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known as the Allowance System. This was first introduced, when, through a succession of bad seasons, and consequent high prices of food, the wages of labour had become inadequate to afford to the families of the agricultural labourers the amount of support to which they had been accustomed. Sentiments of humanity, joined with the idea then inculcated in high quarters, that people ought not to be allowed to suffer for having enriched their country with a multitude of inhabitants, induced the magistrates of the rural districts to commence giving parish relief to persons already in private employment; and when the practice had once been sanctioned, the immediate interest of the farmers, whom it enabled to throw part of the support of their labourers upon the other inhabitants of the parish, led to a great and rapid extension of it. The principle of this scheme being avowedly that of adapting the means of every family to its necessities, it was a natural consequence that more should be given to the married than to the single, and to those who had large families than to those who had not: in fact, an allowance was usually granted for every child. So direct and positive an encouragement to population is not, however, inseparable from the scheme: the allowance in aid of wages might be a fixed thing, given to all labourers alike, and as this is the least objectionable form which the system can assume, we will give it the benefit of the supposition.

It is obvious that this is merely another mode of fixing a minimum of wages; no otherwise differing from the direct mode, than in allowing the employer to buy the labour at its market price, the difference being made up to the labourer from a public fund. The one kind of guarantee is open to all the objections which have been urged against the other. It promises to the labourers that they shall all have a certain amount of wages, however numerous they may be and removes, therefore, alike the positive and the prudential obstacles to an unlimited increase. But besides the

objections common to all attempts to regulate wages without regulating population, the allowance system has a peculiar absurdity of its own. This is, that it inevitably takes from wages with one hand what it adds to them with the other. There is a rate of wages, either the lowest on which the people can, or the lowest on which they will consent, to live. We will suppose this to be seven shillings a-week. Shocked at the wretchedness of this pittance, the parish authorities humanely make it up to ten. But the labourers are accustomed to seven, and though they would gladly have more, will live on that (as the fact proves) rather than restrain the instinct of multiplication. Their habits will not be altered for the better by giving them parish pay. Receiving three shillings from the parish, they will be as well off as before though they should increase sufficiently to bring down wages to four shillings. They will accordingly people down to that point; or perhaps, without waiting for an increase of numbers, there are unemployed labourers enough in the workhouse to produce the effect at once. It is well known that the allowance system did practically operate in the mode described, and that under its influence wages sank to a lower rate than had been known in England before. During the last century, under a rather rigid administration of the poor-laws, population increased slowly, and agricultural wages were conside rably above the starvation point. Under the allowance system the people increased so fast, and wages sank so low, that with wages and allowance together, families were worse off than they had been before with wages alone. When the labourer depends solely on wages, there is a virtual minimum. If wages fall below the lowest rate which will enable the population to be kept up, depopulation at least restores them to that lowest rate. But if the deficiency is to be made up by a forced contribution from all who have anything to give, wages may fall below starvation point; they may fall almost to zero. This deplor

able system, worse than any other form of poor-law abuse yet invented, inasmuch as it pauperizes not merely the unemployed part of the population but the whole, has been abolished, and of this one abuse at least it may be said that nobody professes to wish for its revival.

labourers, and to become his sole means of subsistence, it will make him an Irish cottier: for which assertion, at the enormous rents usually de manded, there is some foundation, But in their precautions against cottierism, these well-meaning persons de not perceive, that if the system they patronize is not a cottier system, it is, in essentials, neither more nor less than a system of conacre.

There is no doubt a material diffe

§ 4. But while this is (it is to be hoped) exploded, there is another mode of relief in aid of wages, which is still highly popular; a mode greatly pre-rence between eking out insufficient ferable, morally and socially, to parish wages by a fund raised by taxation, allowance, but tending, it is to be and doing the same thing by means feared, to a very similar economical which make a clear addition to the result: I mean the much-boasted gross produce of the country. There Allotment System. This, too, is a con- is also a difference between helping a trivance to compensate the labourer labourer by means of his own industry, for the insufficiency of his wages, by and subsidizing him in a mode which giving him something else as a supple- tends to make him careless and idle. ment to them: but instead of having On both these points, allotments have them made up from the poor-rate, he is an unquestionable advantage over enabled to make them up for himself, parish allowances. But in their effect by renting a small piece of ground, on wages and population, I see no which he cultivates like a garden by reason why the two plans should subspade labour, raising potatoes and stantially differ. All subsidies in aid other vegetables for home consump- of wages enable the labourer to do tion, with perhaps some additional with less remuneration, and therefore quantity for sale. If he hires the ultimately bring down the price of ground ready manured, he sometimes labour by the full amount, unless a pays for it at as high a rate as eight change bo wrought in the ideas and pounds an acre: but getting his own requirements of the labouring class; labour and that of his family for no- an alteration in the relative value thing, he is able to gain several pounds which they set upon the gratification by it even at so high a rent. The of their instincts, and upon the increase patrons of the system make it a great of their comforts and the comforts of point that the allotment shall be in aid those connected with them. That any of wages, and not a substitute for such change in their character should them; that it shall not be such as a be produced by the allotment system, labourer can live on, but only sufficient appears to me a thing not to be оссиру the spare hours and days of expected. The possession of land, we a man in tolerably regular agricultural are sometimes told, renders the laemployment, with assistance from his bourer provident. Property in land wife and children. They usually limit does so; or what is equivalent to prothe extent of a single allotment to a perty, occupation on fixed terms and quarter, or something between a quar- on a permanent tenure. But mere ter and half an acre. If it exceeds hiring from year to year was never this, without being enough to occupy found to have any such effect. Did him entirely, it will make him, they possession of land render the Irishman say, a bad and uncertain workman for provident? Testimonies, it is true, hire: if it is sufficient to take him abound, and I do not seek to discredit entirely out of the class of hired them, of the beneficial change produced in the conduct and condition of labourers, by receiving allotments. Such an effect is to be expected while

