Chapter I (3)

[Sidenote: The poor to be badged and licensed to beg.]

The corporations, constituted as above, are empowered to grant badges to such of the helpless poor as have resided one year in their respective counties cities or towns, with a licence to beg within such limits for such time as may be thought fit; and are also empowered to appoint certain of the justices to grant badges and licences likewise—“specifying the names and places of birth and the character of the persons so licensed, and the causes as nearly as may be collected of their poverty, and whether reduced to that state by sickness or misfortune.”

[Sidenote: Houses of industry or workhouses to be provided.]

The said corporation are moreover required as soon as they possess sufficient funds, to build hospitals to be called workhouses or houses of industry for the relief of the poor in their respective counties, “as plain, as durable, and at as moderate expense as may be;” which hospitals are to be divided into four parts, one for such poor helpless men, and one other for such poor helpless women as shall be judged worthy of admission, a third for the reception of men able to labour and committed as vagabonds or sturdy beggars, and the fourth for idle strolling and disorderly women committed to the hospital and found fit for labour.

[Sidenote: Persons begging without a licence to be apprehended.]

Every man above the age of fifteen found begging without a licence, and not wearing a badge, is to be committed to the stocks for any time not exceeding three hours for the first offence, and six hours for every subsequent offence; and old persevering offenders may be indicted at the sessions, and if convicted are to suffer imprisonment not exceeding two months; after which if they again offend they may be publicly whipped, and be again imprisoned for four months, and so on continually for every subsequent offence. Every female found begging without a licence and badge, may be confined in any place appointed for that purpose, not exceeding three hours for the first offence, and for every subsequent offence not exceeding six hours; and every old and persevering offender is, as in the case of the men, to be proceeded against at the sessions; and in order that these directions may be carried into effect, the corporations are empowered to appoint “such and so many persons as they shall think fit, at reasonable salaries, to seize and arrest all such persons whom they shall find begging without such licence and badge, and carry them before the next justice, who may commit the party to the stocks or otherwise as aforesaid.” Justices are moreover empowered on their own view, to cause such persons to be seized and dealt with as is above directed for every first and subsequent offence.

[Sidenote: Poor children to be provided for.]

Whenever a poor person deemed worthy of having a licence to beg, has one or more children under the age of ten years not apprenticed or otherwise provided for, the age and number of such children are to be inserted in the licence by the person applied to in such case, or he may “at his or their election take such and so many of them as he or they shall think fit from the parent, and convey such child or children to the committee of that county, city or town, and insert the names of the rest in the parents’ licence.” If any fatherless or deserted poor children under eight years of age are found strolling and begging, they are to be conveyed to the committee of the particular county city or town, to be placed in such charter school nursery as will receive them when under eight, and the rest are to be apprenticed. The committees are required to keep up a correspondence with the Protestant Charter Schools Society,[24] that they may be informed from time to time when there is accommodation for poor children, in order “that all poor children may as much as possible be prevented from strolling, and may be put to trades or to industry.”

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[24]

Ante, p. 25.

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[Sidenote: Strolling vagabonds to be seized and committed.]

As soon as the houses of industry are provided and furnished for the purpose, the corporations are to place therein so many vagrants sturdy beggars and vagabonds, and so many helpless poor as their funds admit of; “and they are authorised and required to seize every strolling vagrant capable of labour who hath no place of abode, and who doth not live by his or her labour or industry, and every person above the age of fifteen who shall beg publicly without a licence or badge, and every strolling prostitute capable of labour, and to commit the said persons to the divisions allotted for them respectively in the said houses, and there to keep them to hard labour, and compel them to work, maintaining them properly,” and inflicting reasonable punishment when necessary, for the periods named in the Act, varying from two months to four years.

[Sidenote: Money to be provided by grand-jury presentments.]

