POOR LAWS' AMENDMENT. (Hansard, 31 July 1834)

The Earl of Radnor
thought the Amendment would be mischievous, as it would be difficult, after the child was a few years old, to determine the place of its birth; and, to settle that point, each parish being desirous to get rid of the burthen, would cause much litigation.

The Bishop of Exeter
was also of opinion, that the proposition of his noble and learned friend was likely to give rise 778 to much litigation. It would be very difficult, after sixteen years had passed, to prove the place of birth. It would not be sufficient to show that a person named A. B. was entitled to such a parish at such a time; it would be necessary to prove the identity of the individual. Thus would be created a continual series of litigation.

§ Lord Wynford
conceived it would not be more difficult to adopt a proper mode of identification under his clause than under the Bill?

The Bishop of London
asked, why was it necessary to make an exception with reference to the settlement of illegitimate children under this Bill.

§ Lord Wharncliffe
could see no strong, objection to leaving the child to the parish where it was born. That was at present the law; and he saw no reason for altering it.

The Bishop of Exeter
had ventured to state, a few nights ago, what would probably be the effect of this alteration of the law. The erring woman would be sent to the House of Correction of her own parish, and, circumstanced as she was, it was not likely that she would become chaste and continent. She was more likely to have a bastard child every year. No man would marry her, burthened as she was with an illegitimate progeny. A bastard would be bred in the House of Correction every year, for there she must remain. Now, he really thought, that the parish which sent her originally to the House of Correction, should have all the benefit of those children.

§ Lord Wharncliffe
repeated, that it was more just and fit that, after a certain time, the parish where the child was born should become the place of settlement of the child, than that the mother's settlement should be always liable.

The Lord Chancellor
said, they must, in looking to this question, take into consideration not merely the present state of the law, but what it would be when the proposed measure should be passed. When this Bill should be law, the woman would be removed to the parish in which her settlement lay, and would be placed in the workhouse. But, under the existing law, a woman (and such people were generally more or less of vagrant habits) might have four children born in four different parishes, and have herself a claim 779 on a fifth parish, where her own settlement was. There she might go with her children. Now, by the law, the workhouse there could not relieve any one of the four children; each of them must be relieved by a different parish. The parish officers must open four different accounts, one in each parish. Now, nothing ought to be more strongly guarded against,—and that was one object of the Bill,—than the preventing workhouses from entering on a system of complicated accounts. This clause had been very seriously considered, and he believed that the parties consulted, Overseers, Magistrates, and Clergymen, were not so unanimous on any other point as they were on this.

The Earl of Radnor
thought that, on the score of justice, the clause had better stand as it was originally framed.

The Earl of Falmouth
observed, that the Amendment of his noble and learned friend (Lord Wynford) merely limited the age beyond which children should not follow the settlement of their mother.

The Bishop of London
said, that it did not follow that the place of the child's birth was the place where it was conceived. He thought that the clause was best as it stood.

§ Lord Wynford
remarked, that the clause as it stood was unfit to stand part of the Bill, because it was cruel arid unjust that the child should be separated from its mother during the age of nurture, which he was disposed to extend to the sixteenth year.

The Bishop of London
said, that it was certainly expedient that the child should not be removed from the mother till what was generally considered the age of nurture, seven years, had ceased. Undoubtedly the unfortunate woman who had been seduced from the path of chastity might have her mind perverted, and her moral constitution vitiated, in workhouses, as they were conducted under existing circumstances; but one of the most important features of the present measure was, that workhouses would be placed under very different regulations, which would make it, if not impossible, at least very improbable, that the offence which brought her within the workhouse would be committed while she continued within its walls; and he should be very much disappointed if the central Commissioners to be appointed under this Act did not frame such regulations as would make 780 workhouses schools of moral reformation, and not of moral degradation.

§ Lord Wharncliffe
said, that the effect of the Amendment would be, to suspend the settlement of the child till it had attained the age of sixteen years. Considering the character of the persons who would be subjected to the regulations of the workhouse, he thought it would be better, after the age of nurture had expired, that the child should be separated from, than continued with, its parent. He would suggest to the noble and learned Lord, whether it would not be better to defer the consideration of his Amendment till another time.

