| <Taits Edinburgh Mazazine>
| <Prospect of a Poor-Law for Scotland.  1845>
| <pb n="323">
| There have been several things peculiar to the people of Scotland, 
| besides their agriculture and their metaphysics.  They have had 
| peculiarities regarding the law of marriage; peculiarities 
| regarding ruling elderships and zeal in missions; peculiarities 
| regarding Sabbath observance; and peculiarities regarding a 
| profuse love of whisky, and hatred of stage-plays and 
| promiscuous dancing; from all which it has been the fashion to 
| draw the comprehensive conclusion, that they are the most 
| religious, moral, and sagacious people on the surface of the globe.  
| Among other social difficulties which they had long the credit of 
| having set at rest, was the complex question of the Poor-laws, ~~ 
| solved by the simple expedient of leaving the poor to support 
| each other.  But, alas for poor human perfection! even this 
| all-sagacious, all-humane scheme, did not evade the criticism of 
| these latter times.  It had received its practical embodiment in an 
| age when simple legislative measures adapted themselves to a 
| rude taste of society: it had protracted its existence into a 
| complex social condition where it was as inefficacious for its 
| purposes as the original weaver's beam would be in the power-loom
| manufactory.  When the whole country was comparatively 
| poor; when we had no commerce or manufactures; when the 
| parish was a family in which each man knew his neighbour's 
| abilities, wants, and character, ~~ the system of voluntary relief, 
| administered through kirk-sessions, probably met all the 
| necessities of a Poor-law, as some such arrangement may suit the 
| island of Guernsey, or the canton of Zurich, at the present day.  
| But our union with England, after we had finished our thirty or 
| forty years of struggling and kicking against it, brought with it a 
| new organization.  Simple village weavers grew manufacturing 
| capitalists; bonnet-lairds became wealthy proprietors.  The 
| people no longer vegetated and withered in the spot of their birth, 
| but spread hither and thither, and accumulated into large masses 
| wherever manufacturing and commercial wealth held out 
| inducements to them.  It thus happened that the system framed 
| for the three or four hundreds of a village population, who knew 
| all about each other, came to be applied to the forties and fifties, 
| and hundreds of thousands of the great manufacturing districts.  
| Is it wonderful that it came, in the end, to be what we have 
| simply described it ~~ leaving the poor to support each other?
| When the system was looked at and fairly examined; when it was 
| compared with that which had been found necessary for England, 
| a country not now very distinct, in social condition or wealth, 
| from Scotland, ~~ the national prejudice in favour of the system 
| at once gave way.  Humanity triumphed over all conventional 
| feelings and prejudices, and the great bulk of the people of 
| Scotland demanded an amended and enlarged Poor-law; some 
| reform, not paltry and incidental, but a wide and generous 
| measure which should be at once a revocation of old prejudices, 
| and a full homage to the spirit of humanity, and of enlightened 
| social legislation.  But in the midst of this generous outburst of 
| feeling, echoed from end to end of the country by the press and 
| the larger towns, there appeared the powerful and united class of 
| the landholders, whose interests and prejudices were with the old 
| system.  There are some <p> "interests" </p> ~~ that is the 
| scientific legislative term on such occasions ~~ so purely selfish, 
| that the world will not listen to them.  Scarce could bailiffs and 
| messengers-at arms raise the faintest murmur against the series 
| of measures that have been lately passed for extinguishing 
| imprisonment for debt; public executioners are not heard against 
| the abolition of the punishment of death; grave-diggers are not 
| allowed to protest against sanatory regulations, ~~ though 
| clergymen may safely be so, because they can mix something 
| about consecrated earth and religious feelings with the question 
| of burial-fees.  This is an instance of the point of dangerous 
| union:  give interested prejudice some aid, from a religious 
| dogma or a theory of social morality, and, behold, it becomes 
| insolent, clamorous, and tyrannical.  It so happened, that there 
| remained on the earth a few enthusiasts, sincere admirers of the 
| old system of the Scottish Poor-law, and believers in its efficacy, 
| behind whose honest prejudices the landholders of Scotland 
| sought protection from the scorn they were likely to encounter in 
| the advocacy of their odious cause.  One man of brilliant genius, 
| whose maxim is, that whatever he takes in hand to do he does 
| with all his might, ~~ and who, it is to be feared, is at more pains 
| to discover the means of strengthening his championship, than 
| satisfying himself of the goodness of his cause, ~~ has spent half 
| a lifetime in sharpening the weapons of those who support all 
| that is cruel, selfish, and barbarizing in our Poor-law system.  As 
| the marriage brokers in Paris keep a model couple of domestic 
| felicity, to illustrate the beneficent effects of their disinterested 
| efforts for the union of the sexes, this champion of the cause of
| <pb n="324">
| the rich against the poor, exhibited a model parish, where a few 
| zealous disciples, by hard work, proved that the poor might be 
| admirably supported without compelling the rich to pay, ~~ 
| much in the same manner as old Sir Robert Peel proved that 
| there was no need of taxes, by handing ten thousand pounds to 
| the treasury; or as a party of gentlemen, met to dine with a friend, 
| may illustrate the needlessness of criminal laws, by separating 
| without picking each other's pockets.  
