Boyer George R. An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750-1850
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The Old Poor Law in Historical Perspective 57
evident that the labour of those who are not supported by parish assistance, will
purchase a smaller quantity of provisions than before, and consequently, more
of them must be driven to ask for support. (1798: 83-4)
Thus,
in the long run, "the poor-laws tend in the most marked manner
to make the supply of labour exceed the demand for it ... and thus
constantly to increase the poverty and distress of the labouring classes of
society" (1817: II, 371).
7
Malthus's adherence to the wages-fund doctrine led him to criticize
parish make-work projects. He argued that it was a "gross error" to
suppose "that the funds for the maintenance of labour . . . may be
increased at will, and without limit, by a fiat of government, or an
assessment of the overseers" (1807a: II, 102). Like Eden, he felt that
attempts by parishes to employ the poor in the production of manufac-
tured goods would "throw out of employment many independent work-
men, who were before engaged in fabrications of a similar nature"
(1807a: II, 108).
Malthus concluded that the distress of the laboring poor was caused
by the "absurd" and "arrogant" administration of poor
relief,
rather
than by changes in the economic environment. He attempted to refute
the hypothesis that the high levels of relief expenditures during the
Napoleonic Wars had been attributable to the high price of food by
pointing out in 1817 that "we have seen these necessaries of life experi-
ence a great and sudden fall [in price], and yet at the same time a still
larger proportion of the population requiring public assistance" (1817:
II,
360). Given the cause of distress, the solution was obvious: The
granting of relief to able-bodied laborers had to be abolished. Malthus
argued that the abolition of poor relief would benefit the poor in the
long run. He proposed a plan of gradual abolition in which no child born
after a certain date would ever be able to obtain parish relief (1807a: II,
320-4).
Moreover, he argued against replacing poor relief with either a
guaranteed minimum wage, as proposed by Davies, or an allotment
scheme, as proposed by both Eden and Davies. A guaranteed minimum
wage would not work because it would not allow the wage rate "to find
its natural level," determined by "the relations between the supply of
provisions, and the demand for them." It was important for the wage
7
In a rare agreement with Malthus, David Ricardo
(1821:
105-6) wrote that "the clear and
direct tendency of the poor laws ... is not, as the legislature benevolently intended, to
amend the condition of the poor, but to deteriorate the condition of both poor and rich;
instead of making the poor rich, they are calculated to make the rich poor."
58 An Economic History of
the
English Poor Law
rate to reach its natural level because this "expresses clearly the wants of
the society respecting population" (1807a: II, 89-90). With respect to
allotment schemes, Malthus devoted several pages to criticizing Arthur
Young's plan to grant each rural laborer with three or more children
"half an acre of land for potatoes; and grass enough to feed one or two
cows."
According to Malthus, "Young's plan would be incomparably
more powerful in encouraging a population beyond the demand for
labour than our present poor laws" (1807a: II, 376). Malthus blamed the
poverty in Ireland on the ready availability of small allotments of land.
He argued that because of "the facility of obtaining a cabin and pota-
toes . . . , a population is brought into existence, which is not demanded
by the quantity of capital and employment in the country; and the conse-
quence of which must therefore necessarily be ... to lower in general
the price of labour" (1807a: II, 374-5). Malthus concluded that it was
best to leave the poor to their own devices, since that would encourage
them to depend on themselves and to practice moral restraint.
The indictment of the Poor Law contained in Malthus's Essay on
Population received considerable attention in Parliament during the
post-Napoleonic War period. Between 1817 and 1831, several parlia-
mentary committees were appointed to study the economic effects of the
system of outdoor relief and to consider possible methods for Poor Law
reform. The most important document to come out of these committees
was the 1817 report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons
(Pad. Papers 1817: VI).
K
The report contained little that was new in its
analysis of the Poor Law. Rather, it relied heavily on the arguments of
previous reformers, Malthus in particular.