The Bishop of London
said, that being one of the Poor-law Commissioners, he thought it fit to state, that in his opinion the clause was not by any means the most important feature of the Bill, and his arguments in its favour were laid before their Lordships solely because he thought it right to state the reasons which had induced him to recommend its adoption.

§ Lord Wharncliffe
said, that the clause now proposed to their Lordships for adoption had been inserted in the Bill on the Motion of an hon. Member of another House, at the very last stage of its progress, and in his opinion it militated against the recognised principle of the Bill. According to that clause, the unfortunate victim of seduction was to ask for relief from the parish, to be received into the workhouse, to be brought to bed there, and afterwards to be taken before a Magistrate to affiliate her child upon the putative father, from whom, after the sum ordered by the Magistrate for the maintenance of the child had been two months in arrear, the parish had to look for payment. Now, one strong objection to this clause in his mind was this—that it still put into the hands of the woman a remedy, of which it was the principle of the Bill to deprive her. When she found herself pregnant, she might say to the partner of her guilt, "If you don't marry me, I shall go into the workhouse and show you up," and thus would be continued one of the strong motives which now led to the commission of the crime, 781 and it removed one of the strongest inducements against its perpetration,— namely, the shame and disgrace which ought to be its concomitants. But this clause said in effect to the woman, "If you go into the workhouse, you have a chance of getting a husband;" removing the natural impulse to conceal her disgrace from the knowledge of the world. Again, by this clause there were no means to compel the appearance of the man when summoned by the Magistrate, and as he could not be made liable to action until he was two months in arrear, all he had to do was to get out of the way, and thus escape payment altogether. The clause would, in this respect, be entirely inoperative, and entirely contrary to the principle now sanctioned by both Houses of Parliament, that the woman should be chargeable with the maintenance of her illegitimate child, and all merely for the chance, (for it would amount to no more), of the parish being sometimes repaid the expense which it might incur on account of the woman. He should, therefore, move that the clause be expunged.

The Lord Chancellor
observed, that it had been said in another place, that this clause would reconcile the poor to the operation of the other clauses of the Bill, though for his own part he could not discover how it would; and if it would, he did not see that it was any reason in favour of a clause which would neutralise the effect of the rest of the Bill.

The Earl of Falmouth
thought the clause wholly inconsistent with the 67th clause of the Bill; and it never should have been recommended to their Lordships. If the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack had not pushed forward the Bill so rapidly, these contradictions would not have been in it.

The Lord Chancellor
observed, that the obloquy cast upon him by the noble Earl (the Earl of Falmouth) was not new to him. He had been assailed from many quarters; but if it was thought that any pain would be given him by the observations which had been made upon his conduct, he was sorry to say, that it gave no pain whatever. The obloquy to which he had been exposed had not disturbed his rest, had not impaired his appetite, had not injured his health; and if he had been subjected to ten times, ay, to ten thousand times, as much vituperation, he should not have felt the smallest possible portion 782 of concern. He should throw himself with the most perfect, implicit, and absolute confidence on the good sense and honest judgment of his countrymen, and he was sure that in a few weeks, or even a few days, after this measure had been in operation, he should be acquitted by them of any such charges as had been imputed to him.

The Earl of Falmouth
had no intention of casting obloquy upon the noble and learned Lord for his exertions in forwarding the Bill, nor upon his Majesty's Government; but entertaining a conscientious opinion that this measure was both morally and politically wrong, he gave it his opposition. He was most decidedly opposed to the principle of giving the most perfect impunity to the man, while it visited the woman with heavy punishment, and he felt that if the Bill passed into a law, it would sap the foundations of society.

§ Lord Wharncliffe
said, that if it were possible to affix any mark of shame on the father, to stigmatize him with any part of the disgrace attendant upon the transaction, he, for one, would gladly impose a penalty of that kind. But this was not the effect of a pecuniary penalty, and the woman was thereby induced to commit the crime without that hesitation which would follow on a contrary state of things.