to

See the Evidence on the subject of Allotments, collected by the Commissioners of Poor Law Enquiry.

those who hold them are a small num- | in case of necessity, subsist entirely

:

ber; a privileged class, having a status above the common level, which they are unwilling to lose. They are also, no doubt, almost always, originally a select class, composed of the most favourable specimens of the labouring people which, however, is attended with the inconvenience, that the persons to whom the system facilitates marrying and having children, are precisely those who would otherwise be the most likely to practise prudential restraint. As affecting the general condition of the labouring class, the scheme, as it seems to me, must be either nugatory or mischievous. If only a few labourers have allotments, they are naturally those who could do best without them, and no good is done to the class while, if the system were general, and every or almost every labourer had an allotment, I believe the effect would be much the same as when every or almost every labourer had an allowance in aid of wages. I think there can be no doubt that if, at the end of the last century, the Allotment instead of the Allowance system had been generally adopted in England, it would equally have broken down the practical restraints on population which at that time did really exist; population would have started forward exactly as in fact it did; and in twenty years, wages plus the allotment would have been, as wages plus the allow ance actually were, no more than equal to the former wages without any allotment. The only difference in favour of allotments would have been, that they make the people grow their own poor-rates.

I am at the same time quite ready to allow, that in some circumstances, the possession of land at a fair rent, even without ownership, by the generality of labourers for hire, operates as a cause not of low, but of high wages. This, however, is when their land renders them, to the extent of actual necessaries, independent of the market for labour. There is the greatest difference between the position of people who live by wages, with land as an extra resource, and of people who can.

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on their land, and only work for hire to add to their comforts. Wages are likely to be high where none are com pelled by necessity to sell their labour. People who have at home some kind of property to apply their labour to, will not sell their labour for wages that do not afford them a better diet than potatoes and maize, although in saving for themselves, they may live very much on potatoes and maize. We are often surprised in travelling on the Continent, to hear of a rate of day's wages very high, considering the abundance and cheapness of food. It is want of the necessity or inclination to take work, that makes daylabour scarce, and, considering the price of provisions, dear, in many parts of the Continent, where property in land is widely diffused among the people."* There are parts of the Continent where, even of the inhabitants of the towns, scarcely one seems to be exclusively dependent on his ostensible employment; and nothing else can explain the high price they put on their services, and the carelessness they evince as to whether they are employed at all. But the effect would be far different if their land or other resources gave them only a fraction of a subsistence, leaving them under an undiminished necessity of selling their labour for wages in an overstocked market. Their land would then merely enable them to exist on smaller wages, and to carry their multiplication so much the further before reaching the point below which they either could not, or would not, descend.

To the view I have taken of the effect of allotments, I see no argument which can be opposed, but that employed by Mr. Thornton,† with whom on this subject I am at issue. His defence of allotments is grounded on the general doctrine, that it is only the very poor who multiply without regard to consequences, and that if the condition of the existing generation could be greatly improved, which he thinks

* Laing's Notes of a Traveller, p. 456. t See Thornton on Over-Population, ch. vili.

might be done by the allotment system, their successors would grow up with an increased standard of requirements, and would not have families until they could keep them in as much comfort as that in which they had been brought up themselves. I agree in as much of this argument as goes to prove that a sudden and very great improvement in the condition of the poor, has always, through its effect on their habits of life, a chance of becoming permanent. What happened at the time of the French Revolution is an example. But I cannot think that the addition of a quarter or even half an acre to every labourer's cottage, and that too at a rack rent, would (after the fall of wages which would be necessary to absorb the already existing mass of pauper labour) make so great a difference in the comforts of the family for a generation to come, as to raise up from childhood a labouring population with a really higher permanent standard of requirements and habits. So small a portion of land could only be made a permanent benefit, by holding out encouragement to acquire by industry and saving, the means of buying it outright: a permission which, if extensively made use of, would be a kind of

education in forethought and frugality to the entire class, the effects of which might not cease with the occasion. The benefit would however arise, not from what was given them, but from what they were stimulated to acquire

No remedies for low wages have the smallest chance of being efficacious, which do not operate on and through the minds and habits of the people. While these are unaffected, any contrivance, even if successful, for temporarily improving the condition of the very poor, would but let slip the reins by which population was previously curbed; and could only, therefore, con tinue to produce its effect, if, by the whip and spur of taxation, capital were compelled to follow at an equally accelerated pace. But this process

could not possibly continue for long together, and whenever it stopped, it would leave the country with an increased number of the poorest class, and a diminished proportion of all except the poorest, or, if it continued long enough, with none at all. For

to this complexion must come at last" all social arrangements, which remove the natural checks to population without substituting any others.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE REMEDIES FOR LOW WAGES FURTHER CONSIDERED.

§ 1. By what means, then, is poverty to be contended against? How is the evil of low wages to be remedied? If the expedients usually recommended for the purpose are not adapted to it, can no others be thought of? Is the problem incapable of solution? Can political economy do nothing, but only object to everything, and demonstrate that nothing can be done?

If this were so, political economy might have a needful, but would have a melancholy, and a thankless task. If the bulk of the human race are

P.E.

always to remain as at present, slaves to toil in which they have no interest, and therefore feel no interest-drudg ing from early morning till late at night for bare necessaries, and with all the intellectual and moral deficiencies which that implies-without resources either in mind or feelings―untaught, for they cannot be better taught than fed; selfish, for all their thoughts are required for themselves; without interests or sentiments as citizens and members of society, and with a sense of injustice rankling in their minds, equally for what they have not, and

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of either, that man had any voice or choice in the matter. So complete is the confusion of ideas on the whole subject: owing in a great degree to the mystery in which it is shrouded by a spurious delicacy, which prefers that right and wrong should be mismeasured and confounded on one of the subjects most momentous to human welfare, rather than that the subject should be freely spoken of and discussed. People are little aware of the cost to mankind of this scrupulosity of speech. The diseases of society can, no more than corporal maladies, be prevented or cured without being spoken about in plain language. All experience shows that the mass of mankind never judge of moral questions for themselves, never see anything to be right or wrong until they have been frequently told it; and who tells them that they have any duties in the matter in question, while they keep within matrimonial limits? Who meets with the smallest condemnation, or rather, who does not meet with sym

for what others have; I know not what there is which should make a person with any capacity of reason, concern himself about the destinies of the human race. There would be no wisdom for any one but in extracting from life, with Epicurean indifference, as much personal satisfaction to himself and those with whom he sympathizes, as it can yield without injury to any one, and letting the unmeaning bustle of so-called civilized existence roll by unheeded. But there is no ground for such a view of human affairs. Poverty, like most social evils, exists because men follow their brute instincts without due consideration. But society is possible, precisely because man is not necessarily a brute. Civilization in every one of its aspects is a struggle against the animal instincts. Over some even of the strongest of them, it has shown itself capable of acquiring abundant control. It has artificialized large portions of mankind to such an extent, that of many of their most natural inclinations they have scarcely a vestige or a remem-pathy and benevolence, for any amount brance left. If it has not brought the instinct of population under as much restraint as is needful, we must remember that it has never seriously tried. What efforts it has made, have mostly been in the contrary direction. Religion, morality, and statesmanship have vied with one another in incite

ments to marriage, and to the multiplication of the species, so it be but in wedlock. Religion has not even yet discontinued its encouragements. The Roman Catholic clergy (of any other clergy it is unnecessary to speak, since no other have any considerable influence over the poorer classes) everywhere think it their duty to promote marriage, in order to prevent fornication. There is still in many minds a strong religious prejudice against the true doctrine. The rich, provided the consequences do not touch themselves, think it impugns the wisdom of Providence to suppose that misery can result from the operation of a natural propensity: the poor think that "God never sends mouths but he sends meat." No one would guess from the language

of evil which he may have brought upon himself and those dependent on him, by this species of incontinence? While a man who is intemperate in drink, is discountenanced and despised by all who profess to be moral people, it is one of the chief grounds made use of in appeals to the benevolent, that the applicant has a large family and is unable to maintain them.*

One cannot wonder that silence on this great department of human duty should produce unconsciousness of moral obligations, when it produces oblivion of physical facts. That it is possible to delay marriage, and to live in abstinence while unmarried, most people are willing to allow : but when persons are once married, the idea, in this country, never seems to enter any one's mind that having or not having a family, or the number of which it shall

morality until the producing large families *Little improvement can be expected in is regarded with the same feelings as drunkenness or any other physical excess. But while the aristocracy and clergy are foremost to set the example of this kind of incontinence, what can be expected from the poor?

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