POOR LAWS.

HC Deb 07 March 1817 vol 35 cc907-13

Mr. Calcraft

said, he held in his hands two petitions on the subject of the Poor Laws, and he wished to call the attention of the noble lord opposite to these petitions. He could assure the House from his own knowledge, that the statements in them were in no wise exaggerated. They were from two parishes in Dorsetshire: one of them was from the parish of Langton Matravers, consisting of 575 inhabitants, and 419 of these inhabitants were at present receiving parochial relief. The rate amounted at least to 18s. or 19s. in the pound. The other was from Swanage, where the population was larger, about 1,500, and the number of inhabited houses about 300. Of this population there was not one in seven able to support themselves. In this parish, the rate amounted to a guinea in the pound, and every occupier of land but one had given notice to abandon. Four or five in the other had also given such notice; and the land in a short time would thus all be thrown on the hands of the owners. If it had not been for the persons who had come forward and subscribed largely towards the relief of the poor, at the head of whom was lord Eldon, it would have been impossible to go on; but he was sorry to say, that the whole of the funds subscribed would be exhausted by the 22d of the present month. These parishes would have applied for a rate in aid, which the magistrates, if they thought proper, could allow them from the rest of the hundred; but of the five other parishes in the hundred, there was not one which paid less than 7s. in the pound on the rack rent. The other mode which the statute of Elizabeth left open to them, of applying to the magistrates at the sessions who might rate in aid such other parishes in the county as they thought fit to fix on, was a course attended with almost insuperable difficulties. He should move that the petitions be first read, and then referred to the committee on the poor laws. He hoped that committee would not separate, without settling the mode in which rates in aid could be efficaciously obtained. Persons of the largest funded property were at present, contrary to the intent of the statute of Elizabeth, enabled to escape entirely from the poor laws. If the names of the stockholders were published, there could be little difficulty in making them contribute equally with others; and he did not see why the names of the public creditors, and the amount of stock held by them, should remain a secret any more than the amount of the debt.

Lord Castlereagh

said, that the House and the country ought always to keep in view, that a great proportion of the wages of labour of the country were paid out of the poor rates. The farmers, from a system, the bad effects of which had been already too much felt, had been long in the habit, in many parts of the country, of paying a great proportion of the wages of farming labour in the shape of poor rates. This accounted in a great measure for the rapid rise in the amount of those rates from one and a half to upwards of 7 millions. He was convinced, that in cases where 19s or 20s in the pound were paid for poor rates, 15s. of that would be found to be wages paid in the shape of poor rates. A system like this ought to be discouraged as much as possible.

Mr. Calcraft

was glad that the noble lord had made the observation, as it gave him an opportunity of stating, that though it might apply to parishes purely agricultural, it could not apply to the parishes in question. The persons obtaining relief from them were nearly all engaged in the stone trade. He did admit that a great part of the wages of labour in many parts of the country were paid out of the poor rates. He was decidedly of opinion that the political state of the country had, in a great measure, increased the poor rates to what they at present were, and not the idleness of the people.

Mr. Curwen

agreed with the noble lord in reprobating the pernicious practice which existed in many counties of mixing the wages of labour with the poor rates; but there were many parts of the country where the increase of the poor rates was not to be accounted for in this way. With respect to the fundholders, it was indeed true that a great part of the property of the country, for want of means of coming at it, had hitherto escaped from bearing its share. The more he considered the subject, the more he was convinced that the House ought, before they separated, to take some measures for subjecting the fundholders to their fair share of the burthens of the poor rates, without which it would be found impossible to continue to relieve the distresses of the country. From every thing he had seen of the noble lord in the committee, he was convinced that he would heartily concur with them in recommending such measures as, after a minute investigation, should appear best calculated to lighten the pressure of this evil.

Lord Cochrane

said, that he could not suffer the petitions to be laid on the table without stating a circumstance of a most interesting nature, and which, in some degree, had induced him to give the notice which he had done that night, relative to the equalization of the interest paid by the public, for the loan of depreciated paper, to the diminution which had taken place by the operation of that paper on all landed property and stock in trade. He would give it as his decided opinion, founded on all that he had read and heard on the subject of the poor laws, that legislative enactments, confined to their operations alone, would prove wholly unavailing. The House must look deeper for the cause of the evil. The circumstances to which he particularly alluded was, the state of the Manchester manufacturers of goods for foreign markets, all of which goods he could prove were paid for, not by the consumer abroad, but by the landed interest here, in the shape of poor rates. He had only to mention in proof of this, that a piece of cotton stuff, for which the weaver was formerly paid 29s. by the master manufacturer, now cost that manufacturer only 7s. a sum scarcely sufficient to indemnify this weaver for the expense of his loom, paste, candles, and rent; the remainder being paid out of the pockets of the land owners in the form of poor rates. Was this a system that could last? No. It was a transfer of the produce of our land to America in the shape of merchandize—of the original cost of manufacturing which the consumer paid no part. The accounts of exports delivered to the House were the means of delusion. Under such circumstances it would be better to cease manufacturing, and even to burn the useless vessels employed in so ruinous a trade—a trade only beneficial to our rival, and upon which that rival levied a heavy duty, derived also from the pockets of the landholders of England. An end must be put to evils of such enormous magnitude, and this could only be effected by a reduction of the interest of the debt. No man could say that the poor laws occasioned the increase of misery, and that they had produced the state of wretchedness which called for the assistance of those who still possessed property. It was the taxes which reduced the people to want. It was the taxes which deprived the manufacturer of a foreign market, by enhancing the value of his goods, and enabling foreign countries to rival and undersell him in every market. He repeated, that an end must be put to this state of things by a fair and equitable reduction of the interest of the funded debt, and he hoped for the concurrence of every honourable man in that House to the attainment of that object. It had been contended by various members that the able bodied part of the lower classes were not entitled to relief; he (lord C.) thought otherwise; he felt that those capable of working, but destitute of employment, were even more deserving of pity and assistance than the aged and infirm, inasmuch as their feelings, under such circumstances, with a starving family around them, must be more acute. It was in vain to imagine that they would quietly lie down and die in a ditch. He expressed an anxious hope that the House would dispassionately weigh and consider the perilous circumstances in which the country was placed. The present system mutt soon cease; and if his majesty's ministers continued to oppose every change, it would come at last in that dreadful form which would not only sweep away the landed property, but involve the whole kingdom in confusion and utter ruin.

