One painful result was already beginning to show itself.Neglected children in great towns had already excited compassion.Thomas Coram (1668?-1751)had been shocked by the sight of dying children exposed in the streets of London,and succeeded in establishing the Foundling Hospital (founded in 1742).In 1762,Jonas Hanway (1712-1786)obtained a law for boarding out children born within the bills of mortality.The demand for children's labour,produced by the factories,seemed naturally enough to offer a better chance for extending such charities.Unfortunately among the people who took advantage of it were parish officials,eager to get children off their hands,and manufacturers concerned only to make money out of childish labour.Hence arose the shameful system for which remedies (as I shall have to notice)had to be sought in a later generation.
Meanwhile the outbreak of the revolutionary war had made the question urgent.When Manchester trade suffered,as Eden tells us in his reports,many workmen enlisted in the army,and left their children to be supported by the parish.Bad seasons followed in 1794and 1795,and there was great distress in the agricultural districts.The governing classes became alarmed.
In December 1795Whitbread introduced a bill providing that the justices of the peace should fix a minimum rate of wages.Upon a motion for the second reading,Pitt made the famous speech (12th December)including the often-quoted statement that when a man had a family,relief should be 'a matter of right and honour,instead of a ground of opprobrium and contempt.'(14)Pitt had in the same speech shown his reading of Adam Smith by dwelling upon the general objections to state interference with wages,and had argued that more was to be gained by removing the restrictions upon the free movement of labour.
He undertook to produce a comprehensive measure;and an elaborate bill of 130clauses was prepared in 1796.(15)The rates were to be used to supplement inadequate wages;'schools of industry'were to be formed for the support of superabundant children;loans might be made to the poor for the purchase of a cow;(16)and the possession of property was not to disqualify for the receiving relief.In short,the bill seems to have been(17)model of misapplied benevolence.The details were keenly criticised by Bentham,and the bill never came to the birth.Other topics were pressing enough at this time to account for the failure of a measure so vast in its scope.Meanwhile something had to be done.On 6th May 1795the Berkshire magistrates had passed certain resolutions called from their place of meeting,the 'Speenhamland Act of Parliament.'They provided that the rate of wages of a labourer should be increased in proportion to the price of corn and to the number of his family --a rule which,as Eden observes,tended to discourage economy of food in times of scarcity.They also sanctioned the disastrous principle of paying part of the wages out of rates.An act passed in 1796repealed the old restrictions upon out-door relief;and thus,during the hard times that were to follow,the poor-laws were adapted to produce the state of things in which,as Cobbett says (in 1821)'every labourer who has children is now regularly and constantly a pauper.'(18)The result represents a curious compromise.The landowners,whether from benevolence or fear of revolution,desired to meet the terrible distress of the times.Unfortunately their spasmodic interference was guided by no fixed principles,and acted upon a class of institutions not organised upon any definite system.The general effect seems to have been that the ratepayers,no longer allowed to 'depopulate,'sought to turn the compulsory stream of charity partly into their own pockets.If they were forced to support paupers,they could contrive to save the payment of wages.They could use the labour of the rate-supported pauper instead of employing independent workmen.The evils thus produced led before long to most important discussions.(19)The ordinary view of the poor-law was inverted.The prominent evil was the reckless increase of a degraded population instead of the restriction of population.Eden's own view is sufficiently indicative of the light in which the facts showed themselves to intelligent economists.As a disciple of Adam Smith,he accepts the rather vague doctrine of his master about the 'balance'between labour and capital.If labour exceeds capital,he says,the labourer must starve 'in spite of all political regulations.'(20)He therefore looks with disfavour upon the whole poor-law system.It is too deeply rooted to be abolished,but he thinks that the amount to be raised should not be permitted to exceed the sum levied on an average of previous years.The only certain result of Pitt's measure would be a vast expenditure upon a doubtful experiment: