In the Hanse towns, there Were introduced, in 1788, a system of voluntary contri butions aided by fixed subsidies from the government. This at length resulted in government supplying all deficiencies, which in the last few years have been 80 per cent of the cost of the general poor relief. In Holland pauper colonies have been supported by government for the last 40 years. Vagrants, after a short imprisonment, are sent to one of these, under a system of discipline quite as rigorous as an Irish intermediate prison. Paupers of good character are sent to maintain themselves and their families, by agricultural labor, in free colonies. The working of the system is pronounced costly and unsatisfactory.
In America, the system is very similar to our own. Every man is entitled by law to relief from the town of his settlement, the rate being assessed on whole towns, and not on parishes. The states have their own poor-laws, but paupers are removable from one state to another. Any American becoming a pauper loses his state rights. The acts concerning work-houses and paupers in the revised code of Massachusetts may be taken to represent generally the state of the law throughout the Union. The former provides " that any town may erect or provide a work-house for the employment and support of nil poor and indigent persons that are maintained by, or receive alms from the town; all persons who, being able to work, and not having means to maintain themselves, refuse or neglect to work; all persons who live a dissolute, vagrant life, and exercise no ordi nary calling or lawful business, and all such persons as spend their time and property in public-lionses, to the neglect of their proper business, or by otherwise what they earn, to the impoverishment of themselves and their families, are likely to become chargeable to the town or the commonwealth." The idle and the vagrant may be com mitted to the work-house, and kept to labor, as in a house of correction. There are pro visions for enforcing the claims of kindred, and for the immediate relief of strangers. The administration is in the hands of overseers, who have discretion as to the mode of relief.
The annals of the poor iu England are neither short nor simple. Severe enactments for the repression of vagabondage and mendieity date from a very early period. In ancient Saxon times, the householder was bound to provide for the laborer, and men who had no master were, by the Folkmote, assigned to some householder; but when freedom began to prevail, this state of things naturally came to an end. No master was bound to provide for the freeman, and when lie failed to provide for himself, by honest. labor, he generally took to vagrant begging, often to violence. The statute of Win chester (13th Ed. I. 1235) shows the poor utterly uncared for, and the roads infested by vagrant robbers. Up to the reign of .Richard II., the sole idea of English rulers was to treat pauperism as a clime, and repress it by punishment, and by the most unjust and. absurd restrictions on the freedom of labor. The 23d Ed. III. forbids giving alms to. vagrants, on pain of imprisonment; then also the laws of settlement had their origin in the attempt to chain the free laborer to the land. See SETTLEMENT. The 12th Richard II. (1333), e. 7, is the first statute that makes provision for the impotent poor. The statutes of Henry VII. endeavor to carry out, by the severest measures, the system of repression. The 27th Henry VIII. c. 25 (1335), introduced the principle of compulsory assistance, though it was by way of voluntary alms. Each parish was ordered to and provide for the impotent, and set the able-bodied to work. Alms were to be col lected into a general fund, and indiscriminate almsgiving was forbidden, on pain of for feiture of ten times the value given. The sturdy beggar was treated without mercy, was to be whipped when first caught, next to have his ear cropped, and for a third. offense, to suffer death, as a felon and enemy to the commonwealth. This is repealed. by 1st Ed. VI. c. 3 (1547), because " through foolish pity, it is rendered of non-effect." Not much milder, to modern ideas, seem the substituted penalties—viz., branding, on first conviction, with a V on the shoulder, and being adjudged a slave for two years, to claimed by any one, fed on bread and water, and caused to work by beating, etc. Running away from this tender treatment was punishable with S branded on the face, and slavery for life to the town or parish, on the roads of which the incorrigible vagrant was to work in chains, at the penalty of the town or parish. Other two acts of Edward's reign return to earlier and considerably milder measures of restraint. A little was now found necessary to obtain funds for the maintenance of the poor. The col lectors were gently to ask every man and woman at church what they would give; but if one could not be persuaded, the bishop was to send fer the recusant, and use " chari table ways and means." At length, the 5th Elizabeth, e. 3 (1563), provided that lie who obstinately refused to give should be handed over to the more persuasive arguments the justices, who were empowered to