared, would exterminate them."[18]
A pretty result, this, for free labor and free competition, and abolitionism, to have arrived at. But Ireland was always esteemedun mauvais sujet. Let us cross St. George's Channel:
"The English peasant is thus deprived of almost every motive to practice economy, and self-denial, beyond what suffices to provide his family with food and clothing. Once a peasant in England, and a man cannot hope that he himself, or his children, will ever be anything better, than a mere laborer for weekly hire.
"This unhappy feature of an English peasant's life was most powerfully, and only too justly depicted in those articles of 'The Times,' to which I have referred above. It was there shown that during the last half century, every thing has been done to deprive the peasant of any interest in the preservation of public order; of any wish to maintain the existing constitution of society; of all hope of raising himself in the world, or of improving his condition of life; of all attachment to his country; of all feelings of there really existing any community of interest between himself and the higher ranks of society; and of all consciousness that he has anything to lose by political changes; and that every thing has been done to render him dissatisfied with his condition, envious of the richer classes, and discontented with the existing order of things."[19]
This, too, is a pretty picture, which is not relieved by the further information that,
"In the year 1770, there were, it is said, in England alone, 250,000 freehold estates in the hands of 250,000 different families. In the year 1815, at the close of the revolutionary war, the whole of the lands of Englandwere concentrated in the hands of only 32,000 proprietors."[20]
"What is the result? The labor market in the manufacturing towns is constantly overstocked; the laborers and shopkeepers find new and eager competitors constantly added to the list; competition in the towns is rendered unnaturally intense; profits and wages are both unnaturally reduced; the town work-houses and the town gaols are crowded with inmates; the inhabitants are overburthened with rates; and the towns swarm with paupers and misery.
"I know not what others may think, but to me it is a sad and grievous spectacle, to see the enormous amount of vice and degraded misery which our towns exhibit, and then to think, that we are doing all we can to foster and stimulate the growth and extension of this state of things, by that system of laws, which drives so many of the peasants of both England and Ireland to the towns, and increases the already vast mass of misery by so doing.
"I speak with deliberation, when I say, that I know of no spectacle so degraded, and if I may be allowed to use a strong word, so horrible, as the back streets and suburbs of English and Irish towns, with their filthy inhabitants; with their crowds of half-clad, filthy, and degraded children, playing in the dirty kennels; with their numerous gin-palaces, filled with people, whose hands and faces show how their flesh is, so to speak, impregnated with spirituous liquors—the only solaces, poor creatures, that they have!—and with poor young girls, whom a want of religious training in their infancy, and misery, has driven to the most degraded and pitiful of all pursuits."[21]
"Of 1600, [pauper children in London,] who were examined, 162 confessed that they had been in prison, not merely once, nor even twice, but some of them several times; 116 had run away from their homes; 170 slept in the "lodging-houses;" 253 had lived altogether by beggary; 216 had neither shoes nor stockings; 280 had no hat or cap, or covering for the head; 101 had no linen; 349 had never slept in a bed; many had no recollection of ever having been in a bed; 68 were the children of convicts."[22]
"The further we examine, the more painful, disgusting and incredible does the tale become.
"We see on every hand stately palaces, to which no country in the world offers any parallel. The houses of our rich are more gorgeous and more luxurious than those of any other land. Every clime is ransacked to adorn or furnish them. The soft carpets, the heavy rich curtains, the luxuriously easy couches, the beds of down, the services of plate, the numerous servants, the splendid equipages, and all the expensive objects of literature, science, and the arts, which crowd the palaces of England, form but items in anensembleof refinement andmagnificence, which was never imagined or approached, in all the splendor of the ancient empires.
"But look beneath all this display and luxury, and what do we see there? A pauperized and suffering people.
"To maintain a show, we have degraded the masses, until we have created an evil so vast, that we now despair of ever finding a remedy."[23]
We may now dismiss Mr. Kay—this testimony is sufficiently direct and sufficiently ample: and yet it would have been easy to have introduced many more and stronger statements made by him, which have been omitted because they were loo long to be quoted. Mr. Kay is neither Chartist nor Socialist. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, a Barrister-at-law, and has traveled over Europe for eight years, under an appointment from the Senate of the University of Cambridge, as Traveling Bachelor of the University, commissioned "to travel through Western Europe in order to examine the social condition of the poorer classes of the different countries."[24]The evidence of such a man should be authoritative, but we will continue our quotations:
"It is undeniable that morality has declined in our days with the progress of knowledge."[25]
"One word more, and we have done. On many questions of practical duty, men are now affecting to be wiserand better than the Bible. Plans of social progress and improvement are rife, that have an air of transcendental refinement about them, unknown to the homely morality of the Word of God. We are becoming too sentimental to endure that even the murderer shall be put to death. And now we are for bettering God's ordinance of marriage itself; and we see a fine, romantic, tender charm in an alliance of brothers and sisters, on which God has stamped his curse. What may such things betoken? Are they ominous of such unbridled lawlessness and lust as marked the days before the Flood? Are they signs of the days not unlike these that are to precede the coming of the Son of Man?"[26]
"The task of restoring health and soundness to a society so fearfully diseased as ours unquestionably is, is on all hands acknowledged to be at once the noblest and the most imperative to which citizens or statesmen can now direct their energies."[27]
"Society, such as it now is in England, will not continue to endure, &c."[28]
"The last battle of civilization is the severest: the last problem the knottiest to solve. Out of all the multitudinous ingredients and influences of the past; out of the conquest of nature, and the victory of freedom; out of the blending and intermixture of all previous formsof polity and modifications of humanity, has arisen a complex order of society, of which the disorders and anomalies are as complex as its own structure. We are now summoned to the combat, not with material difficulties, nor yet with oppressors nor with priests, but with an imperfect and diseased condition of that social world of which we form a part; with pains and evils appalling in their magnitude, baffling in their subtlety, perplexing in their complication, and demanding far more clear insight and unerring judgment, than even purity of purpose, or commanding energy of will. This conflict may be said to date from the first French Revolution; and it has been increasing in intensity ever since, till it has reached to a vividness and solemnity of interest, which surpasses and overshadows the attractions of all other topics, &c. &c."[29]
"England's rapidly accelerating decline is a very remarkable and mournful phenomenon; it is a mortal sickness for which there is no remedy. I liken the English of the present day to the Romans of the third century after Christ."[30]
The analogy might be extended to nearly all of modern civilization.
"Tremendous catastrophes have come to pass, and there is no resistance; not a semblance of great men, no joy or enthusiasm, no hopes for the future, except that the time will one day come, when by means of mutual instruction every peasant boy shall be able to read. Thetruth of the thing is the unveiled destitution of the populace, who are resolved to bear it no longer, and this again paves the way for a revision of property; which is not, indeed, something new under the sun, but has been unheard of for centuries past, and even now seems quite inconceivable to our politicians, who have set property, in the place of God, in the Holiest of Holies, &c., &c."[31]
We cannot venture to extend our extracts, though we have the materials before us to increase them ten—nay, twenty-fold. We contribute these merely as a confirmation of Mr. Fitzhugh's position, that, really and confessedly, Free Society has proved a calamitous and irremediable failure in the principal communities of Christendom.