The Marquis of Lansdown
had never brought himself to look upon the Bill as a measure of punishment, but as an attempt by a better administration of the Poor Laws, to give relief to poor persons in a manner the most economical to the parish. He should assent to the proposition of the noble Baron on these grounds.

The Bishop of Exeter
regretted that there were no means of punishing the father without the evidence of the mother, as it was objectionable for many reasons; but at the same time their Lordships should bear it in their recollection, that the station in which the unfortunate females who would be the peculiar objects of this clause moved, prevented their obtaining the redress which the victims of seduction in the higher walks of life might secure. Let their Lordships consider the circumstances of these unhappy persons, so poor that they were obliged to go into the workhouse, and then let them reflect whether the report of the Commissioners was drawn up in mockery, when it noticed that these poor creatures were not to be 783 deprived of the right of action. He would not let the woman get from the man her share of the penalty annexed to their common iniquity, but he thought a pecuniary penalty ought to be inflicted upon the man. He did not say, that modern legislators were bound to imitate in every point the enactments of the Mosaical law; but he did say, that considering the authority on which that law rested, no Legislature need be afraid or ashamed to follow one of its provisions. Their Lordships would recollect, that in that code a crime not exactly in its results the same as that now under discussion, but closely allied to it—namely, incontinency—was punished by that law with a pecuniary penalty. If a man had connexion with a woman, even with her own consent, he was bound to marry her, and was amerced with a heavy fine; and what was the reason alleged in the sacred volume for that enactment? "Because he hath humbled her." He must say, therefore, that it was too much to affirm that no pecuniary penalty should be imposed upon the man, and that equity of the highest kind taught us not to visit the woman with the whole of the penalty.

The Lord Chancellor
said, that if he attempted to follow the right rev. Prelate in making the Mosaical code the authority for every Act of Parliament, he should have directed against him, not morely the obloquy to which he had lately alluded, but the arguments of a whole army of close reasoners, an impenetrable phalanx of sound logicians, whose hostility was infinitely more formidable. The right rev. Prelate might recollect, that under the Levitical Law, there was another crime closely connected with fornication, to which capital punishment was annexed—be meant adultery; and yet under the law of England there was no punishment for that crime at all. No one could doubt, however, that the relative criminality of incontinence and adultery, in the eye of reason, in the estimation of the divine and of the moral law, was greatly against the latter; still, incontinency was punished by the law of England, and adultery escaped without any penalty. The law of this country not only did not make incontinency an offence, except in woman, but neither made adultery nor incest punishable, save only under the Ecclesiastical law. The law in the northern part of this country made both adultery and incest capital offences, and though under those 784 laws, which might suit the 17th century, convictions and executions had taken place (and he would instance the case of Major Weir, who for witchcraft and incest was executed), yet such was the change in the views and feelings of the people, these laws had now fallen into absolute desuetude in the north. To legislate well, was to legislate in accordance with the feelings of the people. He must say, that there was no sound ground for the argument, that legislation should now be made consonant to the Mosaic law.

The Bishop of London
concurred in the great principle which had been laid down by the noble and learned Lord. His right rev. friend had forgotten, that in the Mosaic law, religion was so connected, that it was difficult to separate the one from the other. The great truth of which his right rev. friend had lost sight was this, that under the Mosaic law every sin was a crime. Such was not the case in the laws of any other nation.

The Bishop of Exeter
had not proposed to make all sins crimes, but he did mean to contend, that by the infliction of the full burden or penalty for a double fault a palpable injustice was done. This no noble Lord had dared to rise in his place to deny.

The Marquis of Lansdown
denied, that any penalty was intended to be inflicted by the operation of this measure; all that would be required by this Bill was, that the mother of illegitimate children should do that by her offspring that the mother of a family legitimately born was compelled to do.

§ Lord Wynford
observed, that by the law of nature it was equally imperative upon the father to support his child as upon the mother. The proposed alteration in the existing laws was, in his opinion, based upon the unfounded assumption, that the female was the chief aggressor, and that assumption led to the very great injustice of exonerating the man, and throwing the whole burthen upon the unfortunate woman.

