Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Farmer's Magazine, and Monthly Journal of the Agriculture Interest, Vol. 45: Dedicated to the Farmers of the United Kingdom; January, 1874
Oh, look cheerful pay your men better. Well, it is ancom monly easy to be generous with other people's money (laugh ter). It is all very well to curry popularity with a class who may have the franchise soon; and I would say further, that it is an easy way of playing the part of the good Samaritan without the expenditure of the oil and of the two-pence (cheers andlaughter). We now come to the poor-law, and I contend that the re lations of the agricultural labourer with the poor-laws re quire revision. I am obliged to trouble you with a little bit of history, not for the purpose of trying to weary you, but many people seem to think that what has been must be for ever, and they fancy that the present administration of the poor law as we have it, is a thing that cannot be improved. Now, previous to the Reformation the poor were supported entirely by charity and by the church, and as the church then pos sessed one-third of the land I think they were in a position to support the poor. But on the abolition of the Monasteries the revenues passed into private hands the poor then began to beg, and the clergy were instructed to collect alms and to incite their parishioners to the giving of alms. But the alms did not come in, and they passed a compulsory Alms Act. You will say that is a contradiction, but I do not think it is more contradictory than a celebrated bill we have before Par liament called the Permissive Prohibitory Bill. Well, in the year 1600, the celebrated Act of Elizabeth was passed, on which our poor-law is founded. That Act enacted that every man was to contribute in the parish according to his ability. This Act lasted 122 years, I believe without any amendment, and under it out-door relief might be given, but every one was to work for it. Then we had a system which lasted 73 years, when a bill brought in by Sir Edward Knatclibull was passed authorising the purchase or hire of workhouses to keep, maintain, and employ every poor person, those who refused to go there having no relief at all. We then came to the disas trous period of our poor-law, which lasted 39 years. In 1795, sir William Young's Act was passed. This was followed by Gilbert's and by East's Acts in subsequent years, by which it was provided that the justices and the parishioners should give relief to poor persons in their houses. Forty years afterward we had what was termed then and is now termed still, the New Poor-law, by which relief to able-bodied la bourers was abolished. Now, just mark the peculiar effect these Acts had on the expenditure for the relief of the poor. A hundred years ago the poor-rates amounted to a year. Thirty years afterwards, when they began to give out door relief it wss In fifteen years afterwards it had risen to In 1834, you passed the New poor Jaw and abolished out-door relief, and it dropped in three years to You then began your lax and indiscriminate administration of the law, and what was the result? Why.
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