The report began, in typical fashion, by maintaining that the granting
of outdoor relief to able-bodied laborers instilled bad habits in the work-
ing class.
9
It presented evidence that relief expenditures had been con-
tinually increasing since 1776, and argued that this increase was for the
most part "independent of the pressure of any temporary or accidental
circumstances, . . . the rise in the price of provisions and other neces-
8
Poynter (1969:
245)
called
the
1817 report
"the
baldest
and
most dogmatic summary
of
the abolitionist case published"
in the
post-Napoleonic
War
period.
9
The report claimed that outdoor relief produced
"the
unfortunate effect
of
abating those
exertions
on the
part
of
the labouring classes,
on
which, according
to
the nature
of
things,
the happiness
and
welfare
of
mankind
has
been made
to
rest. By diminishing this natural
impulse
by
which
men are
instigated
to
industry
and
good conduct,
by
superseding
the
necessity
of
providing
in the
season
of
health
and
vigour
for
the wants
of
sickness
and old
age,
. . .
this system
is
perpetually encouraging
and
increasing
the
amount
of
misery
it
was designed
to
alleviate"
(Pad.
Papers 1817:
VI, 4).
The Old Poor Law in
Historical Perspective
59
saries of life," and the increase in population (Pad. Papers 1817: VI, 5).
Rather, it was the result of "evils which are inherent in the system." The
report predicted that "the amount of the assessment will continue as it
has done, to increase till ... it shall have absorbed the profits of the
property on which the rate may have been assessed, producing thereby
the neglect and ruin of the land" (Pad. Papers 1817: VI, 8).
Like Eden and Malthus, the report rigidly adhered to the wages-fund
doctrine. It maintained that:
what number of persons can be employed in labour, must depend absolutely
upon the amount of the [wages] funds, which alone are applicable to the
maintenance of labour. In whatever way these funds may be applied or ex-
pended, the quantity of labour maintained by them . . . would be very nearly
the same. . . . [W]hoever therefore is maintained by the law as a labouring
pauper, is maintained only instead of some other individual, who would other-
wise have earned by his own industry, the money bestowed on the pauper.
(Pad. Papers 1817: VI, 17)
In other words, there existed a one-to-one trade-off between poor relief
and wage income, so that governmental make-work projects were al-
ways counterproductive. The objective of finding employment for all
who required it was "not in the power of any law to fulfill" (Pad. Papers
1817:
VI, 17).
Ironically, the 1817 report did not urge that the provision of outdoor
relief to able-bodied laborers be immediately abolished, believing this to
be impractical at the time. It did suggest, however, that at some time in
the future, "under favourable circumstances of the country," the system
of outdoor relief should be ended. Abolition would result in an increase
in "the natural demand for labour" and would also "have the effect of
gradually raising the wages of labour" because it was "the obvious inter-
est of the farmer" to provide each of his workers with "such necessaries
of life as may keep his body in full vigour, and his mind gay and cheer-
ful"
(Pad. Papers 1817: VI, 18-19).
The major arguments for abolishing the Poor Law, therefore, were
laid out 17 years before the appearance of the 1834 Poor Law Report
and the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act. The intellectual roots
of the abolitionists' arguments were Townsend's
Dissertation
on the
Poor
Laws, which argued that relief was unnecessary; the wages-fund doc-
trine,
which was used by Eden and Malthus to argue that relief lowered
wage rates; and Malthus's theory of population, which showed that
outdoor relief increased the number of paupers in the long run.
60 An Economic History of
the
English Poor Law
2.
The
Poor
Law
Report
of 1834
The postwar parliamentary committees that were set up to consider
various aspects of poor relief made no attempt to abolish or reform the
Poor Law. The "impotence" of Parliament was finally ended when the
Royal Commission to Investigate the Poor Laws was created by the new
Whig government in February 1832. Nine persons were chosen to serve
on the commission; by far the two most important members were Nassau
Senior, a lawyer and political economist, and Edwin Chadwick, a lawyer
and journalist as well as a disciple of Jeremy Bentham.
