XVIII. Outdoor Relief

OUTDOOR RELIEF. (Fortnightly Review, IHHH.)

VOL. m. bb

THE Times newspaper has stated that I have given countenance to the fallacy that under the Poor Law men have a natural right to work or to bread. It has also published a letter from Mr. Albert Pell, stating that my words imply a censure upon the whole administration of the Poor Law, and would countenance the giving of relief to men in their own homes.

I plead guilty to both of these impeachments, and in as few words as I can I will justify what I have said. As to the first indictment, that the poor have a natural right to work or to bread, the Times thinks it sufficient to reply that there is no obligation upon any one to give work. If it had extended its argument to the other limb of the alternative it would have answered itself. But the Times wisely refrained from saying that there is no natural obligation on men to give bread to the hungry. This needs no proof, even apart from Christian law. The obligation, therefore, is universal, but those who can give work as the condition of earning bread have an alternative in which they are free to choose, while those who cannot give work are certainly not obliged by any natural law to do so. For them it is enough to give bread, which, if they can give, they are bound to give. Some men, therefore, have an alternative and others none; but all are bound by natural obligations, if they can, to feed the hungry.

But it may be said that granting the obligation in the giver does not prove a right in the receiver. To which I answer that the obligation to feed the hungry springs from the natural right of every man to life, and to the food necessary for the sustenance of life. So strict is this natural right that it prevails over all positive laws of property. Necessity has no law, and;i starving man has a natural right to his neighbour's bread.

I am afraid that those who speak so confidently about rights, obligations, and laws have not studied, or have forgotten, the first principles of all human positive law. If the law of property did not rest upon a natural right it could not long exist. They who deny it justify the dictum, La propriety c'est le vol. They who affirm that property rests upon a natural right cannot, without destroying their own assertion, deny that the first natural right of man is to live. Even self-defence issuing in the taking of the life of an aggressor is recognised as the natural right of self-defence. Before the natural right to live all human laws must give way; and this natural right in every man lays upon all men the correlative obligation to sustain the life of man when it is threatened with extinction. The law of natural charity recognises in each the same right to live, and imposes upon us all according to our power the obligation to sustain the life of others as we sustain our own.

On this foundation all Poor Laws from Queen

Elizabeth to the present day repose, as the text of those laws abundantly proves. Until 5 Eliz. c. 3, the relief of the poor was by voluntary contribution; it became compulsory by that statute,1 which is described as "An Act touching divers orders of artificers, labourers, servants of husbandry, and apprentices." It goes on to say that there would be " good hope that the same law being duly executed should banish idleness, advance husbandry, and yield unto the hired per sons, both in time of scarcity and in time of plenty, a convenient portion of wages.": The Act, therefore, contemplated the industrious classes. It provided also that all between twelve and sixty years of age, if not otherwise employed, should serve in husbandry. It prescribed also the hours of work, the time for meals, and the rate of wages to be fixed by the justices.3 The 14 Eliz. c. 5 was " For the punishment of vagabonds and for the relief of the poor and impotent." It repealed the Acts of Henry IV., Edward VI., and the 5 Eliz. c. 3. It appointed " Overseers of the Poor;" it made it penal to give money to any rogue or vagabond or sturdy beggar; but it provided relief for those "who are whole and mighty in body and able to labour." 4 In the 18 Eliz. c. 3, the recital runs as follows: " To the intent that youth may be accustomed and brought up in labour and work, and then not grow to be idle rogues: and to the intent also that such as be already grown up in idleness and so are rogues at present may not have any just excuse in saying that they cannot

1 Nicholl's History of the English Poor Lair, vol. i. p. 156. 2 Ibid. p. 158. 3 Ibid. p. 158. « Ibid. p. 161.

get any service or work, and be then without favour or toleration worthy to be executed, and that poor and needy persons may be set on work." In every city, town, and market-town, justices were enjoined to order "a competent stock of wool, hemp, flax, iron, or other stuff — by taxation of all — so that every poor and needy person, old and young, able to work and standing in need of relief, shall not, for want of work, go abroad begging, or committing pilferings, or living in idleness." Here the providing of work is expressly enacted for all who are able to work and are in need of relief; and if such persons should refuse to work, they were to be sent to the House of Correction. 5 These show the mind of the Legislature down to that date.

This Act was repealed by the 39 Eliz. c. 3 and 4; nevertheless, the mind and the intention remain the same. The Act provides that children shall be set to work. It still enacts the provision of wool, hemp, and other stock for work, and also competent sums of money for and towards the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, poor, and not able to work. Then follows an enactment of mutual liability — that is, of parents to support their children and of children to support their parents.6

All this was again repealed by the 43 Eliz. c. 2, which statute is the foundation of the Poor Law down to the present day. It provides for compulsory assessment, and that for the four following purposes: " 1. For the setting to work of children whose parents cannot support them. 2. For setting to work of all • Ibid. p. 170. • Ibid. p. 186.

such persons, married or unmarried, having no means to maintain themselves, and who use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by. 3. For providing a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, and other ware or stuff to set the poor on work. 4. For the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, blind, and such others amongst them, being poor and not able to work." It extended the mutual liability of maintenance to grandfathers and grandmothers. This provision shows what vigilant care was exercised to maintain the domestic life of the people, and all the obligations and charities which arise from the relations of kindred and of homes. I fail to recognise in these statutes an administration of the law by which the old.and the helpless are removed from their children and their kindred into a workhouse as a condition of relief, still less the refusal of outdoor relief, except on the same condition whereby a family is sold up, their home broken up, in all probability never to be reconstituted, and the whole family, old and young, charged for ever upon the rates. This condition is known at this time to be absolutely refused by an immense multitude of our suffering and deserving poor; they will endure any privations of hunger and cold rather than break up their home, with its natural and Christian charities, the only possession and happiness left to them in life, by going into a workhouse. Stone-breaking and crank-working are well enough as a deterrent for loafers and criminals, but the workhouse is a cruel deterrent when offered to families who, by a wise assistance in time of need, may be carried through the straits of winter when in want of work.

Both the spirit and the letter of the statutes of Elizabeth provide for the relief or the employment of such as be lusty, who, having their limbs strong enough to labour, may be daily kept in continual labour, whereby they may every one of them get their own living with their own hands. This provision is made even for those who may not be deserving. How much more does it include the deserving and the willing to work who are thrown out of employment by winter, which suspends a multitude of trades and industries, or by the vicissitudes which so often paralyse the employers of labour. The indiscriminate refusal of outdoor relief pauperises those who break up their homes and go into the workhouses, aggravates the poverty of those who refuse to break up their homes, multiplies the number of those who are idle, because they are not relieved by work, and drives multitudes into the dangerous classes, who become desperate and hardened.

Does not our present administration of the Poor Law, as compared with the old statutes, imply a decline of Christianity, and an application of political economy uncontrolled by the moral laws of human sympathy, and of the compassion which wealth owes to-poverty?