Edwin Chadwick

“ Everywhere the increase of pauperism and of burthens on the rates appeared to be due to the mal-administration of the legal provisions for compulsory relief, to the imbecility, or to the sinister interests of ignorant local administrators, and to habits of the recipients of the rates induced by lax administration—nowhere to the assumed inevitable pressure of a willing working population upon limited means of subsistence. ”

“ The impression is created in the popular mind of the existence of an indefinite and inexhaustible fund apart from any sources in the labour of others, of wrong if there be any stint to them—of wrong for which, to the more active depredation, brigandage is a natural and proper means of redress, as a war to obtain a rightful share of wealth, and the means of subsistence without giving any work in return for it. ”

“ Malthus, sustained by abstract and geometrical reasoning, which attributed the existence and increase of pauperism mainly to the inevitable pressure of population on the means of subsistence, and prescribed, as the necessary remedy, the absolute repeal and disallowance of any legal provision of relief. Eminent economists and statesmen, and, indeed, most persons of intellectual rank in society, adopted this opinion as a settled conclusion, and were of opinion that all measures for the amendment of the Poor Law in England, ought to tend to its discontinuance. ”

“ To effect this, to put a stop to hereditary pauperism, to cut off the vicious succession of those who live habitually as mendicants or depredators, society must be brought to appreciate and to act upon the profound old Hebrew maxim—that he who neglects to teach his son a trade brings him up as a thief. ”

“ Ireland which is the lowest in wealth, and which gives entire relief, or relief in the workhouse, in twenty -nine cases out of thirty, is the least burdened with paupers; whilst Scotland, which stands between England and Ireland in respect to wealth, where nineteen-twentieths of the cases are relieved out of doors, is approaching to England in respect to pauperism. The influence of the erroneous system on the population appears to be such as we should have anticipated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The new Poor-law organisation in Ireland, I have no doubt, is, in fact, a large economy upon no previous organisation of the kind whatsoever. In respect to the provision for Scotland, I am apprehensive that, from the error of its principle, the change has been one of increased and seriously increasing charge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In many urban districts, as in the metropolis, the profitable labour is given, in some wealthy sub-districts, without any contribution towards the relief of the casualties of destitution contingent on that labour, whilst the entire chargeability for them is thrown upon other and poor sub-districts, or places which the labourers inhabit, and which derive the least benefit from their industry. ”

“ Isolated forces, for the most part, only divert the predatory lines upon each other. But what can be said to the state of intelligence which permits the population of one part of the metropolis itself, the city, to be charged with an extra expense for an inferior protection, and to be subjected to an extra amount of depredation at the expense and inconvenience of the rest of the metropolis, by impeding inter-communication and pursuit of depredators, who prey upon one district whilst they live and take refuge in another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In respect to medical relief, it may be observed that it is contrary to sound principle, and most injurious in its operation, that the public service should be mixed up with private practice, which necessarily withdraws the interest of the officer from his duty towards the destitute. It would be far more economical, instead of two men's half-time, half in public practice and half in private, to have one man's whole time, and that time directed to the work of mitigation as well as of cure. ”

“ That it is resorted to as a refuge is shown by the fact that in-door relief is attended by a greater degree of fluctuation and change in ordinary times than out-door relief. Once on the out-door pauper roll no one voluntarily resigns his position, and consequently the permanent pension-list, by far the heaviest incumbrance on the English and Scotch poor-rates, undergoes comparatively little change in the course of the year. ”

“ With all the shortcomings which I have described as relates to the present English Poor-law, the imperfect organisation and partial consolidation has arrested large growing evils, and has given very general satisfaction to those whose knowledge of what was really practicable is limited. ”

“ Under the Poor-law Amendment Act, extensive sales were made of cottages and plots of land, amounting, I believe, to a million or more in saleable value, which had fallen into the possession of the parishes, on account of the destitution of the cottier owners, but in a large proportion of cases, I believe, on their abandonment of them and the abandonment of the neighbourhoods for a higher return for labour to be obtained as wages elsewhere. ”

