NUMBER III.

54. In the foregoing Numbers, I have shown, that men can never be so poor as to have no rights at all: and that, in England, they have a legal, as well as a natural, right to be maintained, if they be destitute of other means, out of the lands, or other property, of the rich. But, it is an interesting question, HOW THERE CAME TO BE SO MUCH POVERTY AND MISERY IN ENGLAND. This is a very interesting question; for, though it is the doom of man, that he shall never be certain of any-thing, and that he shall never be beyond the reach of calamity; though there always has been, and always will be, poor people in every nation; though this circumstance of poverty is inseparable from the means which uphold communities of men; though, without poverty, there could be no charity, and none of those feelings, those offices, those acts, and those relationships, which are connected with charity, and which form a considerable portion of the cement of civil society: yet, notwithstanding these things, there are bounds beyond which the poverty of the people cannot go, without becoming a thing to complain of, and to trace to the Government as a fault. Those bounds have been passed, in England, long and long ago. England was always famed for many things; but especially for its good living; that is to say, for the plenty in which the whole of the people lived; for the abundance of good clothing and good food which they had. It was always, ever since it bore the name of England, the richest and most powerful and most admired country in Europe; but, its good living, its superiority in this particular respect, was proverbial amongst all who knew, or who had heard talk of, the English nation. Good God! How changed! Now, the very worst fed and worst clad people upon the face of the earth, those of Ireland only excepted. How, then, did this horrible, this disgraceful, this cruel poverty come upon this once happy nation? This, my good friends of Preston, is, to us all, a most important question; and, now let us endeavour to obtain a full and complete answer to it.

