Mr. Canning was once asked by Mr. Tierney why he did not touch the Poor Law? To which question Mr. Canning replied:— "Why do not Governments decide offhand a question growing out of the usages of centuries—interwoven with the habits, and deeply rooted in the prejudices of the people? Of all subjects of legislation on which Governments ought not harshly or prematurely to interfere, without ascertaining, and, if possible, carrying with them the prevailing sentiments of the country, this of the Poor Law appears to me the one on which it would be most undesirable to take a precipitate course."
From the reign of Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603) until the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 relief of the poor in England was administered on the basis of a Poor Relief Act 1601. From the start of the nineteenth century the basic concept of providing poor relief was criticised as misguided by leading political economists and in southern agricultural counties the burden of poor-rates was felt to be excessive (especially where poor-rates were used to supplement low wages (the 'allowance' or Speenhamland system). Opposition to the Elizabethan Poor Law led to a Royal Commission on poor relief, which recommended that poor relief could not in the short term be abolished; however it should be curtailed, and administered on such terms that none but the desperate would claim it. Relief should only be administered in workhouses, whose inhabitants were to be confined, 'classified' (men, women, boys, girls) and segregated. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 allowed these changes to be implemented by a Poor Law Commission largely unaccountable to Parliament. The act was passed by large majorities in Parliament, but the regime it was intended to bring about was denounced by its critics as (variously) un-Christian, un-English, unconstitutional, and impracticable for the great manufacturing districts of Northern England. The Act itself did not introduce the regime, but introduced a framework by which it might easily be brought in.
Opposition to the New Poor Law strictly speaking was resistance to the introduction of the New Poor Law administrative framework; this was chiefly encountered in the industrial North in 1837–9 and overcome after a few riots by a judicious mixture of legal threats and deployment of the military. Opposition to the New Poor Law in the looser sense of resistance to (and criticism of) key features of the regime recommended by the Royal Commission persisted and eventually became orthodoxy: for example outdoor relief was never abolished in much of the industrial North. When a prominent West Riding opponent of the New Poor Law died in 1858, the Huddersfield Chronicle wrote "..the controversy closed and English common sense has settled down on the poor-law question somewhat nearer to the views of Oastler and Pitkethly than those of their opponents."
Criticism of the Elizabethan poor law Criticism of the Poor Law grew in the early nineteenth century after the Napoleonic Wars with France, especially among political economists.
Thomas Malthus thought any benevolence to the poor was self-defeating; the only check on the numbers of the poor was poverty. Furthermore, the Poor Law gave a right to relief only in the parish where the claimant had a right of settlement, obtained by birth or by prolonged residence: it undesirably limited the mobility of labour. Without the Poor Law there would be "a few more instances of severe distress," but "the aggregate mass of happiness among the common people would have been much greater than it is at present." However, he was one of the first to advocate so called 'indoor relief' in workhouses for the poor as opposed to outdoor relief (handouts in money or in kind, with recipients not under the control of poor-law authorities).
David Ricardo supported the abolition of the Poor Law in his book 'Principles of Political Economy and Taxation' published in 1817. Any tax raised to pay for welfare such as poor rates reduced the money available to pay wages. He also argued that it rewarded laziness, discouraged people from saving for old age or illness, and encouraged irresponsibly large families.
Edwin Chadwick, a member of the royal commission, and subsequently secretary of the Poor Law Commission, was a follower of Jeremy Bentham (who believed that wages would find their true levels in a free-market system where there was state control to maintain common agreed standards). Chadwick therefore criticized the Old Poor Law because its decentralised administration meant significant variation in the treatment of paupers. Chadwick held that the able-bodied poor should be put to work in workhouses which met the condition of less eligibility: they could not claim outdoor relief as they did under the existing Poor Law. Conditions had to be worse than those for the poorest labourer outside the workhouse, so that people would not want to claim relief. This would decrease the poor rate, allow wages to rise to their true levels, and promote honest toil.