“In order to furnish some revenues for the said corporations at the outset,” the grand juries are required to present annually at every spring assizes in every county of a city or town, to be raised off the lands and houses equally and rateably, any sum not less than 100_l._ nor more than 200_l._, and in every county at large any sum not less than 200_l._ nor more than 400_l._, to be assessed and collected as other county taxes are, and paid to the corporations respectively, without fee or deduction whatever, for the charitable purposes of the Act. All rectors vicars and incumbents of parishes are likewise required to permit such clergymen as the respective corporations may appoint, to preach sermons in their churches annually, and to permit collections to be made for the objects contemplated by the Act.

[Sidenote: Recapitulation.]

We here see that provision has been made, partly by compulsory assessment, partly by voluntary contributions, and through the instrumentality of corporations specially appointed—for the badging and licensing of the poor to beg—for providing hospitals workhouses or houses of industry in every county at large and county of a city or town—for separately confining therein able-bodied vagabonds and disorderly women who are to be kept to hard labour—and for the maintenance therein of poor helpless men and women. Authority is likewise given to seize any one found begging without a badge or licence, and to send such as are above fifteen to the house of industry for punishment, whilst the children are to be placed at school or put out to trade or service. And finally, persons are appointed at reasonable salaries to carry these enactments against unlicensed begging into effect.

In this Act therefore we have stringent provisions against mendicancy, coupled with a conditional permission for practising it. The deserving poor are permitted to beg, or if helpless are maintained; the undeserving poor if they beg are punished: but the distinction between the two is not defined, neither is it perhaps possible so to define it as to guard against continual deception and fraud. The punishment of vagrancy in every shape prescribed by this Act, accords with what we find in all the earlier Scottish and English statutes, and if due provision were at the same time made for relieving the destitute poor, this would be open to little objection; but the relief of poverty is here proposed to be effected chiefly by means of an organised system of begging, the helpless poor for whom provision is made in the houses of industry, being evidently those only who are too infirm to travel about for that purpose. By thus combining two objects of an opposite nature, it is evident neither will be accomplished—vagrancy will not be put down, and poverty will not be relieved. The providing for the establishment of corporations in every county, with powers to erect hospitals, houses of industry, or workhouses, and to tax the property of the country for such purpose, was no doubt an important advance in the legislation with regard to the poor; but like many other Irish enactments the present does not appear to have been carried into effect, except in a very few instances; and as a general measure the Act may be said to have been inoperative. It possessed however so much of a general character, and seemed to hold out such a promise of efficiency by consolidating the provisions of former Acts, that it was for a time relied upon, and upwards of half a century elapsed before anything further was attempted for the relief of the poor in Ireland.

The foregoing is the last of the Acts of the Irish parliament which we shall have occasion to notice, and when the Union took place in 1800, the Imperial legislation superseded that which had been local.

On here closing the last volume of Irish statutes, it may be convenient to give a short statement of the nature and extent of the previous legislation connected with our subject. Houses of industry and foundling hospitals, supported partly by public rates, and partly by voluntary contributions, were we have seen established at Dublin and Cork, for the reception and bringing up of exposed and deserted children, and the confinement of vagrants—free schools were directed to be maintained in every diocese, for educating the children of the poor—parishes were required to support the children exposed and deserted within their limits, and vestries were organised and overseers appointed to attend to this duty—hospitals, houses of industry or workhouses, were to be provided in every county, and county of a city or town—severe punishments were enacted against idle vagabonds and vagrants; whilst the deserving poor were to be badged and licensed to beg, or if infirm and helpless were to be maintained in the hospitals or houses of industry, for the building and upholding of which however, reliance was chiefly placed on the charitable aid of the humane and affluent, assessments for the purpose being limited to 400_l._ in counties at large, and to 200_l._ in counties of cities or towns.