10
The first task of the commission was the collection of data on the
economic effects of outdoor
relief.
The commissioners relied on two
types of evidence. First, they drew up and distributed two sets of ques-
tionnaires, known as the Rural and Town Queries, which were mailed to
parishes during the spring of 1832. The commissioners then appointed
26 assistant commissioners to visit parishes throughout England and
Wales. The assistant commissioners were directed to ascertain the ef-
fects of outdoor relief "on the industry, habits, and character of the
labourer, the increase of population, the rate of wages, the profits of
farming, the increase or diminution of farming capital, and the rent and
improvement of land" (Royal Commission 1833: 417). Those who came
upon parishes with a seeming redundancy of population were to deter-
mine whether the redundancy was "occasioned either by the want of
capital among the farmers, or by the indolence or unskillful habits of the
labourers." If the unemployment appeared to be caused by the existence
of "more labourers than could be profitably employed at the existing
prices of produce, although the labourers were intelligent and industri-
ous,
and the farmers wealthy," the assistant commissioners were to ascer-
tain to what extent the redundancy
has been occasioned by the stimulus applied to population by the relief of the
able-bodied; and for that purpose inquire into the frequency of marriages where
the husband at the time, or shortly before or after the time of the marriage, was
in receipt of parish
relief,
and into the proportion of the number of such mar-
riages to those of independent labourers. (Royal Commission 1833: 418)
In other words, the commissioners assumed that unemployment was
caused either by the indolence of labor, as argued by Townsend and
10
Detailed analyses
of the 1834
Poor
Law
Report
can be
found
in
Cowherd
(1977:
204-
82),
Webb
and
Webb
(1929:
1-103), and
Poynter
(1969:
316-29).
See
also Williams
(1981:
52-8).
The Old Poor Law in Historical Perspective 61
Malthus, or by an increase in population caused by the system of out-
door
relief,
as argued by Malthus.
The assistant commissioners' reports were completed by January 1833.
The information from these reports, along with information from the
Rural and Town Queries, was selectively used in the general report of the
Royal Commission (Royal Commission 1834), written almost entirely by
Senior and Chadwick, and published in March 1834. Publication of the
assistant commissioners' reports and the answers to the Rural and Town
Queries followed later in 1834. In all, the report filled 12 volumes of
Parliamentary Papers containing thousands of pages. Unfortunately, a
large amount of the material contained in the assistant commissioners'
reports and the Queries was ignored by Senior and Chadwick, so that the
general report's analysis of the use of outdoor relief was little more than a
greatly expanded version of the 1817 House of Commons Report on the
Poor Law, full of detailed examples of the bad effects of the system of
outdoor relief on laborers, landlords, large farmers, small farmers, and
tradesmen.
The major conclusion reached by the report was that all forms of
outdoor relief produced bad effects and should therefore be abolished.
It contended that
out-door relief . . . appears to contain in itself the elements of an almost indefi-
nite extension; of an extension, in short, which may ultimately absorb the whole
fund out of which it arises. Among the elements of extension are the constantly
diminishing reluctance to claim an apparent benefit, the receipt of which im-
poses no sacrifice, except a sensation of shame quickly obliterated by habit, even
if not prevented by example. (Royal Commission 1834: 44)
The effect of the allowance system, which granted "relief in aid of
wages" to privately employed laborers, was to
diminish, we might almost say to destroy, all ... qualities in the labourer. What
motives has the man who . . . knows that his income will be increased by noth-
ing but by an increase of his family, and diminished by nothing but by a diminu-
tion of his family, that it has no reference to his skill, his honesty, or his
diligence - what motive has he to acquire or to preserve any of these merits?
Unhappily, the evidence shows, not only that these virtues are rapidly wearing
out, but that their place is assumed by the opposite vices. (1834: 68)
These same criticisms were applied to the policy of granting outdoor
relief to unemployed laborers, which also was criticized for granting
benefits that were as large as the wage rates paid by farmers while
62 An Economic History of
the
English Poor Law
requiring only a small amount of work from the recipients (1834: 39).
The labor rate and the roundsman system also made laborers indolent.
Under
the
labour-rate system
[and the
roundsman system] relief
and
wages
are
confounded.
The
wages partake
of relief, and the
relief partakes
of
wages.
The
labourer
is
employed,
not
because
he is a
good workman,
but
because
he is a
parishioner.
He
receives
a
certain
sum, not
because
it is the
fair value
of his
labour,
but
because
it is
what
the
vestry
has
ordered
to be
paid. Good conduct,
diligence, skill,
all
become valueless.
Can it be
supposed that they will
be pre-
served? (1834: 219-20)
The labor rate and the roundsman system were further criticized for
allowing labor-hiring farmers to pass some of their labor costs to small
occupiers, tradespeople, and householders (1834: 197, 210-11). Since
Parliament had given sanction to the use of labor rates only two years
before 1834, it is surprising that they were criticized so severely in the
report.
11
Unlike earlier critiques of the Poor Laws, the 1834 report gave an
explanation for the widespread adoption and persistence of policies
granting outdoor relief to able-bodied laborers. Employers supported
the use of outdoor relief because it
enables them
to
dismiss
and
resume their labourers according
to
their daily
or
even hourly want
of
them,
and to
reduce wages
to the
minimum,
or
even below
the minimum
of
what will support
an
unmarried
man, and to
throw upon others
the payment
of a
part
... of the
wages actually received
by
their labourers.
(1834:
59)
Of course, the granting of outdoor relief made laborers indolent and
thereby reduced their productivity, so that ultimately "the farmer finds
that pauper labour is dear, whatever be its price." However, the decline
in labor productivity evolved slowly over time, so the farmer benefited
from the use of outdoor relief in the short run (1834: 71). In the long
run, "when the apparently cheap labour has become really dear," the
farmer "can either quit at the expiration of his lease, or demand on its
renewal a diminution of rent" (1834: 73).
12
Whereas leaseholders were
thus encouraged to support the allowance system, farmers who owned
11
An
entire chapter
of the 1834
report
was
devoted
to
criticism
of the
labor rate. Appar-
ently Senior
and
Chadwick believed that
the
recent popularity
of
labor rates made
it
important
to
present
an
especially detailed critique
of
that method
of
outdoor
relief.
12
The
report concluded that farmers' ability
to
profit from
the use of
outdoor relief
by
reducing their wage bill "accounts
for the
many instances
in our
evidence
... of the
indifference
of the
farmers
in
some places
to
poor-law expenditure,
and in
other places
to their positive wish
to
increase
it"
(1834:
72).
The Old Poor Law in
Historical Perspective
63
their land were not. A landowner
u
may be expected to oppose the
introduction of allowance, knowing that for giving up an immediate
accession to his income he will be repaid, by preserving the industry and
morality of his fellow-parishioners, and by saving his estate from being
gradually absorbed by pauperism" (1834: 73). The seeming popularity of
the allowance system, therefore, could only be explained by the political
dominance of leaseholders in most rural parishes in the south and east.
13
The report rejected the proposal that outdoor relief be replaced by a
policy of supplying laborers with allotments, although the renting of
land to laborers by individual farmers was supported. There was no need
for parliamentary intervention, since the renting of allotments could be
made "beneficial to the lessor as well as to the occupier," and "a practice
which is beneficial to both parties, and is known to be so, may be left to
the care of their own self-interest" (1834: 193-4). However, although
allotments reduced relief expenditures in the short run, the report ar-
gued that they would not reduce expenditures in the long run. The
amount of land available for allotments "is limited, and the number of
applicants is rapidly augmenting, [so that] every year would increase the
difficulty of supplying fresh allotments, and diminish their efficiency in
reducing the increasing mass of pauperism" (1834: 194).
