A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



The powers of the justices to grant relief were somewhat curtailed, but 

 no adequate reform was effected until 1834, when the new Poor Law was 

 passed, founded on the report of the Royal Commission appointed to investi- 

 gate the operation of the poor laws. In 1830 and 1831 there were riots in 

 various agricultural districts, resulting in the appointment of this commission, 

 and the condition of the labourers is fully shown in the answers to inquiries 

 made in various parishes. The riots were not serious in the greater part of 

 Buckinghamshire, but the cause was said very generally to be the adminis- 

 tration of the poor laws. The rector of Sherington 2U described how their 

 action created a hostile spirit between labourers and employers, and destroyed 

 all feelings of reciprocal dependence and goodwill between the richer and 

 poorer classes. The report from Amersham is interesting in this connexion : 

 there had been no disposition to riot at all, owing to the wants of the poor 

 having been supplied by charitable people. Though this may not have been 

 economically sound, the distribution of this private relief had resulted in the 

 higher and trading classes having much greater intercourse with the poor 

 generally. In parts where this intercourse had not been achieved the labourers 

 claimed exemption from all consequences of their misconduct and imprudence, 

 knowing of no limit to their legal exactions upon the farmer. They con- 

 sidered the stacks of corn as their own property and wages or allowances as 

 their right, gaining their demands by terrifying the farmers and burning 

 stacks. Even if an increase in wages was gained by these means the allow- 

 ance system continued, and no real improvement took place in the relations 

 between farmers and labourers. Lack of employment even increased, owing 

 to the great reluctance to invest capital in any form of agriculture. 



The risings took place almost exclusively in counties where the rates 

 were highest and the tendencies of the poor law most fatally developed, and 

 within the county itself the disturbances were most severe where the adminis- 

 tration was the most imprudent. Everywhere the parish had stepped in 

 between the farmer and labourer as a middleman of the worst kind. In 

 most places the farmers had no interest in the labourers supplied to them 

 without consideration of the needs of their land, so that sympathy between 

 the two classes was killed. 



The methods of giving out-relief were various : it was occasionally 

 given in kind, more often in money without labour, but the three most 

 ordinary methods were the roundsman system, parish employment, and the 

 labour-rate system. The roundsman system has already been described at 

 Aylesbury, but in the early days of out-relief it cannot have been on quite 

 the same lines. The commissioners described it as a system of paying 

 occupiers of property to employ applicants for relief, at a rate of wages fixed 

 by the parish, not dependent on services but on the wants of the applicants, 

 the employer being repaid out of the poor rates all he advanced in wages 

 beyond a certain sum. Parish employment was work provided by the over- 

 seers, generally on the roads or in stone-pits, where labourers were sent to 

 work in large gangs with little or no superintendence. 



The labour-rate system consisted of an agreement amongst rate-payers, 

 that each of them should employ and pay out of his own money a certain 

 number of labourers, who had a claim of settlement, according to some 



814 Poor Latv Com. Rep. 

 88 



