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CHAPTER XI.

THE POOR.

THERE is hardly a question connected with the march of civilization more difficult to answer satisfactorily than this: What is to be done with the Poor?

In our own day, when subdivision of labour has been carried to an unheard of extent, when property follows the natural law of accumulation in masses, and society numbers the proletarian as an inevitable unit among its constituents, the question presents itself in a threatening and dangerous form, with difficulty surrounding it on every side, and anarchy scowling in the background, hardly to be appeased or vanquished. But such circumstances as those we live under are rare, and almost unexampled in history: even the later and depraved days of Roman civilization offer but a very insufficient pattern of a similar condition 1. Above all it would

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1 The Roman poor-law was, consequently upon the Roman imperial institutions, of a strange, exceptional and most dangerous character. The rulers literally fed the people : panem et circenses, food and amusements; these were the relief which the wealthy and powerful supplied, and if ever these were sparingly distributed, convulsions and revolution were inevitable. The Aetrovpyía, public dinners, and other doles of a compulsory nature assisted the poorer among the Athenians. (I have not cancelled this note, which was written long before the events of February 1848 and their consequences had added another pregnant example to the store of history.)

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be difficult to find any parallel for them in countries where land is abundant, and the accumulation of property slow: there may be pauperism in New York, but scarcely in the valley of the Mississippi. The cultivator may live hardly, poorly; but he can live, and as increasing numbers gather round him and form a market for his superfluous produce, he will gradually become easy, and at length wealthy. It is however questionable whether population will really increase very fast in an agricultural community where a sufficient provision is made for every family, and where there is an unlimited fund, and power of almost indefinite extension. On the contrary, it seems natural under these circumstances that the proportion between the consumers and the means of living should long continue to be an advantageous one, and no pressure will be felt as long as no effort is made to give a false direction to the energies of any portion of the community.

But this cannot possibly be the case in a system which limits the amount of the estate or hyd. Here a period must unavoidably arise where popu lation advances too rapidly for subsistence, unless a manufacturing effort on an extensive scale is made, and made with perfect freedom from all restraints, but those which prudence and well-regulated views of self-interest impose. If want of rapid internal communication deprive the farmer of a market, and compel him to limit his produce to the requirements of his own family, there cannot be a doubt not only that he will be compelled to remain in a stationary and not very easy position,

but that a difficulty will arise as to the disposal of a redundant population. Many plans have been devised to meet this difficulty; a favourite one has been at all times, to endeavour to find means of limiting population itself, instead of destroying all restrictions upon occupation. The profoundest thinkers of Greece, considering that a pauper population is inconsistent with the idea of state, have positively recommended violent means to prevent its increase infanticide and exposition thus figure among the means by which Plato and Aristotle consider that full and perfect citizenship is to be maintained. I have already touched upon some of the means by which our forefathers attempted this regulation emigration was as popular a nostrum with them as with us: service in the comitatus, even servitude on the land, were looked to as an outlet, and slavery probably served to keep up something of a balance: moreover it is likely that a large proportion of the population were entirely prevented from contracting marriage: of this last

· Περὶ δὲ ἀποθέσεως καὶ τροφῆς τῶν γιγνομένων ἔστω νόμος μηδὲν πεπηρωμένον τρέφειν, διὰ δὲ πλῆθος τέκνων, ἐὰν ἡ τάξις τῶν ἐθῶν κωλύῃ, μηδὲν ἀποτίθεσθαι τῶν γιγνομένων· ὥρισται γὰρ δὴ τῆς τεκνοποιΐας τὸ λos. Arist. Polit. vii. c. 14. See also Plato, Leg. bk. 5. Ed. Bekk. p. 739, 740, etc. Ed. Stalbaum, vol. vi. p. 131, etc. The tendency of Aristotle's ideas on the subject may be gathered from his notion that the Cretans encouraged maidepaoría, in order to check population. I am informed upon good authority, that in the Breisgau, and especially the See-Kreis of Baden, the younger children, or any supposed surplus, are permitted to die, of want of food, in order that the property (Bauerngut), amounting sometimes to 100 morgen or 66 acres of land, may remain undivided. It is also certain that in other parts of Europe, a woman who bears more than a certain settled number of children is looked upon with contempt.

number the various orders of the clergy, and the monks must have made an important item. It is even probable that the somewhat severe restrictions imposed upon conjugal intercourse may have had their rise in an erroneous view that population might thus be limited or regulated1. But still, all these means must have furnished a very inadequate relief: even the worn-out labourer, especially if unfree, must have become superfluous, and if he was of little use to his owner, there was little chance of his finding a purchaser. What provision was made for him?

The condition of a serf or an outlaw from poverty is an abnormal one, but only so in a Christian community. In fact it seems to me that the State neither contemplates the existence of the poor, nor cares for it the poor man's right to live is derived from the moral and Christian, not from the public law: so little true is the general assertion that the poor man has a right to be maintained upon the land on which he was born. The State exists for its members, the full, free and independent citizens, self-supported on the land; and except as selfsupported on the land it knows no citizens at all. Any one but the holder of a free hýd must either fly to the forest or take service, or steal and become a þeóv. How the pagan Saxons contemplated this fact it is impossible to say, but at the period when

The Poenitentials recommend abstinence every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday throughout the year: on all great fasts, high feasts and festivals: during all penances, general or special: seven months before and after parturition.

we first meet with them in history, two disturbing causes were in operation; first the gradual loosening of the principle of the mark-settlement, and the consequent accumulation of landed estates in few hands; secondly the operation of Christianity.

This taught the equality of men in the eye of God, who had made all men brothers in the mystery of Christ's passion. And from this also it followed that those who had been bought with that precious sacrifice were not to be cast away. The sin of suffering a child to die unbaptized was severely animadverted upon. The crime of infanticide could only be expiated by years of hard and wearisome penance; but the penance unhappily bears witness to the principle,-a principle universally pagan, and not given up, even to this day, by nations and classes which would repudiate with indignation the reproach of paganism, though thoroughly imbued with pagan habits. In the seventh century we read of the existence of poor, and we read also of the duty of assisting them. But as the State had in fact nothing to do with them, and no machinery of its own to provide for them, and as the clergy were ex officio their advocates and protectors, the State did what under the circumstances was the best thing to do, it recognized the duty which the clergy had imposed upon themselves of supporting the poor. It went further,-it compelled the freeman to supply the clergy with the means of doing it.

In the last years of the sixth century, Gregory the Great informed Augustine that it was the custom of the Roman church to cause a fourth part of