55. POVERTY is, after all, the great badge, the never-failing badge, of slavery. Bare bones and rags are the true marks of the real slave. What is the object of Government? To cause men to live happily. They cannot be happy without a sufficiency of food and of raiment. Good government means a state of things in which the main body are well fed and well clothed. It is the chief business of a government to take care, that one part of the people do not cause the other part to lead miserable lives. There can be no morality, no virtue, no sincerity, no honesty, amongst a people continually suffering from want; and, it is cruel, in the last degree, to punish such people for almost any sort of crime, which is, in fact, not crime of the heart, not crime of the perpetrator, but the crime of his all-controlling necessities.—To what degree the main body of the people, in England, are now poor and miserable; how deplorably wretched they now are; this we know but too well; and now, we will see what was their state before this vaunted “Reformation.” I shall be very particular to cite my authorities here. I will infer nothing; I will give no “estimate;” but refer to authorities, such as no man can call in question, such as no man can deny to be proofs more complete than if founded on oaths of credible witnesses, taken before a judge and jury. I shall begin with the account which Fortescue gives of the state and manner of living of the English, in the reign of Henry VI.; that is, in the 15th century, when the Catholic Church was in the height of its glory. Fortescue was Lord Chief Justice of England for nearly twenty years; he was appointed Lord High Chancellor by Henry VI. Being in exile, in France, in consequence of the wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and the King’s son, Prince Edward, being also in exile with him, the Chancellor wrote a series of Letters, addressed to the Prince, to explain to him the nature and effects of the Laws of England, and to induce him to study them and uphold them. This work, which was written in Latin, is called De Laudibus Legum Angliæ; or, Praise of the Laws of England. This book was, many years ago, translated into English, and it is a book of Law-Authority, quoted frequently in our courts of this day. No man can doubt the truth of facts related in such a work. It was a work written by a famous lawyer for a prince; it was intended to be read by other contemporary lawyers, and also by all lawyers in future. The passage that I am about to quote, relating to the state of the English, was purely incidental; it was not intended to answer any temporary purpose. It must have been a true account.—The Chancellor, after speaking generally of the nature of the laws of England, and of the difference between them and the laws of France, proceeds to show the difference in their effects, by a description of the state of the French people, and then by a description of the state of the English. His words, words that, as I transcribe them, make my cheeks burn with shame, are as follows: “Besides all this, the inhabitants of France give every year to their King the fourth part of all their wines, the growth of that year, every vintner gives the fourth penny of what he makes of his wine by sale. And all the towns and boroughs pay to the King yearly great sums of money, which are assessed upon them, for the expenses of his men at arms. So that the King’s troops, which are always considerable, are substituted and paid yearly by those common people, who live in the villages, boroughs, and cities. Another grievance is, every village constantly finds and maintains two cross-bow-men, at the least; some find more, well arrayed in all their accoutrements, to serve the King in his wars, as often as he pleaseth to call them out, which is frequently done. Without any consideration had of these things, other very heavy taxes are assessed yearly upon every village within the kingdom, for the King’s service; neither is there ever any intermission or abatement of taxes. Exposed to these and other calamities, the peasants live in great hardship and misery. Their constant drink is water, neither do they taste, throughout the year, any other liquor, unless upon some extraordinary times, or festival days. Their clothing consists of frocks, or little short jerkins, made of canvass, no better than common sackcloth; they do not wear any woollens, except of the coarsest sort; and that only in the garment under their frocks; nor do they wear any trowse, but from the knees upwards; their legs being exposed and naked. The women go barefoot, except on holidays. They do not eat flesh, except it be the fat of bacon, and that in very small quantities, with which they make a soup. Of other sorts, either boiled or roasted, they do not so much as taste, unless it be of the inwards and offals of sheep and bullocks, and the like which are killed, for the use of the better sort of people, and the merchants; for whom also quails, partridges, hares, and the like, are reserved, upon pain of the gallies; as for their poultry, the soldiers consume them, so that scarce the eggs, slight as they are, are indulged them, by way of a dainty. And if it happen that a man is observed to thrive in the world, and become rich, he is presently assessed to the King’s tax, proportionably more than his poorer neighbours, whereby he is soon reduced to a level with the rest.” Then comes his description of the English, at the same time; those “priest-ridden” English, whom Chalmers and Hume, and the rest of that tribe, would fain have us believe, were a mere band of wretched beggars.—“The King of England cannot alter the laws, or make new ones, without the express consent of the whole kingdom in Parliament assembled. Every inhabitant is at his liberty fully to use and enjoy whatever his farm produceth, the fruits of the earth, the increase of his flock, and the like: all the improvements he makes, whether by his own proper industry, or of those he retains in his service, are his own, to use and enjoy, without the let, interruption, or denial of any. If he be in anywise injured or oppressed, he shall have his amends and satisfactions against the party offending. Hence it is that the inhabitants are rich in gold, silver, and in all the necessaries and conveniences of life. They drink no water, unless at certain times, upon a religious score, and by way of doing penance. They are fed, in great abundance, with all sorts of flesh and fish, of which they have plenty every-where; they are clothed throughout in good woollens; their bedding and other furniture in their houses are of wool, and that in great store. They are also well provided with all other sorts of household goods and necessary implements for husbandry. Every one, according to his rank, hath all things which conduce to make life easy and happy.”—Go, and read this to the poor souls, who are now eating sea-weed in Ireland; who are detected in robbing the pig-troughs in Yorkshire; who are eating horse-flesh and grains (draff) in Lancashire and Cheshire; who are harnessed like horses, and drawing gravel in Hampshire and Sussex; who have 3d. a day allowed them by the magistrates in Norfolk; who are, all over England, worse fed than the felons in the jails. Go, and tell them, when they raise their hands from the pig-trough, or from the grains-tub, and, with their dirty tongues, cry “No Popery;” go, read to the degraded and deluded wretches, this account of the state of their Catholic forefathers, who lived under what is impudently called “Popish superstition and tyranny,” and in those times which we have the audacity to call “the dark ages.”—Look at the then picture of the French; and, Protestant Englishmen, if you have the capacity of blushing left, blush at the thought of how precisely that picture fits the English now! Look at all the parts of the picture; the food, the raiment, the game! Good God! If any one had told the old Chancellor, that the day would come, when this picture, and even a picture more degrading to human nature, would fit his own boasted country, what would he have said? What would he have said, if he had been told, that the time was to come, when the soldier, in England, would have more than twice, nay, more than thrice, the sum allowed to the day-labouring man; when potatoes would be carried to the field as the only food of the ploughman; when soup-shops would be open to feed the English; and when the Judges, sitting on that very Bench on which he himself had sitten for twenty years, would (as in the case of last year of the complaints against Magistrates at Northallerton) declare that BREAD AND WATER were the general food of working people in England? What would he have said? Why, if he had been told, that there was to be a “Reformation,” accompanied by a total devastation of Church and Poor property, upheld by wars, creating an enormous Debt and enormous taxes, and requiring a constantly standing army; if he had been told this, he would have foreseen our present state, and would have wept for his country; but, if he had, in addition, been told, that, even in the midst of all this suffering, we should still have the ingratitude and the baseness to cry “No Popery,” and the injustice and the cruelty to persecute those Englishmen and Irishmen, who adhered to the faith of their pious, moral, brave, free and happy fathers, he would have said, “God’s will be done: let them suffer.”—But, it may be said, that it was not, then, the Catholic Church, but the Laws, that made the English so happy; for, the French had that Church as well as the English. Aye! But, in England, the Church was the very basis of the laws. The very first clause of Magna Charta provided for the stability of its property and rights. A provision for the indigent, an effectual provision, was made by the laws that related to the Church and its property; and this was not the case in France; and never was the case in any country but this: so that the English people lost more by a “Reformation” than any other people could have lost.—Fortescue’s authority would, of itself, be enough; but, I am not to stop with it. White, the late Rector of Selbourne, in Hampshire, gives, in his History of that once-famous village, an extract from a record, stating that for disorderly conduct, men were punished by being “compelled to fast a fortnight on bread and beer!” This was about the year 1380, in the reign of Richard II. Oh! miserable “dark ages!” This fact must be true. White had no purpose to answer. His mention of the fact, or rather his transcript from the record, is purely incidental; and trifling as the fact is, it is conclusive as to the general mode of living in those happy days. Go, tell the harnessed gravel-drawers, in Hampshire, to cry “No Popery;” for, that, if the Pope be not put down, he may, in time, compel them to fast on bread and beer, instead of suffering them to continue to regale themselves on nice potatoes and pure water.—But, let us come to Acts of Parliament, and, first, to the Act above mentioned of King Edward III. That Act fixes the price of meat. After naming the four sorts of meat, beef, pork, mutton, and veal, the preamble has these words: “These being THE FOOD OF THE POORER SORT.” This is conclusive. It is an incidental mention of a fact. It is an Act of Parliament. It must have been true; and, it is a fact that we know well, that even the Judges have declared from the Bench, that bread alone is now the food of the poorer sort. What do we want more than this to convince us, that the main body of the people have been impoverished by the “Reformation?”—But I will prove, by other Acts of Parliament, this Act of Parliament to have spoken truth. These Acts declare what the wages of workmen shall be. There are several such Acts, but one or two may suffice. The Act of 23d of Edw. III. fixes the wages, without food, as follows. There are many other things mentioned, but the following will be enough for our purpose.

