Chapter XII: Part II (2)

One essential distinction between a comparatively rich and poor society is in the moral right which individuals have to dispose of their money in certain modes. Where capital abounds in proportion to the consumers, individuals are fully justified in giving away in whatsoever form and to whomsoever they please; as they give away that which leaves nobody destitute. But in a society where population abounds in proportion to capital, to give food and clothing to the idle while the industrious are debarred from earning it, is to take subsistence from him whose due it is, to give it to one who has no claim. Thus to violate justice can be no true charity. Where consumers abound in proportion to capital, it is obvious that the way to bestow most happiness is, not to take away one man’s share to give it to another, but to do what is possible towards creating another share in such a way as not to cause more want. In other words, almsgiving is the mode of charity appropriate to one state of society, and the establishment of provident associations, and the encouragement of emigration, and especially of education, are the modes of charity appropriate to another state of society. We have need enough of charity in our present state;—with hundreds of thousands of paupers in our parishes, and of half-starved artizans in our towns, and broken-spirited labourers in our villages. We have need enough of charity,—of the time of such as have leisure, and of the attention of the thoughtful, and of the exertions of the active, and of the wealth of the opulent. All these will be too little for the removal of the evil which our own mistakes have caused. We have need enough of charity; and if we would learn how to apply it, there are those among the sufferers who can instruct us. There is in existence a letter from a poor operative living in a district where charities of food and clothing abound, entreating the influential parties whom he addresses to put an end to the almsgiving which leaves no chance of a just provision to the high-souled working man. There is in existence a petition from a body of agricultural labourers to the House of Lords, last year, praying for the abolition of legal charity which condemns the labourer to starvation or degradation. These documents are signs of the times which are not to be mistaken, and which may well strike us silent with shame at our incessant complaints of the poor for having lost their spirit of independence, and become a degraded race. Where is our Christian charity, when we first wrest from them their independence, and then taunt them with the loss? when we invite them to encroach, and then spurn them for encroaching?

Even from this enormous evil, however, good is at this moment arising. The rapid, the appalling increase of the mischief has directed the general attention towards it; and the two grand principles with which we set out afford the suggestion of remedies which are actually in preparation. It is now many years since certain commissioners, appointed by the French government to investigate our pauper system, pronounced it the great political gangrene of England, which it was equally dangerous to remove and to let alone. The mischief has been on the increase ever since, and yet there is hope of cure. If it were not that we had sound principles to go upon,—if we had all this vice and misery on our hands to be got rid of we knew not how, our condition would indeed be deplorable. But, once having got hold of the truth that ours is a society where labour abounds in proportion to capital, we know at least how to look about for a remedy, and with what aim to direct our proceedings. We must lessen the inducements to indigence, (strange that such should exist!) by making the condition of the pauper inferior to that of the independent labourer, and ensure its remaining universally so by appointing a rigid, impartial, and uniform administration of the funds of our legal charity. Every diminution of the inducements to indigence is necessarily an increase of the inducements to independence; both by giving the right bias to the inclinations of the labourer, and by saving a portion of the subsistence-fund.

In proportion to the savings effected in the subsistence-fund by a rigid administration of the legal charity, the surplus labour of our parishes will be absorbed; and if, by a wise scheme of emigration, the disproportion between our capital and labour can be still further reduced, a way will be open for the total abolition of a legal charity,—the most demoralizing agency, perhaps, which can be introduced into any state,—a curse beneath which no society can prosper. We shall then be at liberty to apply our charity wholly to that object which should now be uppermost with all the truly benevolent,—to prevent indigence instead of providing for it, in the full confidence that “accidental cases will be relieved by accidental succour.” There are many who believe that an immediate abolition of our legal charity would cause less misery than its long continuance: but there is happily no occasion to contemplate the alternative. There is a strong hope afforded by various instances of partial reformation that a way remains for us out of our difficulties,—toilsome and painful, no doubt, but practicable and safe;—a way of so rectifying the administration of our poor-laws as to give us the power of at length abolishing them. Honoured be the rulers who shall set us forward on this path; and blessed be every one who bestirs himself to remove obstructions by the substitution of a true for a spurious charity![D]