“ The system of entire or in-door relief, as laid down, impedes the action of such sinister interests as have been extensively prevalent during the late crisis in preventing immediate reductions of the masses or congestions of the unemployed, by emigration or by migration, or by changes of employment ”

“ The owners of small tenements in towns could still, as guardians, give out-door partial relief, much of which was in payment of the high rents paid by their own tenants. Shopkeepers, as guardians in towns, might still give, as they often determinedly exercised their discretion in giving out-door and partial relief, wholly in money instead of in kind, much of which money was expended in their own shops, or in the shops of their class. ”

“ The landowners in Scotland, who are apprehensive of the increasing pressure of pauperism, and especially the owners of the single-roomed tenements, in which a million of the population of Scotland reside, will best ward off future burthens by exertions in this direction ”

“ On my representation, a commission was appointed to examine into the principles of the organisation of a general police force, and on its preventive as well as repressive action.- We found that the estimated number of some hundred thousand persons living by depredation as well as by mendicancy, from whom the population of the prisons as well as of reformatories is kept up, was chiefly migratory, and that migration, from one end of the kingdom to the other, required the corresponding extent of action of a police force. ”

“ In the present condition and practice of legislation, no measure based on administrative principles, partaking of science or system, goes into the House of Commons that, as a general rule, does not come out worse than it went in. ”

“ I may assume that I have elsewhere proved that on the half school-time system, the common elementary instruction may be imparted in half the hours of the day now occupied, in half the period of years now occupied to the detriment of productive occupation, and at half the expense that is now incurred for inferior mental instruction, divested of the physical training, which is so necessary to impart industrial aptitudes. ”

“ By the new Poor-law organisation of paid permanent officers, paid clerks, paid relieving officers, paid masters and matrons of workhouses, paid district medical officers, paid schoolmasters, and, it may be added, of paid assistant-commissioners and inspectors, with the paid officers of a Central Board, together with a large expenditure upon new buildings throughout the country, all of which were the outcries as extravagancies; a large saving has, nevertheless, been effected upon the unpaid services, chiefly of one parish officer throughout the country—the unpaid parish overseer. ”

“ These causes of disability and pauperism are everywhere gross and patent. It may be said, in the words of the Psalmist, that the earth is "filled with the habitations of cruelty." By partial sanitary appliances, these causes of misery and destitution have, in various instances, been reduced one third, and, it is proved, may be reduced one-half ”

“ We also failed to get the administration freed, as was intended, from action of those sinister interests which operate the most powerfully in narrow areas. Farmer guardians could still give, though indirectly, out-door relief, which in effect was frequently relief in aid of the wages of their own labourers. They as well as manufacturing guardians, as employers, could still apply relief in methods to effect their local stock of labour, and to keep down its price, cheating themselves, however, by impairing its quality and value. ”

“ Our proposal in respect to existing pauperism and establishments was to have classified, by the appropriation of separate houses, each to one class of objects, as would have been extensively practicable in populous urban districts, with the existing tenements, assigning one house to the males, another to the females, one for the sick, and most especially one for orphan and destitute children, instead of putting all classes under one roof. ”

“ The moral evils which have been inflicted on children—female children more particularly—from bringing them up in the same house with dissolute adults, from the influence of whose example, under the existing conditions of the single union houses, it has been found impracticable to protect them. ”

“ Of the existing causes of destitution and pauperism to which the class of independent labourers are subject, a larger proportion are those which do arise from localising causes, bad sanitary conditions, ill-drained, and cesspool-tainted, and over-crowded habitations ”

“ On the occasion of epidemic visitations, the hospital accommodation in the poorest part of a large town is overcharged, and the officers overworked, and extra assistance needed, whilst the sick wards of another part of the town will have abundance of room, and a service of officers little occupied. ”

“ By his exertions mainly, improved poorhouses have been constructed, and Ireland has had the advantage of an advanced system of relief, for which union chargeability in wide areas is substituted for the English law of relief under the law of parochial settlement. ”