tax him at their discretion, and send him to jail for • default. Ten years later, the power of compulsory assessment is given to the justices, and abiding-places are ordered to be provided for the aged and infirm. These statutes culminated in the 43d Elizabeth, c. 2 (1601), which has formed the basis of the poor-law system of England up to the It taxed every inhabitant of every parish for the relief of the poor. It directed the justices in every county to appoint three or four substantial householders in each parish to be overseers of the poor, along with the, churchwardens. It ordered the relief of the impotent, and the of children, and the providing of work fog the able, by means of "a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, and other necessary ware and stuff." The great act of Elizabeth came but slowly into operation. Up to the reign of Charles I. there were ninny parishes. in which no rate was assessed, and which turned away their poor; but the great evils had been remedied, and there is little legislation on the subject for the next_ hundred years. The 3d William and Maly, c. 2 (1691), an act relating chiefly to settlement, provides that the persons to be relieved be registered and examined by the vestry, because evils had arisen out of the unlimited power of the churchwardens and overseers giving relief "for their own private ends," by which the charge on the parish was greatly increased, con trary to the true intent of the statute of Elizabeth. This act also gave power to the justices to order relief in cases of emergency, a provision which afterward became a. fruitful source of difficulty. The evils henceforth complained of were. that many had i thrown themselves on the rates who ought to have been supporting themselves nde pendently of such aid; that pauper labor was found interfering with and displacing-, industrial labor; that the overseers were acting with unchecked dishonesty; and justices, with unrestrained liberality, ordering the money of the industrious and prudent to be spent upon the idle and improvident. Efforts were made to remedy these abuses throughout the reigns of the first three Georges, by making the justices act with the overseer, by rendering the overseers accountable to the parishioners by means of returns. and the power of inspection, and by the offer of the work-house to all applicants for relief. This last provision, made in the reign of George I. (9th Geo. I. c. 7, 1723), sub-, etituted what is called in-door relief, for the allowance made to the poor at their own homes, and introduced the work-house system. AU who refused to be lodged in the house
were to be struck off the poor's-roll, and refused relief. A great increase in the number Of work-houses took place; guardians were appointed to guard the pauper children from neglect and improper conduct, and other attempts to improve their administration made; work-house unions were also introduced by an act called Gilbert's act (1782), and a suc cession of acts passed for the protection of parish apprentices. Toward the close of the 18th c. a great relaxation took place in the treatment of the poor. The 36th Geo. III. c. 10 and 23 (1796), increased the amount, and extended the application of relief. It repealed the act forbidding relief to those who refused the work-house, and allowed relief to be given in aid of wages. Henceforth, out-door relief became the rule under a. variety of systems, of which the complaint was justly made, that they turned the poor laws into a mode of paying wages. In 1801 the amount of the rates was reckoned at. £4,000,000. In 1820 it had risen to £7,330,254. In 1817 a commission of the house of commons stated their opinion, that, unless checked, the assessment would swallow up. the profits of the laud. Though the two vestry acts, which resulted from the commis sion appointed in 1817, seem to have done something to remedy the evils complained of, a new commission to inquire into the operation of the poor-laws was found necessary, and appointed in February, 1832. The evidence brought before this commission revealed a disastrous state of things. The independence, integrity, industry, and domestic virtue of the lower classes were in some places nearly extinct. The great source of the evil was shown to be the relief afforded to the able-bodied on their own account, and that of their families, in aid of wages. This aid at first reduced the expenditure in wages, and found favor with farmers and magistrates, who framed scales of relief in accordance, with the wants of the people, so that they began to be paid for their necessities, and not for their industry, and fell into the temptation of increasing the former, and neglecting• the latter. Five modes of out-door relief were found in operation: 1. Relief without labor; 2. Allowance given, in aid of wages, according to the number of the laborer's. family; 3. The roundsmen system, the laborers being let out, by the parish, among the employers round; 4. Parish work, generally on the roads; 5. The labor-rate, the rate payers preferring to divide among them the pauper labor, and to pay for it, however valueless, instead of raising