The price of shoes, cloth, and of provisions, throughout the time that this law continued in force, was as follows:—

These prices are taken from the Preciosum of Bishop Fleetwood, who took them from the accounts kept by the bursers of convents. All the world knows, that Fleetwood’s book is of undoubted authority.—We may then easily believe, that “beef, pork, mutton, and veal,” were “the food of the poorer sort,” when a dung-cart filler had more than the price of a fat goose and a half for a day’s work, and when a woman was allowed, for a day’s weeding, the price of a quart of red wine! Two yards of the cloth made a coat for the shepherd; and, as it cost 2s. 2d., the reaper would earn it in 6½ days; and, the dung-cart man would earn very nearly a pair of shoes every day! this dung-cart filler would earn a fat shorn sheep in four days; he would earn a fat hog, two years old, in twelve days; he would earn a grass-fed ox in twenty days; so that we may easily believe, that “beef, pork, and mutton,” were “the food of the poorer sort.” And, mind, this was “a priest-ridden people;” a people “buried in Popish superstition!” In our days of “Protestant light” and of “mental enjoyment,” the “poorer sort” are allowed by the Magistrates of Norfolk, 3d. a day for a single man able to work. That is to say, a half-penny less than the Catholic dung-cart man had; and that 3d. will get the “No Popery” gentleman about six ounces of old ewe-mutton, while the Popish dung-cart man got, for his day, rather more than the quarter of a fat sheep.—But, the popish people might work harder than “enlightened Protestants.” They might do more work in a day. This is contrary to all the assertions of the feelosophers; for they insist, that the Catholic religion made people idle. But, to set this matter at rest, let us look at the price of the job-labour; at the mowing by the acre, and at the thrashing of wheat by the quarter; and let us see how these wages are now, compared with the price of food. I have no parliamentary authority since the year 1821, when a report was printed by order of the House of Commons, containing the evidence of Mr. Ellman, of Sussex, as to wages, and of Mr. George, of Norfolk, as to price of wheat. The report was dated 18th June, 1821. The accounts are for 20 years, on an average, from 1800 inclusive. We will now proceed to see how the “popish, priest-ridden” Englishman stands in comparison with the “No Popery” Englishman.