Sir C. Burrell

said, he felt it his duty to protest against the doctrine held out by the noble lord. He was convinced, that when the fundholder was trenched upon, and through him honour and public faith were violated, the present distress would be increased ten-fold. He augured much from the present state of the funds, which held out a reasonable expectation that the monied interest would assist the landholders by way of mortgage, which could not be hoped for when the funds afforded 5 per cent, on money invested. He was convinced that any interference with the fundholder would therefore be an injury to the landholder also. He was surprised that the member for Carlisle, who was re- markable for sound sense, should have joined in so wild a theory as the proposal for breaking faith with the creditor. Great exertions had been made in the district he was connected with, to employ the poor, even those scarcely able to work, for the purpose of avoiding idleness and the appearance of pauperism. He thought it would be most desirable to increase the circulating medium, which would give a facility to the employment of the labouring classes throughout the kingdom, and would do more to restore prosperity than any remedies which had been proposed.

Mr. Lockhart

said, he was anxious to correct an erroneous idea which the noble lord (Cochrane) had either expressed or implied, namely, that it was in contemplation by way of reform in the poor laws, to propose to refuse relief to able bodied men, who were without employment. No such idea was entertained, he believed, by any member of the House, and certainly not by any member of the committee on the poor laws; the idea entertained by the committee, was to encourage industry, but by no means to refuse relief when industry was found unavailing. He agreed in what had been said by the noble lord (Castlereagh) as to the bad effects of mixing up poor rates with the wages of labour, but he denied that this system had been voluntary on the part of the landlords. When the population increased, and so many poor applied for parish relief, it was found impossible to give the same sum to the single and married men. If the unmarried men received as much as would support a; family, they would have spent more than they had any need for; but as it was impossible to make any distinction between single and married men, in the actual rate of wages, the price of labour was fixed at a low rate, and an additional sum was given to those who had families out of the parish rates. It was not often he agreed with the noble lord (Cochrane), but he must say, he concurred with him in thinking, that if that system was not put an end to, by which one species of property was exempted from all rates and taxes to which others were subject, and that too to an amount equal to all the rents of the kingdom, it must render all trade and industry wholly unproductive, and thus cut up the roots on which it depended. He did not wish to see any compulsory measure adopted, but he looked to the good sense of persons holding all species of property, and trusted to their conviction of the expediency of making some sacrifices for the security of their property and every other.

Sir O. Moselcy

said, be allowed that in many instances in Manchester the weavers got no more than 7s. for a peice of cloth, for which they formerly got 29s. and that the rest of what was necessary for their subsistence, was made up from the poor rates. The average rate of wages was, he thought, so low as 7s. 6d. a week. But the poor rates, from which their subsistence, was supplied, could not, in that instance, be considered as a tax on the land-holders; the merchants had warehouses, and rateable property in the town and its neighbourhood. He was himself a proprietor of land in that town, and he by no means considered those rates as pressing unfairly upon him.

Mr. Brougham

said, he agreed with his hon. friend who had last spoken as to the manner in which the poor rates operated, lie could not let this opportunity pass without protesting as well against the proposal of the noble lord (Cochrane), as that of the hon. baronet (sir C. Burrell), who had professed so much abhorrence of the noble lord's proposition. The difference between the noble lord's project for reducing the interest of the debt, and the hon. baronet's proposal for increasing the quantity of the circulating medium, was only the difference between two modes of bankruptcy, or as had been well expressed by a celebrated writer on these subjects, the difference between secret fraud and open violence. For what distinction could there really be, between taking boldly a certain proportion of his annuity from the creditor, and making that annuity worth so much the less, by an increase of the paper circulation? He, for his own part, did not see more good faith or justice in one proposition than in the other. Though it was with hesitation that he differed from so respectable an authority as that of his hon. friend (sir O. Moseley), he was afraid that he had under-rated the distresses in the manufacturing districts; for, from the inquiries which he (Mr. B.) had felt it his painful duty to make on this subject, he was persuaded that the average rate of wages was not more than 3s. or 4s. a week. This subject was a most interesting one, and the more it was inquired into, the more it would be found that distress existed, to a degree to which the House had scarcely a conception.

The petitions were read and ordered to lie on the table.