Poor Relief

In late eighteenth-century Britain the expansion of commerce, combined with agricultural innovation, led to modest improvements in living stand­ards and population growth. Yet the prospects for prosperity remained fragile.

Sympathy for the poor grew out of perceptions that they bore a large share of the high mortality and the high prices occasioned by the war. Evangelical revivalism applied the principles of Christian morality to social policy in the campaign against the slave trade.⁴ The British poor, they pointed out, did not live much better than slaves abroad. A disappointing harvest in 1794 led to widespread protests, and occasional collective action against millers, middlemen, and bakers.⁵ Those unable to feed their families despite long hours of drudging work could not be blamed but hostility was leveled at those suspected of laziness or malingering.⁶

The Poor Law of 1722 had authorized parishes to build workhouses and deny relief to anyone who refused to enter them—the equivalent of work requirements that are particularly strict in the U.S. today—but many parishes were inclined to provide more generous assistance. The magistrates of Berkshire County summoned a meeting in the parish of Speenhamland in 1795, where they calculated a minimum cost of living for a family based upon its number of members and the cost of bread. If the wages a man could earn fell below that level, the parish promised to make up the difference.

The so-called Speenhamland system was widely adopted in areas of the midlands and the south where factory jobs were scarce and economic conditions poor. It provided both a safety net for families and a public subsidy for employers, who could pay lower wages as a result.

Legislation setting minimum wages could have solved the problem, albeit on terms less favorable to employers. Such legislation was introduced into Parliament in 1795, but drew criticism from many quarters. In addition to interfering with the free operation of the labor market, the minimum wage violated mercantilist principles that valued population growth. Prime Minister William Pitt argued that it would give single men an unfair advantage over fathers, because each would earn the same no matter how many children they were supporting. He went on to defend the principles of the Speenham- land system:

Let us make relief in cases where there are a number of children, a matter of right and an honour, instead of a ground for opprobrium and contempt. This will make a large family a blessing and not a curse; and this will draw a proper line of distinction between those who are able to provide for themselves by their labour and those who, after having enriched their country with a number of children, have a claim upon its assistance for their support.⁷

As Pitt put it, poor relief was actually a kind of family allowance system. The demands of war heightened awareness of the value of future man­power. But sheer manpower was becoming less relevant to military success than strategic development and deployment of technology, as exemplified by the force of British naval power. Few English politicians after Pitt spoke confidently of large families as a blessing to the nation. Indeed, they soon began to describe them as a curse.