Here are “waust improvements, Mau’m!” But, now let us look at the relative price of the wheat, which the labourer had to purchase with his wages. We have seen, that the “popish superstition slave” had to give fivepence a bushel for his wheat, and the evidence of Mr. George states, that the “enlightened Protestant” had to give 10 shillings a bushel for his wheat; that is 24 times as much as the “popish fool,” who suffered himself to be “priest-ridden.” So that the “enlightened” man, in order to make him as well off as the “dark-ages” man was, ought to receive twelve shillings, instead of 3s. 7¾d. for mowing an acre of grass; and he, in like manner, ought to receive, for thrashing a quarter of wheat, eight shillings, instead of the four shillings which he does receive. If we had the records, we should doubtless find, that Ireland was in the same state.

56. There! That settles the matter as to ancient good living. Now, as to the progress of poverty and misery, amongst the working people, during the last half century, take these facts; in the year 1771, that is, 55 years ago, Arthur Young, who was afterwards Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, published a work on the state of the agriculture of the country, in which he gave the allowance for the keeping of a farm-labourer, his wife and three children, which allowance, reckoning according to the present money-price of the articles which he allows amounted to 13s. 1d. He put the sum, at what he deemed the lowest possible sum, on which the people could exist. Alas! we shall find, that they can be made to exist upon little more than one-half of this sum!

57. This allowance of Mr. Arthur Young was made, observe, in 1771, which was before the Old American War took place. That war made some famous fortunes for admirals and commodores and contractors and pursers and generals and commissaries; but, it was not the Americans, the French, nor the Dutch, that gave the money to make these fortunes. They came out of English taxes; and the heaviest part of those taxes fell upon the working people, who, when they were boasting of “victories,” and rejoicing that the “Jack Tars” had got “prize-money,” little dreamed that these victories were purchased by them, and that they paid fifty pounds for every crown that sailors got in prize-money! In short, this American war caused a great mass of new taxes to be laid on, and the people of England became a great deal poorer than they ever had been before. During that war, they BEGAN TO EAT POTATOES, as something to “save bread.” The poorest of the people, the very poorest of them, refused, for a long while, to use them in this way; and even when I was ten years old, which was just about fifty years ago; the poor people would not eat potatoes, except with meat, as they would cabbages, or carrots, or any other moist vegetable. But, by the end of the American war, their stomachs had come to! By slow degrees they had been reduced to swallow this pig-meat, (and bad pig-meat too,) not, indeed, without grumbling; but to swallow it; to be reduced, thus, many degrees in the scale of animals.

58. At the end of twenty-four years from the date of Arthur Young’s allowance, the poverty and degradation of the English people had made great strides. We were now in the year 1795, and a new war, and a new series of “victories and prizes” had begun. But who it was that suffered for these, out of whose blood and flesh and bones they came, the allowance now (in 1795) made to the poor labourers and their families will tell. There was, in that year, a Table, or Scale, of allowance, framed by the Magistrates of Berkshire. This is, by no means, a hard county; and therefore it is reasonable to suppose, that the scale was as good a one for the poor as any in England. According to this scale, which was printed and published, and also acted upon for years, the weekly allowance, for a man, his wife and three children, was, according to present money-prices, 11s. 4d. Thus it had, in the space of twenty-four years, fell from 13s. 1d. to 11s. 4d. Thus were the people brought to the pig-meat! Food, fit for men, they could not have with 11s. 4d. a week for five persons.

59. One would have thought, that to make a human being live upon 4d. a day, and find fuel, clothing, rent, washing, and bedding, out of the 4d., besides eating and drinking, was impossible; and one would have thought it impossible for any-thing not of hellish birth and breeding, to entertain a wish to make poor creatures, and our neighbours too, exist in such a state of horrible misery and degradation as the labourers of England were condemned to by this scale of 1795. Alas! this was happiness and honour; this was famous living; this 11s. 4d. a week was luxury and feasting, compared to what we NOW BEHOLD! For now the allowance, according to present money-prices, is 8s. a week for the man, his wife, and three children; that is to say 2⁵⁄7d. In words, TWO PENCE AND FIVE SEVENTHS OF ANOTHER PENNY, FOR A DAY! There, that is England now! That is what the base wretches, who are fattening upon the people’s labour, call “the envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world.” This is what Sir Francis Burdett applauds; and he applauds the mean and cruel and dastardly ruffians, whom he calls, “the country gentlemen of England,” and whose generosity he cries up; while he well knows, that it is they (and he amongst the rest) who are the real and only cause of this devil-like barbarity, which (and he well knows that too) could not possibly be practised without the constant existence and occasional employment of that species of force, which is so abhorrent to the laws of England, and of which this Burdett’s son forms a part. The poor creatures, if they complain; if their hunger make them cry out, are either punished by even harder measures, or are slapped into prison. Alas! the jail is really become a place of relief, a scene of comparative good living: hence the invention of the tread-mill! What shall we see next? Workhouses, badges, hundred-houses, select-vestries, tread-mills, gravel-carts, and harness! What shall we see next! And what should we see at last, if this infernal THING could continue for only a few years longer?