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Footnote D:

If a rebuke were needed for despondency respecting the prospects
of society, it might be found in the experience of the change
which a few months have wrought in the popular convictions as to
the true direction of charity. Fifteen months ago, it required
some resolution to give so much pain to kind hearts as was
occasioned by such exposures as those contained in “Cousin
Marshall,” and yet more to protest against poor-laws for Ireland.
The publications of the Poor-Law Commissioners have since wrought
powerfully in the right direction. Conviction has flashed from
mind to mind; and now we hear from all quarters of Provident and
Friendly Societies, of Emigration, of parish struggles for the
rectification of abuses, of the regulation of workhouses, the
shutting up of soup and blanket charities, and the revision of
charitable constitutions, with a view to promote the employment of
labour rather than the giving of alms. The extent of the change of
opinion in the same time with regard to poor-laws for Ireland is
scarcely less remarkable. On no subject has mistake been more
prevalent, and never has it more rapidly given way before the
statement of principles and facts. The noblest charity, after all,
would be a provision for the regular statement, in a popular form,
of principles and facts of like importance. When shall we have a
Minister of Public Instruction who will be the angel of this new
dispensation? It is for the people to say when.

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Here is the statement of the evil and of one of the appropriate remedies.

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In a society composed of a natural gradation of ranks, some must be poor; _i.e._ have nothing more than the means of present subsistence.

Any suspension of these means of subsistence, whether through disaster, sickness, or decrepitude, converts the poor into the indigent.

Since indigence occasions misery, and disposes to vice, the welfare of society requires the greatest possible reduction of the number of the indigent.

Charity, public and private, or an arbitrary distribution of the subsistence-fund, has hitherto failed to effect this object; the proportion of the indigent to the rest of the population having increased from age to age.

This is not surprising, since an arbitrary distribution of the subsistence-fund, besides rendering consumption unproductive, and encouraging a multiplication of consumers, does not meet the difficulty arising from the disproportion of numbers to the means of subsistence.

The small unproductive consumption occasioned by the relief of sudden accidents and rare infirmities is necessary, and may be justifiably provided for by charity, since such charity does not tend to the increase of numbers; but, with this exception, all arbitrary distribution of the necessaries of life is injurious to society, whether in the form of private almsgiving, public charitable institutions, or a legal pauper-system.

The tendency of all such modes of distribution having been found to be to encourage improvidence with all its attendant evils,—to injure the good while relieving the bad,—to extinguish the spirit of independence on one side, and of charity on the other,—to encourage peculation, tyranny, and fraud,—and to increase perpetually the evil they are meant to remedy,—but one plea is now commonly urged in favour of a legal provision for the indigent.

This plea is, that every individual born into a state has a right to subsistence from the state.

This plea, in its general application, is grounded on a false analogy between a state and its members, and a parent and his family.

A parent has a considerable influence over the subsistence-fund of his family, and an absolute control over the numbers to be supported by that fund; whereas the rulers of a state, from whom a legal provision emanates, have little influence over its subsistence-fund, and no control whatever over the number of its members.

If the plea of right to subsistence be grounded on the faults of national institutions, the right ought rather to be superseded by the rectification of those institutions, than admitted at the cost of perpetuating an institution more hurtful than all the others combined.

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What then must be done to lessen the number of the indigent now so frightfully increasing?

The subsistence-fund must be employed productively, and capital and labour be allowed to take their natural course; _i. e._ the pauper system must, by some means or other, be extinguished.

The number of consumers must be proportioned to the subsistence-fund. To this end, encouragements to the increase of population should be withdrawn, and every sanction given to the preventive check; _i. e._ charity must be directed to the enlightenment of the mind instead of to the relief of bodily wants.

If not adopted speedily, all measures will be too late to prevent the universal prevalence of poverty in this kingdom, the legal provision for the indigent now operating the extinction of our national resources at a perpetually increasing rate.

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The objects of voluntary emigration, directed by the state, are three-fold:—

1. To improve the condition of those who emigrate, by placing
them where they may obtain subsistence at less cost than at
home.