The most striking feature of the report is that it made no attempt to
study the causes of the unemployment that was very much in evidence in
the rural south and east. None of the questions in the Rural Queries dealt
with the causes of unemployment, and the instructions to the assistant
commissioners requested them merely to ascertain whether unemploy-
ment was caused by the indolence of laborers or by increases in popula-
tion brought about by the allowance system. Despite the indifference of
the commissioners, many parishes responding to the Rural Queries dis-
cussed the causes of their unemployment problems, and several of the
assistant commissioners wrote of the economic causes of unemployment,
and especially seasonal unemployment, in their
reports.
This information
was ignored by Senior and Chadwick, however, so that the commission's
report made no mention of the economic causes of unemployment.
Rather, the report maintained that existing unemployment was an artifi-
cial creation of the system of outdoor
relief.
To support this contention,
evidence was presented of a decline in unemployment rates in parishes
13
The report does not explain why landowners would allow leaseholders to adopt a system
that would cause the parish to be "gradually absorbed by pauperism."
64 An Economic History of
the English
Poor Law
where the use of outdoor relief had been discontinued
(1834:
233-7). The
report concluded that the unemployment problem "would be rapidly
reduced and ultimately disappear" upon the abolition of policies granting
outdoor relief to able-bodied laborers (1834: 354).
The report recommended that outdoor relief be replaced by a policy
of "less-eligibility," the purpose of which was to lower the utility level of
laborers supported by the parish below that of the lowest-paid indepen-
dent laborers. The report contended that the "most essential of
all
condi-
tions"
imposed on the recipient of relief should be that
his situation on the whole shall not be made really or apparently so eligible as the
situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class. . . . [I]n proportion as
the condition of any pauper class is elevated above the condition of independent
labourers, the condition of the independent class is depressed; their industry is
impaired, their employment becomes unsteady, and its remuneration in wages
are diminished. Such persons, therefore, are under the strongest inducements to
quit the less eligible class of labourers and enter the more eligible class of
paupers. . . . Every penny bestowed, that tends to render the condition of the
pauper more eligible than that of the independent labourer, is a bounty on
indolence and vice. (1834: 228)
In order to achieve less eligibility, the report recommended that, "except
as to medical attendance," relief should be granted to able-bodied labor-
ers and their families only in well-regulated workhouses (1834: 262).
The elimination of outdoor relief would not only eliminate unemploy-
ment, it would also cause laborers to become "more steady and dili-
gent," thereby increasing productivity, which would make "the return to
the farmers' capital larger, and the consequent increase of the [wages]
fund for the employment of labour enables and induces the capitalist to
give better wages" (1834: 329). A graphical representation of the re-
port's hypotheses concerning the effects of Poor Law reform on wage
rates and employment is given in Figure
2.1.
The report maintained that
the elimination of outdoor relief would cause a rightward shift in the
supply curve of agricultural labor from S, to 5
2
, and a rightward shift in
the demand curve from D
x
to D
2
, owing to the increase in labor's produc-
tivity, so as to cause both the equilibrium wage rate and the employment
of labor to increase.
The Report of the Royal Poor Law Commission is by far the most
influential work ever written on the economic effects of the Old Poor
Law. Ironically, most of the report's arguments in favor of the abolition
of outdoor relief were not original. But the massive amount of evidence
The Old Poor Law in
Historical Perspective
Real Wage
65
Employment
Figure 2.1. The effect of Poor Law reform on real wages and employment: traditional
hypothesis.
used to support its arguments, and its air of self-confidence, have made
the 1834 report a far more influential work than any of its predecessors.
Each study discussed in the remainder of this chapter relied heavily on
the information contained in the report.
3.
Fabian Interpretations of
the
Poor Law
The first major interpretive study of the Poor Law to appear after 1834
was John and Barbara Hammond's The
Village
Labourer, published in
1911.