| <reg orig="No one"> No-one </reg> could deny that the 
| showman honestly believed in his own quackery, as Morison did, 
| when he died under the effects of his universal medicine.  
| Scarcely was to be resisted the honest, open, hearty enthusiasm 
| with which he called on the public to walk up and see the 
| wonderful exhibition, and satisfy themselves with their own eyes.  
| But the plain sagacious public were not to be deceived; and 
| neither the exquisite model got up for the occasion, nor the glitter 
| of the eloquence with which its tiny proportions were 
| exaggerated and adorned, could deceive the eye, or make the 
| tinseled, hollow, fragile toy pass for a substantial and valuable 
| engine of social organization and comfort.  At length the 
| exhibitor and his assistants grew tired.  They were isolated in 
| their endeavours.  The rest of the community would not be so 
| enthusiastic as themselves; and so they proclaimed that the plan 
| did not get fair play, and gave it up.  They were like the French 
| prophets who promised to raise a body in St. Paul's church-yard.  
| Fifty thousand people assembled to behold the ceremony; but, 
| after all the proper scientific incantations were performed, no 
| animated corpse raised its head.  The operators attributed their 
| failure to the absence of a proper faith in some one or more of 
| the onlookers, and complained that they had not got fair play.
| The mischief that was done by this, was to give selfish prejudice 
| an excuse for its conduct, and arguments in its support.  
| Parsimony and cruelty put themselves under the protection of an 
| amiable Utopianism.  The defenders of starvation walked forth as 
| honest enthusiasts, ~~ men mistaken, but the victims of an 
| amiable theory, ~~ the dupes of a too sincere reliance on the 
| kindness, virtue, and benevolence of their fellow-beings; men 
| who had so great a trust in the voluntary proffers of their 
| neighbours to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, that they 
| could not think of vulgarizing the benignant propensity, by 
| laying any coercive injunction upon them, ~~ or upon themselves.  
| There is much latitude to Utopians, the victims of fond dreams, 
| and visionary theories:  it is an extension of the plea of insanity 
| among criminals, palliating what would otherwise be seen in its 
| true light ~~ grinding tyranny and stony-hearted selfishness.  
| And here let us not leave ground for the mistaken supposition, 
| that we charge the landed proprietors who have set their face 
| against a liberal Poor-law, with being actuated by the vulgar 
| motive of individual pecuniary consideration.  Few of them, we 
| believe, have analyzed their motives, and found, as a result of the 
| process, this simple element ~~ An extended Poor-law will take 
| ten pounds a-year out of my pocket, and therefore I will oppose it.  
| Their motive is that more dangerous, because less easily exposed 
| one, of class interests.  Their feeling is <p> "interest-begotten 
| prejudice" </p> ~~ a chaotic mass of prejudices and opinions 
| gathered round the nucleus of simple mercenary feeling.  The
| <hi rend="italic"> esprit de corps </hi> that makes the portionless 
| younger brother as great a champion of the Corn-laws, as the 
| mortgaged first-born, who feels that their repeal would ruin him, 
| and makes the poor curate, who has neither connexions nor 
| Greek enough to aspire to a vicarage, as great a supporter of the 
| pomp and luxury of the Episcopal order, as his Grace the Primate 
| of all England.
