CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



over particular cases of destitution, the relief 

 afforded is unavoidably partial and unequal no 

 one knowing the real needs of a petitioner, or 

 how far he is relieved by others ; so that a door 

 is opened for the practice of gross imposture, 

 while the more modest poor are probably the 

 least liberally treated. It is also generally found 

 that this state of society is attended with an 

 increase of the numbers of the poor, rendering 

 individual efforts insufficient, and tending to 

 such disorders, that a public provision becomes 

 necessary as a matter of police. A new principle 

 is then evolved from the natural fact of the 

 existence of a poor class namely, that the com- 

 munity cannot be safe from imposture, spoliation, 

 the propagation of disease, and other kindred 

 evils, unless it combine to assure itself that no 

 person in the country shall want the necessaries 

 of life. 



It is then that states begin to make arrange- 

 ments for the regular relief of the poor ; and 

 generally these arrangements are of a more or 

 less advanced and efficient nature, in proportion 

 to the advanced social condition of the respective 

 countries. In most of the Catholic states of 

 Europe, the system adopted consists simply in 

 the ministers of religion taking charge of the 

 voluntary contributions of the people, and admin- 

 istering them to the best of their ability. We 

 need scarcely remark that the single fact of the 

 funds being, on this plan, voluntary, renders it 

 impossible to be certain that the provision for 

 the poor is sufficient in amount In Great 

 Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Denmark, 

 Sweden, and Norway, the principle is recognised 

 that a compulsory provision ought to be made 

 so as to insure that all the members of the com- 

 munity shall have the means of subsistence. In 

 England, this system has been in operation for 

 nearly three centuries ; but in most of the other 

 countries enumerated, it is of comparatively recent 

 adoption. In America, all the states of the Union 

 which are of English origin have, from their 

 commencement as colonies, adopted this prin- 

 ciple. In Scotland, laws for a compulsory pro- 

 vision have existed nearly as long as in England, 

 but until 1845-6 they were not carried out into 

 anything like a general system. 



ENGLISH POOR-LAWS. 



Acts respecting the poor in England only made 

 arrangements as to the places in which they 

 should beg, until, in 1536, immediately after the 

 dissolution of the religious houses, by which the 

 poor had previously been in a great measure 

 supported, it was found necessary to make an 

 effort to repress the enormous prevalence of 

 vagrancy, by enacting that head-officers in 

 parishes, towns, and counties, should take charge 

 of the impotent poor, and collect alms for their 

 support, and at the same time use force to 

 compel able-bodied mendicants to work for their 

 own livelihood. This and subsequent Acts of a 

 similar character appear in a great measure to 

 have failed in their object, chiefly perhaps from 

 the severity of the penalties imposed for dis- 

 obedience. In 1572, we find the first trace of 

 compulsory assessment for the poor a measure 

 then resorted to, apparently, because all other 

 means of collecting money had proved insufficient. 



602 



It was, however, by the famous Act 43 Elizabeth, 

 c. 2 (1601), that the basis of the present system 

 of poor-relief in England was laid. The professed 

 objects of this law were, ' to set the poor to work, 

 to relieve the lame, impotent, old, and blind, and 

 to put out their children as apprentices.' To 

 attain these objects, the inhabitants of every 

 parish in the country were required to raise a 

 fund sufficient to maintain their own poor ; and 

 the administration of this fund was placed m the 

 hands of parish overseers, under the control of 

 justices of the peace. The leading merit of this 

 Act was, its requiring that the claims of the able- 

 bodied for relief should be subjected to a test, to 

 prove that the alleged want was not the result of 

 an indolent disposition : such persons were to 

 receive relief only on condition that they should 

 work for it. To make this rule certain of opera- 

 tion, an Act passed eight years after (7 Jac. I. 

 c. 4), ordered the building of houses of correc- 

 tion, to be provided with cards, mills, and other 

 implements, and where the vagrant able-bodied 

 poor should be set to work. This may be con- 

 sidered as the origin of the workhouse system in 

 England. 



The principal difficulties connected with the 

 earlier administration of the English poor-laws 

 arose from the indolent and vagrant disposition of 

 a large section of the people, who preferred the 

 vicissitudes and hardships of a wandering life to 

 the exercise of steady and industrious habits. 

 One result of this large amount of vagrancy was 

 that many towns became burdened with the ex- 

 pense of relieving numbers of strangers from other 

 parts of the kingdom. This led, in 1662, to the 

 passing of the Act establishing settlement, and 

 giving each parish the right, within forty days of 

 a poor person coming to reside within it, to have 

 that poor person conveyed back to the parish 

 where he last resided for a period of forty days. 

 The rigid enforcement of the law of settlement 

 was followed by a marked diminution in the 

 number of habitual vagrants, but the benefit thus 

 derived was only partial, for the poor speedily 

 learned to avail themselves of the claim which the 

 law gave them upon their native parishes, and 

 thus the evil of vagrancy became replaced by 

 another, equally demoralising and distressing 

 a timid and slothful dependence on the relief to- 

 be obtained at one fixed place. 



The houses of correction were mainly penal 

 establishments; and it was not till 1723 that 

 workhouses, as now understood, were established. 

 An Act passed in that year enabled parishes,, 

 either singly or in union, to provide themselves 

 with houses wherein to employ the poor ; and 

 enacted that, in case any person refused to be 

 relieved in those houses, he should not be en- 

 titled to any other relief. This might be severe 

 upon the real pauper, but it effectually unmasked 

 the voluntary one and the impostor, and proved 

 a protection to parishes against the orders of 

 justices over-liberal of money not their own. The 

 operation of this law was so favourable to the 

 public, that some began to imagine that paupers 

 might even become profitable ; and this was 

 partly the cause of an Act (22 Geo. III. c. 83) in 

 1782, usually called Gilbert's Act, which threw 

 upon guardians the duty of finding work for the 

 poor near their own residences, and making up- 

 what was required for their subsistence out of the 