2. To improve the condition of those who remain, by increasing
the ratio of capital to population.

3. To improve the condition of the colonized region.

To fulfil the first of these objects, the colony must be so located as to insure health and abundance to its members; and it must be so organized as to secure the due co-operation of labour and capital.

To fulfil the second object, the removal of each individual must be less costly than his maintenance at home would be; and the selection must be made with a view to lessening the amount of human productiveness at home.

To fulfil the third object, the colonists must be selected with a view to their productiveness, both as regards capital and population; which includes a moral fitness to compose an orderly society.

It follows from all these considerations that a new settlement should be composed of young, healthy, and moral persons; that all should not be labourers, nor all capitalists; and that there should be a sufficient concentration of their numbers on the new lands to ensure a facility of exchanges.

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All other proposed remedies must be subjected to, as this must be regulated by, the test, whether they assist in proportioning labour and capital. The Home Colonization system here fails, on the double ground that it ensures a smaller return to capital and labour than could be had abroad, and serves as a direct premium on population.

Home colonies may afford a temporary relief to a redundant population, and also increase the productiveness of the lands which they appropriate; but this is done by alienating capital from its natural channels; and with the certainty of ultimately injuring society by increasing the redundancy of population over capital.

Home colonization then, though less injurious than the unproductive distribution of the charity-fund, is inferior to foreign colonization, inasmuch as the one yields temporary benefit to a few at the expense of ultimate injury to many; and the other produces permanent benefit to all.

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All provisions for rewarding forethought and economy, and especially all for the diffusion of sound moral and political knowledge, approve themselves by this test. All contrivance and care in the production and economy of capital approve themselves also; but Emigration is conspicuous in its merits, since it not only immediately reaches the seat of the evil in the mother country, but affords the greatest of blessings to the colonized regions. If regulated by a due regard to the infallible test, it is scarcely possible to conceive of an arrangement more apt to all the purposes of society. Where it has failed, the reason of failure has commonly been that one link in the chain of operating causes has been wanting. Land and labourers cannot mutually prosper without the capital which has too often been deficient. We have not yet made the experiment of sending out small societies completely organized, and amply provided to settle down at once in a state of sufficient civilization to spare the mother-country all further anxiety about the expedition. It can be no objection to this that it abstracts capital and the most useful species of labour from the mother-country: since the capital so sent out will yield a more rapid and ample increase to us in a new market for commerce than it could have done at home; and the labour is that which we least want at home,—however good its quality may be,—and that which we most want in our possessions on the other side the world. Such an organized society, however, would be able to bear a much larger proportion of children than a similar society could take charge of at home,—the labour of children being of as much more value than their maintenance abroad, as it is less at home. If for every old person naturally belonging to such a company, left behind, two children were taken out, this country would be immediately compensated for the abstraction of prime labour, and a provision would be made for the future contraction of the population. All details, however, from the greatest to the least, will be arranged with infinitely less trouble than our parochial mismanagements have cost us when we have once, as a nation, surveyed the dreary haunts of our pauperized classes, and then taken a flight in spirit to the fair regions abroad which invite their labour with a sure promise of rich recompense. The time must come when it will be a matter of wonder how we could so long be oppressed with a redundancy of labour at home, while our foreign lands were dreary only for want of labour, while an open sea lay between, while we had shipping to spare to traverse it, and while we were spending nine millions a year in the fruitless support of our paupers, and as a premium on the production of yet more and more labour. The best plea for us in that day will be that we did not understand our own case. By the time we have spent nine millions, or the half of nine millions, in relieving our labour market, we may have discovered how inferior is that superstitious, spurious charity which doles out bread at its own door to an unlawful petitioner because to give bread was once charity, and that enlightened, genuine benevolence which causes plenty to spring in the far corners of the world, nourishing at home the ancient household virtues which have been well nigh starved among us, but which are not dead.

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What decision does our test give out in regard to Ireland? That, as a redundancy of population is her universally acknowledged curse, it is unreasonable to expect relief from the introduction of a legal charity,—the most efficacious of all premiums on population. The conclusion is so obvious, that it can be got rid of only by proving either that a redundant population is not the great grievance of Ireland, or that there may be a legal charity which does not act as a premium on population. Where are the materials for either the one proof or the other?