60. In order to form a judgment of the cruelty of making our working neighbours live upon 2⁵⁄7d. a day; that is to say 2d. and rather more than a halfpenny, let us see what the surgeons allow in the hospitals, to patients with broken limbs, who, of course, have no work to do, and who cannot even take any exercise. In Guy’s Hospital, London, the daily allowance to patients, having simple fractures, is this: 6 ounces of meat; 12 ounces of bread; 1 pint of broth; 2 quarts of good beer. This is the daily allowance. Then, in addition to this, the same patient has 12 ounces of butter a week. These articles, for a week, amount to not less at present retail prices (and those are the poor man’s prices,) than 6s. 9d. a week; while the working man is allowed 1s. 7d. a week! For, he cannot and he will not see his wife and children actually drop down dead with hunger before his face; and this is what he must see, if he take to himself more than a fifth of the allowance for the family.

61. Now, pray, observe, that surgeons, and particularly those eminent surgeons who frame rules and regulations for great establishments like that of Guy’s Hospital, are competent judges of what nature requires in the way of food and of drink. They are, indeed, not only competent judges, but they are the best of judges: they know precisely what is necessary; and having the power to order the proper allowance, they order it. If, then, they make an allowance like that, which we have seen, to a person who is under a regimen for a broken limb; to a person who does no work, and who is, nine times out of ten, unable to take any exercise at all, even that of walking about, at least in the open air; if the eminent surgeons of London deem six shillings and ninepence worth of victuals and drink, a week, necessary to such a patient; if they think that nature calls for so much in such a case; what must that man be made of, who can allow to a working man, a man fourteen hours every day in the open air, one shilling and seven pence worth of victuals and drink for the week! Let me not however ask what “that man” can be made of; for it is a monster and not a man: it is a murderer of men: not a murderer with the knife or the pistol, but with the more cruel instrument of starvation. And yet, such monsters go to church and to meeting; aye, and subscribe, the base hypocrites, to circulate that Bible which commands to do as they would be done by, and which, from the first chapter to the last, menaces them with punishment, if they be hard to the poor, the fatherless, the widow, or the stranger!

62. But, not only is the patient, in a hospital, thus so much more amply fed than the working man; the prisoners in the jails; aye, even the convicted felons, are fed better, and much better, than the working men now are! Here is a fine “Old England;” that country of “roast beef and plumb pudding:” that, as the tax-eaters say it is, “envy of surrounding nations and admiration of the world.” Aye; the country WAS all these; but, it is now precisely the reverse of them all. We have just seen that the honest labouring man is allowed 2⁵⁄7d. a day; and that will buy him a pound and a half of good bread a day, and no more, not a single crumb more. This is all he has. Well enough might the Hampshire Baronet, Sir John Pollen, lately, at a meeting at Andover, call the labourers “poor devils,” and say, that they had “scarcely a rag to cover them!” A pound and a half of bread a day, and nothing more, and that, too, to work upon! Now, then, how fare the prisoners in the jails? Why, if they be CONVICTED FELONS, they are, say the Berkshire jail-regulations, “to have ONLY BREAD and water, with vegetables occasionally from the garden.” Here, then, they are already better fed than the honest labouring man. Aye, and this is not all; for, this is only the week-day fare; for, they are to have, “on Sundays, SOME MEAT and broth!” Good God! And the honest working man can never, never smell the smell of meat! This is “envy of surrounding nations” with the devil to it! This is a state of things for Burdett to applaud.