Opposition to introduction of the New Poor Law
The 1832 Royal Commission Alarmed at the cost of poor relief in the southern agricultural districts of England (where in many areas it had become a semi-permanent top-up of labourers' wages – the 'allowance system', 'Roundsman system', or 'Speenhamland system') Parliament had set up a Royal Commission into the operation of the Poor Laws. Its report had recommended sweeping changes unsurprisingly similar to those favoured by Chadwick:
Out-relief of the able-bodied poor should cease - relief should be given only in workhouses, and upon such terms that only the truly indigent would accept it. "Into such a house none will enter voluntarily; work, confinement, and discipline, will deter the indolent and vicious; and nothing but extreme necessity will induce any to accept the comfort which must be obtained by the surrender of their free agency, and the sacrifice of their accustomed habits and gratifications. "
Different classes of paupers should be segregated; to this end parishes should pool together in unions, with each of their poorhouses dedicated to a single class of paupers and serving the whole of the union. "the separation of man and wife was necessary, in order to ensure the proper regulation of workhouses"Speech of Lord Althorp (c 339) in
The new system would be undermined if different unions treated their paupers differently; there should therefore be a central board with powers to specify standards and to enforce those standards; this could not be done directly by Parliament because of the legislative workload that would ensue.
Mothers of illegitimate children should receive much less support; poor-law authorities should no longer attempt to identify the fathers of illegitimate children and recover the costs of child support from them
Poor Law Amendment Act 1834
Acting on the recommendations of the royal commission, Parliament passed the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, which however did not directly enact the recommendations. On illegitimacy it did not follow the recommendations of the Commission; under the New Poor Law fathers of illegitimate children could still be pursued; with however the crucial difference that under the old poor law the mother's sworn testimony was sufficient to establish paternity; under the New Poor Law the mother's word alone was insufficient; there had to be corroborative evidence. To implement the other recommendations the Act set up a three-man Poor Law Commission, an 'at arms' length' quango to which Parliament delegated the power to make appropriate regulations, without making any provision for effective oversight of the Commission's doings. Local poor-rates payers still elected their local Board of Poor Law Guardians and still paid for local poor law provisions, but those provisions could be specified to the Board of Guardians by the Poor Law Commission; where they were the views of the local rate-payers were irrelevant.
Opposition to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 The radical MP William Cobbett voted against the Act, asserting that the poor had an automatic right to relief and that the Act aimed to "enrich the landowner" at the expense of the poor. The 'Tory Radical' Richard Oastler personally lobbied Tory leaders (including the Duke of Wellington) to oppose the Act. Oastler's objections were that the Act pursued aims dictated by political economy by un-Christian treatment of the poor (and particularly of the married poor: "whom God hath joined together let no man part asunder"), and to ensure this was done with consistent heartlessness was setting up an unconstitutional body. Oastler told the Duke "if that Bill passes, the man who can produce the greatest confusion in the country will be the greatest patriot, and I will try to be that man". However the Duke was unconvinced; Tory landowners were as keen on reducing poor rates as were the Whigs, and the Bill received little opposition from either the House of Commons or the House of Lords before gaining Royal Assent. John Fielden, an industrialist and owner of textile mills at Todmorden and MP for Oldham (where he had secured Cobbett's election) was like Cobbett a strong opponent of the New Poor Law, and after Cobbett's death was part of a small group of MPs who called for review of the working of the Act - Fielden further called for its repeal -: all that was achieved was a Select Committee which took most of its evidence from the Poor Law Commission and other Poor Law functionaries and consequently found much to praise and little to blame.
Resistance to the New Poor Law structures
South of England The new dispensation was implemented progressively, starting with the southern counties of England, whose problems it was designed to address. There it achieved a considerable reduction in the poor rates with only minor disturbances (In Buckinghamshire when paupers were transported 3 miles from Chalfont St. Giles to Amersham, the Riot Act had to be read. In East Anglia new workhouses were attacked.Rees, R. Poverty and Public Health 1815–1948, Heinemann, 2001. ) "Partial riots have occurred in different counties; but, by the aid of small parties of the Metropolitan Police ... occasionally aided by the support of military force, these disturbances have been put down, without any considerable injury to property.'page 5 of the Poor-law Commissioners' second report' as quoted by John Fielden MP at c 1015 of "
North of England There had been no great dissatisfaction with the existing Poor Law in the North, the burden of poor relief being lower (in 1832 under the old Poor Law Lancashire, with a population about 280% that of Kent, had poor relief costs only about 80% those of Kent).data given as from the British Almanack of 1832 in a letter from 'An Admirer of your Paper' The rate of increase in the cost of poor-relief was no of concern either: in Sheffield the cost of poor-relief in 1833 was half what it had been ten years before. Correspondingly there had been no urgent need to implement the New Poor Law. Not until January 1837 were the first steps taken to introduce the system into the textile districts of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire by setting up 'poor law unions' and electing Boards of Guardians for them. The Poor Law Boards were then to appoint a clerk to administer whatever system of relief was specified for that Union by the central Commission.