Whatever affects the security of property, or intercepts the due reward of labour, impairs the subsistence-fund by discouraging industry and forethought.

Partnership tenantcies affect the security of property by rendering one tenant answerable for the obligations of all his partners, while he has no control over the management of their portions.

A gradation of landlords on one estate has the same effect, by rendering one tenant liable to the claims of more than one landlord.

The levying of fines on a whole district for an illegal practice going on in one part of it has the same effect, by rendering the honest man liable for the malpractices of the knave.

The imposition of a church establishment on those who already support another church, intercepts the due reward of labour, by taking from the labourer a portion of his earnings for an object from which he derives no benefit.

The practice of letting land to the highest bidder, without regard to former service, or to the merits of the applicants, intercepts the due reward of the labourer, by decreeing his gains to expire with his lease.

All these practices having prevailed in IRELAND, her subsistence-fund is proportionably impaired, though the reduction is somewhat more than compensated by the natural growth of capital.

While capital has been growing much more slowly than it ought, population has been increasing much more rapidly than the circumstances of the country have warranted; the consequences of which are, extensive and appalling indigence, and a wide spread of the moral evils which attend it.

An immediate palliation of this indigence would be the result of introducing a legal pauper-system into Ireland; but it would be at the expense of an incalculable permanent increase of the evil.

To levy a poor-rate on the country at large would be impolitic, since it would only increase the primary grievance of an insufficiency of capital, by causing a further unproductive consumption of it.

To throw the burthen of a pauper-system on absentees would be especially unjust, since they bear precisely the same relation to the wealth of their country as its resident capitalists.

In the case of Ireland, as in all analogous cases, permanent relief can be effected only by adjusting the proportions of capital and population; and this must be attempted by means suited to her peculiar circumstances.

The growth of capital should be aided by improvements in agricultural and domestic economy, and by the removal of political grievances; from which would follow a union in place of an opposition of interests.

Population should be reduced within due limits,

In the present emergency, by well-conducted schemes of emigration; and

Permanently, by educating the people till they shall have become qualified for the guardianship of their own interests.

A sameness in the natural laws of distribution exactly reverses the order of possession in new countries, i. e., in those where capital abounds in proportion to population. There the landowner (if any one finds it worth his while to be a landowner without being either a capitalist or a labourer at the same time) gains no real rent till the best land is all under cultivation, and then very little till a third degree is resorted to. The capitalist, meanwhile, makes less than the labourer; or would gain less if he were not, like the landowner, a labourer also. Where labour is so dear, all are labourers; and the labourer, by a very natural process, soon becomes a capitalist and a landowner; and then he may chance to learn what a strange thing it seems to a man from the mother-country to let land of a fine quality for no better rent than a small share of the produce; and how vexatious it is, after having reaped splendid returns to capital, to have to pay away, in the purchase of labour, all but little more than the ordinary profits of stock.

The want of a due consideration of the difference in relative condition of labourers at home and labourers in new countries has led to some serious errors[E] in the formation and execution of some of our plans of colonization. Such a scheme as that of penal colonization could never have been adopted if the case of the working class in both countries had been understood. Besides the many other objections which might be and have been forcibly urged, there must remain the insurmountable one that labour is better rewarded in a new colony than at home. It does not appear that any arbitrary severity, short of the infliction of such life-long misery as no crime can deserve, can counteract the natural law by which the labourer is more prosperous in our penal colonies than in England. They are places of privilege, and the carrying him there is putting him in a condition of privilege, sooner or later, however severely we may punish him for any terminable period. This is so notoriously the case, that it has become matter of very serious consideration how the lot of the convict can be rendered harder, and be made known at home to be so; and arrangements have been made, within a short period, by which the disproportion in the lot of the innocent and the guilty is considerably lessened. Still, however far the convict may be placed below the virtuous emigrant in the scale of comfort, no power can, in the present state of our labour-market, prevent his being much better off than the independent labourer at home. The power of rulers may ordain chains, whipping, and other penalties to the convict; but it cannot prevent his having, during a pressing demand for his labour, that abundance of the necessaries of life which the virtuous labourer cannot obtain at home. Bob Castle[F] would not now, perhaps, be able to purchase an estate on which his honest brother Frank was a labourer; but Bob, however he might have been punished for seven or fourteen years, could not but have a fairer prospect before him at the end of that time than honest Frank would have had in England. This necessity forms, of itself, a conclusive argument against penal colonization as a secondary punishment. That mode of punishment can never command respect or success which wanders so far from the principle of retribution as to inflict studied miseries as a set-off against advantages which cannot be excluded.