63. But we are not even yet come to a sight of the depth of our degradation. These Berkshire jail-regulations make provision for setting the convicted prisoners, in certain cases, TO WORK, and, they say, “if the surgeon think it necessary, the WORKING PRISONERS may be allowed MEAT AND BROTH ON WEEK-DAYS;” and on Sundays, of course! There it is! There is the “envy and admiration!” There is the state to which Mr. Prosperity and Mr. Canning’s best Parliament has brought us. There is the result of “victories” and prize-money and battles of Waterloo and of English ladies kissing, “Old Blucher.” There is the fruit, the natural fruit, of anti-jacobinism and battles on the Serpentine River and jubilees and heaven-born ministers and sinking-funds and “public credit” and army and navy contracts. There is the fruit, the natural, the nearly (but not quite) ripe fruit of it all: the CONVICTED FELON is, if he do not work at all, allowed, on week-days, some vegetables in addition to his bread, and, on Sundays, both meat and broth; and, if the CONVICTED FELON work, if he be a WORKING convicted felon, he is allowed meat and broth all the week round; while, hear it Burdett, thou Berkshire magistrate! hear it, all ye base miscreants who have persecuted men because they sought a reform! The WORKING CONVICTED FELON is allowed meat and broth every day in the year, while the WORKING HONEST MAN is allowed nothing but dry bread, and of that not half a belly-full! And yet you see the people that seem surprised that crimes increase! Very strange, to be sure; that men should like to work upon meat and broth better than they like to work upon dry bread! No wonder that new jails arise. No wonder that there are now two or three or four or five jails to one county, and that as much is now written upon “prison discipline” as upon almost any subject that is going. But, why so good, so generous, to FELONS? The truth is, that they are not fed too well; for, to be starved is no part of their sentence; and, here are SURGEONS who have something to say! They know very well that a man may be murdered by keeping necessary food from him. Felons are not apt to lie down and die quietly for want of food. The jails are in large towns, where the news of any cruelty soon gets about. So that the felons have many circumstances in their favour. It is in the villages, the recluse villages, where the greatest cruelties are committed.

64. Here, then, in this contrast between the treatment of the WORKING FELON and that of the WORKING HONEST MAN, we have a complete picture of the present state of England; that horrible state, to which, by slow degrees, this once happy country has been brought; and, I should now proceed to show, as I proposed in the first paragraph of this present Number, HOW THERE CAME TO BE SO MUCH POVERTY AND MISERY IN ENGLAND; for, this is the main thing, it being clear, that, if we do not see the real causes of our misery, we shall be very unlikely to adopt any effectual remedy. But, before I enter on this part of my subject, let me prove, beyond all possibility of doubt, that what I say relatively to the situation of, and the allowances to, the labourers and their families, IS TRUE. The cause of such situation and allowances I shall show hereafter; but let me first show, by a reference to indubitable facts, that the situation and allowances are such as, or worse than, I have described them. To do this, no way seems to me to be so fair, so likely to be free from error, so likely to produce a suitable impression on the minds of my readers, and so likely to lead to some useful practical result; no way seems to me so well calculated to answer these purposes, as that of taking the very village, in which, I, at this moment, happen to be, and to describe, with names and dates, the actual state of its labouring people, as far as that state is connected with steps taken under the poor-laws.

65. This village was in former times a very considerable place, as is manifest from the size of the church as well as from various other circumstances. It is now, as a church living, united with an adjoining parish, called Vernon Dean, which also has its church, at a distance of about three miles from the church of this parish. Both parishes put together now contain only eleven hundred, and a few odd, inhabitants, men, women, children, and all; and yet, the great tithes are supposed to be worth two or three thousand pounds a year, and the small tithes about six hundred pounds a year. Formerly, before the event which is called “The Reformation,” there were two Roman Catholic priests living at the parsonage houses in these two parishes. They could not marry, and could, therefore have no wives and families to keep out of the tithes; and, WITH PART OF THOSE TITHES, THEY, AS THE LAW PROVIDED, MAINTAINED THE POOR OF THESE TWO PARISHES; and, the canons of the church commanded them to distribute the portion to the poor and the stranger, “with their own hands, in humility and mercy.”

66. This, as to church and poor, was the state of these villages, in the “dark ages” of “Romish superstition.” What! No poor-laws? No poor-rates? What horribly unenlightened times! No select vestries? Dark ages indeed! But, how stands these matters now? Why, the two parishes are moulded into one church living. Then the Great Tithes (amounting to two or three thousand a year) belong to some part of the Chapter (as they call it) of Salisbury. The Chapter leases them out, as they would a house or a farm, and they are now rented by John King, who is one of this happy nation’s greatest and oldest pensioners. So that, away go the great tithes, not leaving a single wheat-ear to be spent in the parish. The Small Tithes belong to a Vicar, who is one Fisher, a nephew of the late bishop of Salisbury, who has not resided here for a long while; and who has a curate, named John Gale, who being the son of a little farmer and shop-keeper at Burbage in Wiltshire, was, by a parson of the name of Bailey (very well known and remembered in these parts), put to school; and, in the fulness of time, became a curate. So that, away go also the small tithes (amounting to about 500l. or 600l. a year); and, out of the large church revenues; or, rather, large church-and-poor revenues, of these two parishes; out of the whole of them, there remains only the amount of the curate, Mr. John Gale’s, salary, which does not, perhaps, exceed seventy or a hundred pounds, and a part of which, at any rate, I dare say, he does not expend in these parishes: away goes, I say, all the rest of the small tithes, leaving not so much as a mess of milk or a dozen of eggs, much less a tithe-pig, to be consumed in the parish.