It is evident that each of these measures partakes more or less of the nature of a poor-law, but there is one material deficiency pervading them all, that is, the want of a certain and sufficient provision for carrying them into effect. In no instance is such a provision made compulsory upon the public. A portion only of what is necessary for the purpose is so imposed, and the remainder is sought to be obtained by voluntary contributions, a combination always attended with uncertainty, and in most cases leading to an insufficiency of the necessary means. Even if the various provisions were fully carried into effect and generally acted upon, this would go far towards rendering them practically inefficient; but at that time in Ireland, it by no means followed because an Act was passed that its provisions would be enforced, and there is reason to believe that in very few instances only were the provisions contained in these Acts carried into operation. The existence of such provisions however, defective and for the most part inoperative as they were, would nevertheless serve as an answer to any person who might be desirous of seeing an efficient system established for the relief of the destitute; and thus the semblance of such a system may have prevented the establishing of one that would have been real, which it only could be when founded upon a general rate, as in the Act of Elizabeth. No such foundation was however, we see, here provided. Neither parochial nor parental liability as recognised and enforced in England, was established by these Acts. Even in the case of fatherless and deserted children, the entire chargeability of the parish for any such child was limited to 5_l._, an amount surely insufficient for its rearing and maintenance until it attained an age to support itself; so that here also reliance must have been placed on the co-operation of private charity, or else upon the child’s being received into one of the foundling hospitals, and the parish being thus relieved from further expense. In short, the training up and educating poor children as protestants, and the repression of vagabondism, appear to be the objects chiefly sought to be attained in all these Acts of the Irish parliament; and to these objects the relief of the infirm and destitute poor, seems to be regarded as a matter altogether secondary and subordinate.

A short account of the state of Ireland at this time will be a fitting conclusion of the present chapter, as well as a useful preparative for what is to follow. The best authority we can refer to for furnishing such an account I believe to be Arthur Young,[25] who devoted three years from 1776 to 1778 inclusive, to a personal examination of the country, its agriculture, commerce, and the social condition of the people. I have had considerable opportunities of testing the accuracy of Arthur Young’s statements, and making due allowance for the changes which must be presumed to have taken place during a period of some sixty years, they have appeared to me to exhibit the circumstances of the country about the time they were written with remarkable accuracy and perspicuity. Of these statements, the following is such a condensed summary as will, it is hoped, show the reader what were Arthur Young’s views of the then condition of Ireland, more especially with regard to matters bearing upon our present subject.

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[25]

See Arthur Young’s Tour in Ireland in the years 1776-77-78 and brought
down to 1779. 2 vols. 8vo. Published in 1780.

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[Sidenote: Arthur Young’s account of the state of Ireland.]

In natural fertility, acre for acre, Ireland is said to be superior to England. It has no such tracts of uncultivated mountain as are seen in the English northern counties, and its lighter shallower and more rocky soil (chiefly of limestone) is nourished by and flourishes under a fall of rain, which if it took place in England, would render the stiff clay lands almost useless. There is no chalk, and little sand or clay in Ireland. The fertility of England may be said to be in great measure owing to the application of skill industry and capital, that of Ireland chiefly to the soil and climate; whilst the bogs, which else would be waste, afford abundance of fuel. Notwithstanding the naturally superior fertility of Ireland however, the rent of land there as compared with England is in the proportion of two to five, or in other words, the land which lets in Ireland for two shillings, would in England let for five. It is considered that 5_l._ per acre expended over all Ireland (which would amount to about eighty-eight millions) “would not more than build, fence, plant, drain and improve that country to be upon a par in those respects with England;” and that it would take above twenty millions more to put the farmers in the two countries upon an equal footing. Profit in all undertakings depends upon capital, and the deficiency of capital thus accounts for the inferiority of the Irish rents. Tillage is little understood, and the produce is very inferior; “and were it not for potatoes, which necessarily prepare for corn, there would not be half of what we see at present.” The practice of harrowing by the tail, and burning corn in the straw, was still seen at Castlebar and other places in the west, notwithstanding its being prohibited by statute.[26] The moisture of the climate is favourable to pasturage and the keeping of cattle was much followed, as it well suited the indolent habits of the people.

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[26]

See _10th and 11th Charles 1st, caps. 15 and 17_, ante page 32.