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Footnote E:

It is incumbent on me to advert to the ill-success of one method
of supplying labour to the Australian colonies, which I have
represented in much too favourable a light in my tale of “Homes
Abroad.” I find that, though I have pointed out (pp. 54, 55) the
leading objections to the plan of indenturing servants to colonial
settlers, I have represented the issue of such an experiment as
more prosperous than it has been proved in fact. The true state of
the case will be learned from the following extract from “Papers
relating to the Crown Lands and Emigration to New South Wales,”
printed by order of the House of Commons, October, 1831.

"The Emigrant, in the cases to which we allude, has bound himself,
previously to his departure from this country, to serve his
employer for a time at wages which, though higher than those which
he could have obtained at home, were much below the ordinary rate
in the colony. No attempt has been made to render the advantage
obtained by the employer in this manner an equivalent for the
expense he has incurred in carrying out the Emigrants; and it can
scarcely be doubted that in many instances the bargain, if
strictly adhered to, would have been more than reasonably
profitable to the employer. Indeed it has been the principal fault
of these arrangements that the engagement of the Emigrant has not
been on either side regarded as a mere undertaking to repay the
expense incurred in his conveyance; and hence he has often been
led to look upon the transaction as a disadvantageous hiring of
himself, into which he had been misled by his ignorance of the
circumstances of the place to which he was going. This has been
the frequent cause of discontent on the part of indentured
servants; and their masters, unable to derive any advantage from
unwilling labourers, have found it more for their interest to
discharge these servants than to insist on the right conveyed by
their bond. It is obvious that no increased severity in the legal
enactments for the protection of contracts could prevent those
which we have described from being thus dissolved; for they have
been so, not from any insufficiency in the obligations by which
the Emigrants have been bound, but from the impossibility of
rendering such obligations worth preserving, where one of the
parties strongly desires them to be cancelled."—pp. 21, 22.

These objections apply only to cases of _binding_ for more than
the repayment of the expenses of removal to the colony. Next to
the education of the people at home, there is no way in which
charity can now operate so beneficially as in making loans, under
security of repayment, to enable working men, and yet more working
_women_, to transport themselves to our Australian colonies; and
by diffusing, as widely as possible, _correct_ information
respecting the condition and prospects of emigrants to our North
American colonies. This correct information, which is to the last
degree interesting, may be obtained from the Papers above referred
to, and the “Reports of the Emigration Commissioners, for 1832;
printed by order of the House of Commons.” Every active
philanthropist ought to possess himself of the contents of these
papers. The Report, dated 1832, contains the following.

“Before we close this account of our proceedings regarding New
South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, we must observe that the value
of that which has been accomplished cannot be justly estimated by
a mere reference to the number already gone out. The general scope
and tendency of our measures must be taken into account, as well
as the importance, in an endeavour to direct emigration to a
quarter comparatively new, of having succeeded in making a
_commencement_. For, after the impulse has once been given towards
countries really adapted to emigration, the letters of the
settlers themselves, more perhaps than the most elaborate
statements from authority, serve to maintain and propagate the
disposition to resort to the same quarter. Although, therefore,
the measures that have been adopted this year may be limited in
their immediate influence, and it may be also impossible to
predict with certainty their ulterior results, yet, at least, they
are of such a nature that, if successful, they may serve as the
foundation of a system sufficient for many years to prevent the
progress of the Australian colonies from being retarded by the
want of an industrious population adequate to the development of
their resources.” (p. 6.) And the mother-country, we may add, from
being impeded, by an over-crowded population at home, in her
efforts to exalt the social and moral condition of her mighty
family.