| It was in this spirit that, when the public press and the municipal 
| communities called loudly for a change of the system ~~ a call in 
| which we are proud to remember that our own voice was not 
| unheard ~~ the landed gentry formed an association for the 
| purpose of suppressing inquiry.  They did not come forward and 
| say boldly, the result of inquiry will be a condemnation of the 
| present system ~ an amendment will trench on our purses ~~ 
| therefore assumed a lofty tone of morality; spoke much about the 
| kindly sympathies of the givers, and the honest independence of 
| the receivers; when the coin that passed from the former to the 
| latter was small, and extorted by importunate or crouching 
| mendicancy, instead of being awarded by a fixed rule of law.  
| They even took religion into their service, and muttered the text 
| that <q> </q>; questioning, but with modesty, if an efficient 
| Poor-law were not a thing denounced in Scripture.
| It was clear that in the midst of all this, something must be done, 
| for the case made out for inquiry was too strong to be resisted; 
| and we are inclined to think that the resolution adopted was a 
| piece of scientific statecraft, such as would have done no 
| discredit to Burleigh or Talleyrand.  The landed proprietors, who 
| set their face against inquiry, were the stanch supporters of the 
| government.  Let the inquiry, therefore, be made by a committee 
| of themselves, along, with two of those officials who are brought 
| up in a theoretic love and admiration of the system so 
| advantageous to the country gentlemen ~~ the parochial clergy.  
| It was no doubt anticipated, that be the investigators who they 
| may, the inquiry could not be made without a strong case being 
| shown.  And so it happened; though the fashion of the 
| examination was, when any statement was made about the 
| immorality and recklessness of the poor, their propensity to 
| drunkenness, and their want of forethought, to receive it with 
| bland politeness; but when the extent of wretchedness, or the 
| smallness of relief was spoken to, to cross-question rigorously, as 
| if the witness were a <hi rend="italic"> <f> socius criminis </f> 
| </hi> come to prove an <hi rend="italic"> <f> alili </f> </hi>.  
| Fortunately the government kept in their hands a means of being 
| acquainted with the whole truth, by putting on the Commission a 
| man trained in the method of inquiry of the Poor Law 
| Commission in England, and through his services, backed by the 
| pregnant merits of the case, the public got at the facts through 
| this Commission, and treated their short essay in defence of the 
| present system with the scorn it deserved.
| <pb n"325">
| This general condemnation has done good.  It is echoed by the 
| <hi rend="italic"> Quarterly Review, </hi> and at length 
| government, ashamed of the paltry character of the amendments 
| proposed by the report, has materially enlarged them.  One of the 
| proposals of the Commissioners, was to appoint a board with no 
| power save that of remonstrance; a Board to tell heritors and 
| kirk-sessions that their allowances are too small; as they have 
| been told, and without effect, for the last six years.  It was fondly 
| suggested that this board, as the mouth-piece of public opinion, 
| would operate a reform.  Public opinion! the classes it was to 
| affect have trained themselves in a brazen defiance of it.  Why 
| not have left the matter simply to their consciences? why, but 
| that the proposal to appoint a Board with nothing to do was still a 
| suggestion of a measure, and the suggestion of a measure is 
| properly part and parcel of every report by a Commission.  The 
| government measure is an improvement on this idea, an 
| improvement not less material than the giving life and motion to 
| the inanimate model.  The proposed Board is to have very 
| material powers.  It may award interim relief during the 
| dependence of an action before the legal judicatories to make 
| good the right to permanent aliment, and its sanction gives the 
| applicant the opportunity of litigating his case with the privileges 
| of a pauper.  Before the Commissioners made their report, the 
| question, whether paupers could litigate their claims for relief in 
| the Court of Session, was decided, and it was found that they 
| could.  This privilege, of which an Englishman will understand 
| the extent, by figuring to himself a pauper being entitled to bring 
| a suit in Chancery for relief, was deemed by the Commissioners 
| a dangerous innovation, and they recommended its abolition.  
| The government measure, instead of adopting the proposal, gives 
| the local judges ~~ the Sheriffs ~~ the power of adjudicating on 
| relief.  By the present practice, when a parish declines burdening 
| itself with a new claimant, it cuts the Gordian knot by denying 
| that he has a settlement, and leaving the pauper to establish that 
| point by an action in the Court of Session.  This means of 
| evasion will be effectually cut off by a provision which throws 
| the burden of relief on the parish where the applicant is found 
| destitute, leaving it to seek indemnity against the parish justly 
| liable by the law of settlement.  On the whole, there are good 
| features in this measure, and so signally has the power of the 
| press been exhibited in making it so good as it is, that we hope to 
| see it still farther improved through the same influence.  It 
| appears to labour under one very considerable defect ~~ the same 
| that was pointed out by Mr. Ellice ~~ in its not containing any 
| provision for a compulsory assessment.  Its principle is, that 
| where relief is enforced, the fund must be provided ~ that where 
| the piston is drawn up, the water must follow.  But we would 
| have been gratified to find in the measure some better security 
| for a large increase of the funds distributed among the poor in 
| Scotland, and would prefer the application of direct pressure.
