Page:Poor Law Administration, its Chief Principles and their Results in England and Ireland as Compared with Scotland.djvu/3

 repugnant to the common sentiments of mankind; that it is repugnant to them to punish even depredation apparently committed as the only resource against want. But, whilst we adopted as a settled principle that a legal provision of compulsory relief should be made to the able-bodied, we did not propose that it should be extended to more than the relief of indigence—the state of a person unable to labour, or unable to obtain, in return for his labour, the means of subsistence. We did not propose to extend the provision to the relief of poverty—that is, the state of one who, in order to obtain a mere subsistence, is forced to have recourse to labour, nor did we propose any legal relief for poverty, strictly so called, and we thought it would be extremely mischievous if we did. We did not consider that a compulsory system of relief by the nation was available as a direct means, as some theoretical writers have assumed, of elevating the condition of the nation. But the evidence collected appeared to establish as a conclusion that a compulsory provision for the relief of the indigent can generally be administered on a sound and well-defined principle; and that under the operation of this principle the assurance that no one need perish from want may be rendered complete, and the mendicant and the vagrant repressed by disarming them of their weapons— the plea of impending starvation. It was assumed, however, that in the administration of a compulsory system of relief, we were warranted in imposing such conditions on the individual relieved as are conducive to the benefit either of the individual himself or of the community at large, at whose expense he is to be relieved. One primary condition is, that his situation on the whole shall not be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class. Every penny bestowed that tends to render the condition of the pauper more eligible than that of an independent labourer is a bounty on indolence and vice. One further primary condition of a sound system of relief we considered was, that the relief given should be entire—not partial relief Any partial relief, any relief in aid of wages, had, as respects the able-bodied, an inevitable tendency to substitute parish doles for wages, and to lower wages, and to destroy the independence of the labourer. We held that relief must be so given as to draw a clear and visible line between the paupers and the self-supporting classes. I found that the working classes, in the administration of their own funds, anxiously and laboriously applied this principle in the shape of a rule, that the recipients of relief should be either wholly on or wholly off the box, or the sick list. It is not absolutely necessary that, in the application of this principle, relief should be given, as commonly supposed, in the workhouse. The pauper may be on out-door work, and may receive out-door relief in return for work, provided that his whole time is occupied in working,