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Considerable pains are taken to show that the system of middlemen which then prevailed, or persons holding tracts of land intermediately between the head landlord and the smaller occupiers, was injurious to both, and a bar to improvement. It was defended on the ground of its affording greater security for the rent. But Arthur Young says that the smaller tenantry were found to be the most punctual rent-payers; and he further observes, “that at the last extremity it is the occupier’s stock which is the real security of the landlord,—it is that he distrains, and finds abundantly more valuable than the laced hat hounds and pistols of the gentleman jobber, from whom he is more likely in such a case to receive a ‘_message_’ than a remittance.” These “profit-renters” are said to waste their time and their means in horseracing and hunting, and to be the hardest drinkers and most dissolute class of men in Ireland, as well as the greatest oppressors of the poor tenantry, whose condition is described as little better than the cottars they employ.

Arthur Young declares, that—to be ignorant of the condition of the labouring classes and the poor generally, is to be wanting in the first rudiments of political knowledge, and he states that he made every endeavour to obtain the best information on the subject, from persons in every class of life. According to some, the poor were all starving. According to others, they were in a very tolerable state of comfort.—Whilst a third party, who looked with a jaundiced eye on British administration, pointed at their poverty and rags as proofs of the cruel treatment of their country. When truth is thus liable to be warped, an inquirer should, he remarks, be slow to believe and assiduous to examine, and he intimates that such had universally been his practice.

The recompense for labour is the means of living. In England the recompense is given in money, in Ireland for the most part in land or commodities. Generally speaking the labouring poor in Ireland are said to have a fair bellyfull of potatoes, and the greater part of the year they also have milk. If there are cabins on a farm, the labourers reside in them. If there are none, the farmer marks out the potato-gardens, and the labourers raise their own cabins, the farmer often assisting them with the roof and other matters. A verbal contract is then made for the rent of the potato-garden, and the keep of one or two cows, as the case may be; after this the cottar works with the farmer at the rate of the neighbourhood, “usually sixpence halfpenny a day, a tally being kept, half by each party, and a notch cut for every day’s labour.” At the end of six or twelve months they reckon, and the balance is paid. Such it is said is the Irish cottar system, and it does not differ materially from that which prevailed in Scotland at a period somewhat anterior. Many cabins are however seen by the road-side or built in the ditch, the inhabitants of which have no potato-gardens—“a wandering family will fix themselves under a dry bank, and with a few sticks, furze, fern &c., make up a hovel no better than a pigsty, support themselves how they can by work begging and pilfering, and if the neighbourhood wants hands or takes no notice of them the hovel grows into a cabin”—these people are not cottars, but are paid in money for whatever work they perform, and consequently have no potato-ground.

The food of the smaller tenantry the cottars and labouring poor generally, was potatoes and milk, of which for the most part they are said to have a sufficiency. The English labourer’s solitary and sparing meal of bread and cheese, is contrasted with “the Irishman’s potato-bowl placed on the floor, the whole family upon their hams around it, devouring quantities almost incredible, the beggar seating himself to it with a hearty welcome, and the pig taking his share.” It must be admitted that the contrast is sufficiently striking, and scenes such as here described were no doubt then often witnessed in Ireland, and with some little modification may even occasionally be met with at the present day. This luxurious abundance was however by no means universal, as is evident by statements in other parts of the work, where many of the people are described as living very poorly, “sometimes having for three months together only potatoes and salt and water.” There is said to be a marked difference between the habits of the people in the north, and those inhabiting the southern and western districts. In the latter, land is alone looked to for affording the means of subsistence. The former are manufacturers as well as farmers, each man holding from 5 to 10 acres of land, and sometimes more, on which he raises the usual crops of corn and potatoes, together with a certain quantity of flax, which is prepared and spun, and sometimes also wove by himself and his family. This double occupation is however not favourable to excellence or improvement in either. The farming was bad, and the people generally very poor. The practice of subdividing the land, until it is brought down to the smallest modicum that can support a family, prevailed in the north as in the other parts of Ireland at that time, and has not entirely disappeared at the present day.