14
This was followed in 1927 and 1929 by a second major study, the
14
Between 1834 and 1911, the only major study of the Old Poor Law was Sir George
Nicholas two-volume History of the English Poor Law, published in 1854 (second
edition, 1898). Nicholls was himself an early Poor Law reformer. Appointed overseer of
the poor for Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in
1821,
he reduced the parish's relief expendi-
tures by 75% in four years, mainly through the abolition of outdoor relief for able-
bodied laborers. Nicholls
(1898:
II, 137) argued that the policy of granting outdoor relief
to the able-bodied was responsible for "checking industry, destroying self-reliance, and
leading to the pauperization of nearly the entire labouring
class."
He made no attempt to
66 An Economic History of
the
English Poor Law
seventh and eighth volumes of Sidney and Beatrice Webb's English
Local Government.
l
* Volume seven was devoted to the Poor Law from
the 1590s to 1834, and volume eight contained a detailed analysis of the
1834 Poor Law Report. These two works, similar in tone, comple-
mented each other in their analysis of the Poor Law during the
Speenhamland era. Together, they form what has been called "the clas-
sic Fabian interpretation" of the Poor Law.
Although the analysis of the Poor Law contained in The Village La-
bourer accepted many of the conclusions reached by the 1834 report, the
Hammonds argued that the provision of outdoor relief for able-bodied
laborers (in their words, the Speenhamland system) was not an exoge-
nous event but rather an endogenous reponse to changing economic con-
ditions in rural areas. Like Davies, the Hammonds argued that the
Speenhamland system was adopted to deal with "the collapse of the eco-
nomic position of the laborer." The collapse was mainly caused by the
enclosure movement that began in the 1760s but was brought to a head by
the "exceptional scarcity" of 1795 (Hammond and Hammond 1913: 120).
The effect of
the
enclosure movement was to destroy the economic basis
of agricultural laborers' independence. The Hammonds contended that
in
an
unenclosed village,
. . . the
normal labourer
did not
depend
on his
wages
alone.
His
livelihood
was
made
up
from various sources.
His
firing
he
took from
the waste,
he had a cow or a pig
wandering
on the
common pasture, perhaps
he
raised
a
little crop
on a
strip
in the
common fields.
He was not
merely
a
wage
earner
... he
received wages
as a
labourer,
but in
part
he
maintained himself
as
a producer.
... In an
enclosed village
at the end of the
eighteenth century
the
position
of the
agricultural labourer
was
very different.
All his
auxiliary
re-
sources
had
been taken from
him, and he was now a
wage labourer
and
nothing
more. Enclosure
had
robbed
him of the
strip that
he
tilled,
of the cow
that
he
kept
on the
village pasture,
of the
fuel that
he
picked
up in the
woods,
and of the
turf that
he
tore from
the
common.
(1913:
106)
determine
the
reasons why
the
system
of
outdoor relief had been adopted,
or
why
it had
survived
for
more than
40
years.
His
analysis
of the
economics
of
outdoor relief
was
essentially
a
repeat
of the
analysis presented
in the 1834
Poor
Law
Report.
For
this
reason, Nicholls's
History
cannot
be
considered
an
important contribution
to
the histori-
ography
of
the
Old
Poor Law.
13
Two other studies published
at
about
the
same time
as The
Village Labourer
provided
analyses
of the Old
Poor
Law: W.
Hasbacrf s History
of
the English Agricultural
La-
bourer
(1908:
171-216);
and
Lord Ernie's
English Farming Past and Present
(1912:
303-
31;
431-8). Hasbach
and
Ernie reached conclusions similar
to
those
of
the Hammonds.
They maintained that
the
system
of
outdoor relief was adopted
in
response
to
changing
economic conditions;
in
particular,
the
enclosure
of
commons
and
waste
and the
decline
in real wage rates. Like
the
Hammonds, they concluded that
the use of
outdoor relief
had disastrous consequences
for
rural parishes.