Poor Laws

Although Lloyd is today most associated with the idea of the tragedy of the commons, by far his most extensively analysed topic in his various lectures was issues relating to the efficacy of the UK poor laws (see Lloyd 1836 [1968]).

He also provided some more concrete arguments for maintaining the poor laws, given that in most situations, ‘population is always pressing against the means of subsistence' (ibid.: 57). For example, he argued against the idea that, because there might be insufficient resources available to feed absolutely everyone who did not have an income, then no one should be provided with poor relief, this idea being,

as absurd as to say, that, because all the thousand persons could not be main­tained, therefore not one could be, in fact, maintained, out of the given supply of food.. A thousand cannot be maintained. Therefore a thousand have not a right to be maintained. But nine hundred can be maintained. Therefore, for all we know to the contrary, nine hundred may have a right to be maintained (ibid.: 39).

Lloyd was sympathetic to the plight of the poor in relation to population growth and the operation of the so-called preventive check, as he believed this check was often overwhelmed by circumstances, and he supported the provi­sion of poor relief in most situations.

More generally, he was concerned to study the structure of the society in which the different industrial classes lived in relation to both the operation of the labour market, and the influence of this structure on individual well­being. For example, he wrote in this respect:

[T]he simple fact of a country being over populous, by which I mean its popula­tion pressing too closely against the means of subsistence, is no, of itself, suffi­cient evidence that the fault lies in the people themselves, or a proof of the absence of a prudential disposition. The fault may rest...with the constitution of society, of which they form a part (Lloyd 1833 [2017]: 22).

In consequence, Lloyd asserted the progressive principle that the institu­tions of property ownership in a given society should be designed, at least in part, with regard to their ‘tendency to promote the general happiness, and, as often as it is discovered that they can be made for effectual to that end, ought to be modified and amended' (Lloyd 1835 [1968]: 51). Elsewhere, he dis­cussed the comparison between slavery and free labour, pointing out some of the similarities between them, and suggested how slavery has differed in dif­ferent societies and contexts, such as in the English as against the French colo­nies and then in Ancient Rome (see Lloyd 1837 [1968]: 20-24).

However, it would be wrong to conclude from all this that Lloyd should be seen as an anticipator of the Marxian treatment of capitalism (see Romano 1971: 285), as Marxism has a much more extensive and comprehensive denunciation of capitalism as an economic system than anything that may have been suggested by Lloyd. Instead, Lloyd's political economy is more accurately described as akin to that of a paternalistic Tory (see Romano 1977). For example, he consistently argued in favour of extensive poor laws, but argued that support for the poor enlarged ‘the field for the profitable employ­ment of capital' (Lloyd 1835 [1968]: 127).

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