a rate. Diminished industry ate away the very root of capital. Farmers turned off their men, or refused to employ them at fair wages, thereby causing a surplus of unemployed labor fraudulently; they then took them back from the parish at reduced wages, paid out of the rates. Under the system of allowance, there were parishes in which every laborer was a pauper, paid more for idleness than he could get for labor, paid more if he took a pauper wife, and still more for every pauper child. Paupers married at 17 and 18 years of age, and claimed the allow ance the day after their marriage; and from parish after parish came the reply to the queries of the commissioners, "All our able-bodied laborers receive allowance." No poor man in such parishes could save; if industrious and thrifty, and it was known that he had a fund of savings, "he would be refused work till the savings were gone," and lie had come clown to the pauper level. This had gong on, till in many places pauperism swallowed up of the rent. Nor was the maladministra tion confined to the rural districts; the evidence showed that it extended all over the country, and into the manufacturing towns, where the out-door relief was a source of constant imposture. The administration of in-door relief was also full of abuses, from want of classification, discipline, and employment. Better food and lodging was pro vided for idle paupers than working-people could procure—better, even, than could be afforded by many of the rate-payers. In 1834 the commissioners reported that they found the administration. "opposed to the letter and spirit of the law, and destructive of the welfare of the community." The commissioners strongly laid down the principle, that the condition of the pauper ought to be below the lowest condition of the indepen dent 1pborer, because every penny bestowed 'in 'rendering the condition of the former more eligible than that of the latter, is a bounty on indolence and vice, and recom mended: 1. The cessation of out-door relief; 2. A central authority to control the administration; 3. Unions for the better management of work-houses, and the classifica tion of their inmates; and 4. A complete and clear system of accounts. The bill ern-, bodying these recommendations was brought in, March 17, 1834, passed its second read- ing in the house of commons with only twenty dissenting votes, and became law on the 14th August as the 4th and 5th Will. IV. c. 76. This act was not a change of law, but of administration. The orders of the new board restricted overseers, on the forma tion of a union, to the collection of rates; appointed paid relieving-officers to dispense. relief under the directions of the unpaid boards 'of guardians; required the gradual withdrawal of out-door relief ; and enforced' classification and discipline in the houses. A rapid formation of unions took place under the new board. In the first' eight months 112 were formed out of 2,066 parishes. The pauperized districts experi4 enced a great and immediate relief, numbers of paupers going off when they found that. relief involved adequate work, or the strictly-disciplined work-house; wages rose, and the expenditure was reduced on an average 20 per cent. At the accession of George I. in 1714, the poor-rates amounted, as nearly as' can be estimated, to £950,000, equal to 3s. 64d. per head on the population of 5,750,000. At the 'accession George III. in 1760, the population had increased to 7,000,000, the poor-rates to £1,250,000—an average of 3s. 31d.; while in 1834, the population, estimated from the last census, was 14,372,000, and the money expended in relief, £6,317,255—equal to 8s. Old. per head. In three years, the operation of the amendment act had reduced the expenditure one-third, viz., to £4,044,741. In 1848 the commissioners were exchanged for a public board, which is one of the government departments, with a president, in whom has been vested the power of the commissioners, and who holds office as one of the ministers of the crown. There are 431 unions. In 1860-61 the number of poor receiving relief in England was }about 850,000, about 4-i per cent on the population: of these, about 140,000 were relieved in work-houses. The commissioners were unable to withdraw out-door relief, continues to be in England the most important item. With the aged, the sick, and orphans, the guardians deal at their discretion; but stringent rules for the relief of the able-bodied are in operation under the board, whose orders have the force of laws. In the rural districts, guardians are prohibited from giving relief to the able-bodied out of the house, unless under a supplemental order, in emergency. For other places, the general rule forbids relief to be given in aid of wages, and requires work to be supplied. Exceptions are made by the board on the application of the unions when necessity arises, as in the recent case of the cotton districts. The expenditure is strictly guarded and examined by public auditors, of whom there are fifty-four for England. A district medical officer, of whom one or more are appointed for each union, attends to all cases of sickness among the poor.