| The great defect of the present system is simply its sordid 
| parsimony, and an enlargement of the fund for relief, must be the 
| main feature of any new measure.  Theorists proposed many 
| plans for liquidating the national debt, by sinking funds, which 
| were to increase of themselves and cost nothing to 
| <reg orig="any body;"> anybody; </reg> but 
| Dr. Hamilton proved that the only way to liquidate the debt was 
| to pay it, and the only means of paying it was by taxing the 
| country to a corresponding extent.  So it appears to us, that the 
| first step towards relieving the poor is to levy a sufficient sum of 
| money for that purpose, and that it is time to consider all the 
| incidents of the method of distribution, when we have got an 
| assurance that a sum bearing a respectable proportion to the 
| exigencies of the case is likely to be forthcoming.  It has been 
| observed by Dr. Alison, as a conclusion of a series of 
| calculations, which we have checked and carried out for our own 
| satisfaction, that if the sum annually expended on the poor of 
| Scotland were raised to the proportion of that levied under the 
| new and economized English Poor-law, it would amount to 
| 800,000, pounds, instead of 150,000, pounds its 
| present, or at least its late, 
| average amount.  There are grave doubts, serious and deliberate 
| considerations, about how the fund for the relief of the poor can 
| be best distributed; whether there should be unions of parishes or 
| not.  We must own that we think the satisfaction of employing 
| mental exertion in the adjustment of these nice questions, would 
| be greatly enhanced if we were assured that the means of 
| accomplishing it would be made proportionate to the end to be 
| accomplished.  We are ready to give up a hundred thousand or so, 
| for the difference between the habits of living in the two 
| countries, say at once two hundred thousand, to save cavils .  Let 
| then the provision for Scotland be six hundred thousand a-year, 
| three-fourths of what is levied and applied on the same 
| population in England, and four times the sum which constitutes 
| the present fund for the relief of the poor in Scotland.  We 
| demand not what Mr. Wakley thought the perfection of a poor-law
| ~~ the supply of a butcher meat dinner, and two pints of 
| porter per day.  We do not wish to see our paupers reveling in the 
| potent ale, which astonished Mr. Chadwick at Reading, under the 
| old system; but we do wish an end put to the cruel, and selfish 
| hallucination, that in this country a human being can be 
| efficiently supported on a shilling a-week.
| We shall be excused for not dwelling on the minute details of 
| this measure, but we are bound to notice another important defect.  
| The pauper is not to be entitled to apply for judicial intervention 
| unless the Central Board in the first place pronounce in his 
| favour.  The protection of the payers against profuseness seems 
| here to have predominated over the protection of the poor against 
| parsimony.  The clause will be likely to render the general rate of 
| relief through Scotland too dependent on the theories that may be 
| entertained by the General Board.  We think, that by leaving the 
| law in all cases open to the pauper, the propensity to restrict 
| allowances within too narrow a compass might receive a 
| wholesome correction
| <pb n="326">
| from an occasional judicial review, and that canvassing of the 
| matter by the public which resort to a court of law always 
| occasions.  We can see the half sunken rock which the framers of 
| the bill were here afraid of running against.  Before the law in 
| England was amended, the justices of peace often sought 
| popularity by awarding extravagant sums for relief, and thus 
| counteracted the beneficial working of the system in the hands of 
| the responsible administrators; but our stipendiary magistracy are 
| not liable to be swayed by the same popular influences.  Among 
| the minor details of the measure, the most unexceptionable is the 
| abolition of the odious privilege of exemption from this branch 
| of local taxation enjoyed by the lawyers of Edinburgh.  There are 
| provisions for the union of parishes for Poor-Law purposes; and 
| for the purpose, we presume, of avoiding the word <p> "union," 
| </p> which has become unpopular in some parts of England, 
| these conjoined parishes are to receive the designation of <p> 
| "combinations." </p>