The Bishop of London
must protest against the suggestion, that it had been assumed by the Commissioners that the woman was always the seducer. There was nothing in the report to justify the assertion.

The Earl of Falmouth
could not admit that this Bill contained no penalties upon the unfortunate mother of an illegitimate 785 child. Was it no penalty to be obliged to work to the bone to maintain it, and when strength failed, to be consigned to a workhouse, there to drag out what might remain of a miserable existence?

The Earl of Radnor
observed, that there was nothing either in the report or evidence that could warrant the assertion, that this part of the measure had been framed upon the assumption that women were the first seducers in the generality of cases.

The Bishop of Exeter
begged to be allowed to read two very short extracts in answer to what had just fallen from the noble Earl. He quoted from the evidence of Edward Tregaskie, Vestry-clerk of Penryn, Cornwall—"We know and are satisfied, from long and serious observation and facts occurring, that continued illicit intercourse has in almost all cases originated with the female." Again, Mr. Walcott speaks of having met with a striking instance which "proves that the female in these cases is generally the party most to blame, and that any remedy to be effectual must act chiefly with reference to her."

The Bishop of London
begged their Lordships to remember, that this was not the language of the Commissioners.

Lord Kenyon
objected to the universal application of it. He was not one of those who thought that a uniform system for the administration of the Poor-laws was advisable. He, on the contrary, thought the establishment of such uniformity anything but desirable. A spirit of improvement had of late years manifested itself in many parishes in the country, and the effect of the present Bill would be to check that spirit in its progress to maturity, by the intervention of a power altogether foreign to the settled habits of the country. He wished to know why the Magistracy of the country were to be superseded by the Commissioners, and so much unnecessary expense incurred? The Magistrates, although accused by some of cowardice and supineness, had given general satisfaction in their guardianship of the poor. He could see no sufficient reason for giving such extraordinary powers to the Commissioners. Where abuses existed, the powers of the Commissioners might possibly be 786 exercised beneficially; but where the affairs of a parish were managed with scrupulous discretion, why should that parish be subjected to the interference of Commissioners upon a more experimental system? He had an Amendment to propose to this clause by way of proviso, the object of which was, to limit the interference of the Board of Commissioners to cases where their aid should be needed. He did not expect to carry his Amendment; but it would serve the purpose of a protest, and to show what his opinions upon the subject were. He had lately presented a petition to their Lordships from ten of the metropolitan parishes, against the Bill then under discussion, and he had reason to know that most of the parishes in London were going on in a very satisfactory manner as to the administration of the Poor-laws. In his own parish the poor-rates had been reduced to one-half what they were. They were at present no more than 1s. 1d. in the pound; and what benefit could the Commissioners introduce where that was the case? The Commissioners were to have the power of creating unions of parishes. The Bill was a more experiment, and, supposing it should fail, what was to become of these unions? He did not wish to say anything against the Commissioners who were to be appointed. They might be most respectable men; but he would contend that no man who had been instrumental in the construction of the Bill before the House, or in the taking of the evidence which had been laid before the public, ought to be one of the Commissioners, for he would certainly be a partial judge of the efficacy of a measure of which he had been one of the originators. The noble Lord concluded by moving as a proviso, "That no part of this Act relating to the Central Board of Commissioners should be construed to apply to parishes in which, upon the average of the last three years, the poor-rate had not amounted to 5s. in the pound upon the rack-rent."

The Lord Chancellor
said, that he would not follow the noble Lord through his observations, for it would be renewing the argument on the principle of the Bill; but he would contend, that the measure was as essential in parishes where the amount of the poor-rates was below the sum moved in the Amendment, as where it was much greater.

§ Lord Wynford
supported the Amend- 787 ment of his noble friend, and said, that it would be infinitely better to let the Bill be tried as an experiment in the first instance, in parishes where the law had been admitted to be improperly administered, and where the burthens for the relief of the poor pressed heavily upon the parishioners than have made it to be universal, as was now to be the case.