The people are said to be everywhere very indifferently clothed. Shoes and stockings were rarely seen on the feet of women or children, and the men were very commonly without them. They appeared more solicitous to feed than to clothe their children, the reverse of which is the case in England, where, as has often been remarked, it is common to pinch the belly in order to clothe the back. Education as far as reading and writing goes was pretty general. “Hedge schools,” as they are called, were everywhere met with, and it is remarked that they might as well be called _ditch_ schools, many a ditch being seen full of scholars. This shows the people to have been desirous of instruction, another proof of which is, the fact of there being schools for men. “Dancing is so universal among them that there are everywhere itinerant dancing-masters, to whom the cottars pay sixpence a quarter for teaching their families.” The people are said to be more cheerful and lively than the English, but lazy to an excess at work, although active at play; and their love of society is as remarkable as is their curiosity, which is declared to be insatiable. Their truthfulness is however not to be relied upon, and petty thefts and pilferings are very common. They are “hard drinkers and quarrelsome, yet civil submissive and obedient.” Such is the summary of the Irish character at that time, as drawn by Arthur Young, and there is no reason to doubt its general accuracy.

With regard to other matters, an Irish cabin is described as being the most miserable-looking hovel that can well be imagined. It is generally built of mud, and consists of only one room. There is neither chimney nor window. The door lets in the light, and should let out the smoke, but that for the sake of the heat it is mostly preferred to keep it in, which injures the complexion of the women. The roof, consisting of turf straw potato-stalks or heath, has often a hole in it, and weeds sprouting from every part, giving it all the appearance of a weedy dunghill, upon which a pig or a goat is sometimes seen grazing. The furniture accorded with the cabin, often consisting only of a pot for boiling the potatoes, and one or two stools probably broken. A bed is not always seen, the family often lying upon straw, equally partaken of by the cow and the pig. Sometimes however the cabin and furniture were seen of a better description, but on inquiry it generally appeared that the improvement had taken place within the last ten years.

The readiness with which habitations are procured in Ireland, and the facility of obtaining food for a family by means of the potato, are considered to be one cause of the rapid increase of population which is shown to have taken place towards the end of the 18th century.[27] Marriage was, and indeed still is, more early and more universal in Ireland than in England. An unmarried farmer or cottar is there rarely seen, and even the house-servants, men as well as women, are commonly married. Yet notwithstanding the rapid increase of population, there was a continual emigration from the ports of Derry and Belfast, several ships being regularly engaged in this passenger trade as it was called, conveying emigrants to the American colonies. These emigrants were however chiefly from the northern counties, partly farmers partly weavers. When the linen trade, the great staple of Ireland flourished, the passenger trade was low, and when the former was low the latter flourished. The emigrants are said to have been chiefly protestants, the Roman catholics at that time rarely quitting the country.

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[27]

See table at pages 11 and 12 ante.

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The towns were said to have very much increased during the last twenty years. “It may in truth be said that Ireland has been newly built over within that period, and in a manner far superior to what was the case before.” Towns are the markets for the general produce of the country, which they help to enrich, and at the same time also to improve. The rise of rents is a natural consequence of the increase of towns; and on an average throughout Ireland, the rents are said to have doubled in the last twenty-five years. The entire rental of Ireland at that time is set down at 5,293,312_l._, but Arthur Young considered it to be not less than six millions. The cost of living was on the whole found to be nearly one-half less than in England. All the articles of use and consumption were cheaper in Ireland, and the taxes trifling in comparison. There was no land-tax, no poor’s-rate, no window-tax, no candle or soap tax, only half a wheel tax, no servants’ tax; and a variety of other things heavily burthened in England, were free or not so heavily burthened in Ireland. The expenses of a family in Dublin and in London, are considered to be in the proportion of five to eight; but the Irish do however, it is added, nevertheless contrive to spend their incomes.