DEMORALISATION OF LABOUR 329 



individual was offered at auction to the highest bidder. Sometimes 

 the parish contracted for the execution of a piece of work at a given 

 sum, and performed it by pauper labour, paving the men according 

 to the allowance scale. If men were still unemployed, they were 

 formed into gangs under overseers, occupied in more or less unpro- 

 ductive work ; it was among these men that the riots of 1830-1 

 are said to have originated. 1 



Against the mass of subsidised labour, free labourers could notl 

 hope to compete. It was so cheap that men who tried to retain/ 

 their independence were undersold. Those who had saved money 

 or bought a cottage, could not be placed on the poor-book ; they 

 were obliged to strip themselves bare, and become paupers, before 

 they could get employment. Every agency that could promote 

 the spread of pauperism seemed brought into play. The demoralisa- 

 tion gradually extended from the southern counties to the North. 

 In the most practical fashion, labourers were taught the lessons 

 that improvidence paid better than thrift ; that their rewards did 

 not depend on their own exertions ; that sobriety and efficiency 

 had no special value above indolence and vice. All alike had the 

 same right to be maintained at the ratepayers' cost. Prudence 

 and self-restraint were penalised. The careful were unemployed, 

 the careless supported by the parish ; the more recklessly a man 

 married and begot children, the greater his share of the comforts 

 of life. The effect was seen in the rapid growth of population. 

 Among unmarried women morality was discouraged, and un- 

 chastity subsidised. The more illegitimate children, the larger the 

 allowance from the parish ; at Swaffham a woman with five illegi-^ 

 timate children was in receipt of 18s. a week. The demoralisation 

 was so complete that it threatened to overthrow the whole social 

 fabric. Voluntary pauperism became a profession, and a paying 

 one. Recipients considered themselves as much entitled to parish 

 allowances as they would have been to wages that they had earned 

 by their industry. A generation was springing up which knew 

 no source of income but poor relief. When once the spirit of 

 independence and self-respect was numbed, and the instincts of 

 parental responsibility and filial obligation were weakened, a 

 pauper's life, with its security of subsistence, its light labour, its 

 opportunities of idleness, had attractions for the vicious and easy- 



1 For these varieties of the Labour Rate, the Roundsmen and Parish Em- 

 ployment, see the Report on the Poor Laws (1834), pp. 42, 31-32, 36. 