Footnote F:

See Homes Abroad.

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The objects of penal colonization are—

1. The security of society by the removal of the offender.

2. The security of society by the effect of his example.

3. The reformation of the offender.

There has hitherto been an entire failure of all these objects: and no wonder; since,—

1. The offender is only transferred from one portion of society
to another; and besides, frequently returns to his old haunts.

2. His punishment, as far as it is punishment, takes place at
too great a distance to be conspicuous as a warning; and in as
far as his lot does not involve punishment, the effect of his
example is precisely the reverse of what is desired.

3. Our convict arrangements tend to the further corruption of
the offender, by letting him experience a great improvement in
his condition as a direct consequence of his crimes.

The junction of penal with voluntary emigration tends equally to disappoint the purposes of the one, and to extinguish the benefits of the other; since convict labourers find themselves in a state of privilege, in a region where their labour procures them large rewards; and new settlers find their community deeply injured by the vice and disease consequent on the introduction of a convict population.

Before closing this part, it may be well to observe that much vain reluctance to acknowledge the two grand principles which primarily regulate the distribution of wealth, arises from too small an allowance having been asked for subordinate influences, which may justify a much greater degree of hopefulness respecting the condition of an advanced country than some economists have ventured to indulge. It is no wonder that the kind-hearted turn away, and refuse to listen to a doctrine which is thought to forbid much hope that the whole of any society can be comfortably provided with the necessaries of life. It is no wonder that the timid cease from trying to lop off evils, if they must believe that every head of the social hydra will grow again,—that for every redundancy drawn off there will be a speedy over-filling. All experience of humanity contradicts such forebodings: and, though it would assuredly be our duty to make our own generation happier than the last, even under the certainty that the next must fall back again, it is much more animating to believe, as we are justified in doing, that every advance is a pledge of a further advance; that every taste of comfort, generated to the poor man by his own exertions, stimulates the appetite for more. It has ever been found that, when men have learned to prefer wheaten bread to potatoes, it is more likely that their children should be taught to seek butchers’ meat than allowed to fall back to potatoes. The father who has worked his way up into a glazed and tiled cottage, brings up his children to fear the mud hovel in which they were born. If we do but apply ourselves to nourish the taste for comfort in the poor,—to take for granted the most, instead of the least, that they ought to require, there is little fear but that, whenever circumstances allow, they will fall into our way of thinking, and prefer a home of comfort, earned by forethought and self-denial, to herding together in a state of reckless pauperism. With every increase of resources, let a vigorous exertion be made to rouse the complacency and exalt the tastes of the labouring class, and it will assuredly be found, in the interval before a new access of labour can be brought into the market, that the condition of the class has improved as a matter of theory, as well as practice, and that it must go hard with them but they will keep it up.

All experience warrants this statement. There can be no question that the preventive check has largely superseded the positive in all advancing societies. There can be no doubt of the increased providence of the middling classes, and the enlargement of the domestic requirements of the poor, even though wars, famine, and pestilence have nearly ceased to make the awful vacancies in which the wants and desires of the survivors could expand. Though in some unhappy districts where the visitations of want have extinguished the moral check, multitudes still herd together, more like brutes than human beings, it is certain that there is a larger demand among the working classes of England for better food, clothing, habitations, and furniture, than their fathers thought of requiring. If this has taken place notwithstanding all the bad policy, public and private, with which we have weakened the spirit and the power of independence, there is ample reason for confidence in an accelerated progress in proportion as public and private influence shall work in an opposite direction. Since every one can, many will assist in this noble work; assured that not a single effort can be lost, and that its successful result will extend far beyond the present generation. Few are now found to advocate that species of prospective benevolence which acts by long-reaching pecuniary bequests; but it does not follow that benevolence may not be prospective. Let it extend its view to the remotest ages within ken of the human imagination. Let it do this by promoting the welfare of the parents of future generations;—a wide field enough, if we lived but for charity.

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