67. As to the poor, the parishes continue to be in two; so that I am to be considered as speaking of the parish of Uphusband only. You are aware, that, amongst the last of the acts of the famous Jubilee-Reign, was an act to enable parishes to establish SELECT VESTRIES; and one of these vestries now exists in this parish. And now, let me explain to you the nature and tendency of this Jubilee-Act. Before this Act was passed, overseers of the poor had full authority to grant relief at their discretion. Pray mark that. Then again, before this Act was passed, any one justice of the peace might, on complaint of any poor person, order relief. Mark that. A select vestry is to consist of the most considerable rate-payers. Mark that. Then, mark these things: this Jubilee-Act forbids the overseer to grant any relief other than such as shall be ordered by the select vestry: it forbids ONE justice to order relief, in any case, except in a case of emergency: it forbids MORE THAN ONE to order relief, except on oath that the complainant has applied to the select vestry (where there is one,) and has been refused relief by it; and that, in no case, the justice’s order shall be for more than a month; and, moreover, that when a poor person shall appeal to justices from a select vestry, the justices, in ordering relief, or refusing, shall have “regard to the conduct and CHARACTER of the applicant!”

68. From this Act, one would imagine, that overseers and justices were looked upon as being too soft and yielding a nature; too good, too charitable, too liberal to the poor! In order that the select vestry may have an agent suited to the purposes that the Act manifestly has in view, the Act authorizes the select vestry to appoint what is called an “assistant overseer,” and to give him a salary out of the poor-rates. Such is this Jubilee-Act, one of the last Acts of the Jubilee-reign, that reign, which gave birth to the American war, to Pitt, to Perceval, Ellenborough, Sidmouth, and Castlereagh, to a thousand millions of taxes and another thousand millions of debt: such is the Select Vestry Act; and this now little trifling village of Uphusband has a Select-Vestry! Aye, and an “Assistant Overseer,” too, with a salary of FIFTY POUNDS A YEAR, being, as you will presently see, about a SEVENTH PART OF THE WHOLE OF THE EXPENDITURE ON THE POOR!

69. The Overseers make out and cause to be printed and published, at the end of every four weeks, an account of the disbursements. I have one of these accounts now before me; and I insert it here, word for word, as follows:—

70. “The disbursements of Mr. T. Child and Mr. C. Church, bread at 1s. 2d. per gallon. Sept. 25th, 1826.

71. Under the head of “Widows” are, generally, old women wholly unable to work; and that of “Old Men” are men past all labour: in some of the instances lodging places, in very poor and wretched houses, are found these old people, and, in other instances, they have the bare money; and, observe, that money is FOR FOUR WEEKS! Gracious God! Have we had no mothers ourselves! Were we not born of woman! Shall we not feel then for the poor widow who, in her old age, is doomed to exist on two shillings a week, or threepence halfpenny a day, and to find herself clothes and washing and fuel and bedding out of that! And, the poor old men, the very happiest of whom gets, you see, less than 7d. a day, at the end of 70 or 80 years of a life, all but six of which have been years of labour! I have thought it right to put blanks instead of the names, under the second head. Men of less rigid morality, and less free from all illicit intercourse, than the members of the Select Vestry of Uphusband, would, instead of the word “bastard,” have used the more amiable one of “love-child;” and, it may not be wholly improper to ask these rigid moralists, whether they be aware, that they are guilty of LIBEL, aye, of real criminal libel, in causing these poor girls’ names to be printed and published in this way. Let them remember, that the greater the truth the greater the libel; and, let them remember, that the mothers and the children too, may have memories! But, it is under the head of “FAMILIES” that we see that which is most worthy of our attention. Observe, that eight shillings a week is the wages for a day labourer in the village. And, you see, it is only when there are more than four children that the family is allowed anything at all. “Levi Cook,” for instance, has five children, and he receives allowance for one child. “Joseph White” has eight children, and he receives allowance for four. There are three widows under this head; but, it is where there is a man, the father of the family, that we ought to look with attention; and here we find, that nothing at all is allowed to a family of a man, a wife, and four children, beyond the bare eight shillings a week of wages; and this is even worse than the allowance which I contrasted with that of the hospital patients and convicted felons; for there I supposed the family to consist of a man, his wife and three children. If I am told, that the farmers, that the occupiers of houses and land, are so poor that they cannot do more for their wretched work-people and neighbours; then I answer and say, What a selfish, what a dastardly wretch is he, who is not ready to do all he can to change this disgraceful, this horrible state of things!

72. But, at any rate, is the salary of the “Assistant Overseer” necessary? Cannot that be dispensed with? Must he have as much as all the widows, or all the old men? And his salary, together with the charge for printing and other his various expenses, will come to a great deal more than go to all the widows and old men too! Why not, then, do without him, and double the allowance to these poor old women, or poor old men, who have spent their strength in raising crops in the parish? I went to see with my own eyes some of the “parish houses,” as they are called; that is to say, the places where the select vestry put the poor people into to live. Never did my eyes before alight on such scenes of wretchedness! There was one place, about 18 feet long and 10 wide, in which I found the wife of Isaac Holden, which, when all were at home, had to contain nineteen persons; and into which, I solemnly declare, I would not put 19 pigs, even if well-bedded with straw. Another place was shown me by Job Waldron’s daughter; another by Thomas Carey’s wife. The bare ground, and that in holes too, was the floor in both these places. The windows broken, and the holes stuffed with rags, or covered with rotten bits of board. Great openings in the walls, parts of which were fallen down, and the places stopped with hurdles and straw. The thatch rotten, the chimneys leaning, the doors but bits of doors, the sleeping holes shocking both to sight and smell; and, indeed, every-thing seeming to say: “These are the abodes of wretchedness, which, to be believed possible, must be seen and felt: these are the abodes of the descendants of those amongst whom beef, pork, mutton and veal were the food of the poorer sort; to this are come, at last, the descendants of those common people of England, who, Fortescue tells us, were clothed throughout in good woollens, whose bedding, and other furniture in their houses, were of wool, and that in great store, and who were well provided with all sorts of household goods, every one having all things that conduce to make life easy and happy!”

73. I have now, my friends of Preston, amply proved, that what I have stated relative to the present state of, and allowances to, the labourers is TRUE. And now we are to do all we can to remove the evil; for, removed the evil must be, or England must be sunk for ages; and, never will the evil be removed, until its causes, remote as well as near, be all clearly ascertained. With my best wishes for the health and happiness of you all,

I remain,
Your faithful friend, and most obedient servant,
Wm. Cobbett.

THE END.

Footnotes:

[1] 4s. 6d. English, equal to one dollar.

[2] 2d. English, equal to four cents, nearly.

[3] The above items may be converted into United States’ money by reckoning 4s. 6d. to the dollar: Thus As 4s. 6d. : 1 dollar :: 11l. 7s. 2d. : 50 dollars 48 cents.

[4] To convert these sums into United States’ money, see page 16.

[5] All the calculations in this work, it must be remembered, are in English money but may be turned into United States’ money as before directed, page 16.

[6] Be sure, now, before you go any further, to go to the end of the book, and there read about Mangle Wurzle. Be sure to do this. And there read also about Cobbett’s Corn. Be sure to do this before you go any further.

[7] To me the following has happened within the last year. A young man, in the country, had agreed to be my servant; but it was found that he could not milk; and the bargain was set aside. About a month afterwards a young man, who said he was a farmer’s son, and who came from Herefordshire, offered himself to me at Kensington. “Can you milk?” He could not; but would learn! Ay, but in the learning, he might dry up my cows! What a shame to the parents of these young men! Both of them were in want of employment. The latter had come more than a hundred miles in search of work; and here he was left to hunger still, and to be exposed to all sorts of ills, because he could not milk.

[8] London

[9] The father of the present Sir Robert Peel, who gained his fortune as a cotton weaver by the help of machinery.

[10] Editors of the London Times Newspaper.

Transcriber’s Note:

Text with a dull underline indicates a correction. Hover the cursor over the underlined text, and the nature of the correction will appear. Other than the corrections noted by hover information, printer’s inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained.

Some quotation marks are not matched in the original. Obvious errors have been silently matched, while those requiring interpretation have been left unmatched.