CHAP. 1834. with the Irish agitators, if the clause, styled in common parlance "the Appropriation Clause," which put the surplus of Church property, after providing for religious purposes, at the disposal of Parliament, were omitted, as it was the object of the greatest anxiety and vehement demand on the part of the agitators. On 29th July the House went into committee on the Tithe Bill, already before the House; and after having been defeated by a large majority in an attempt to throw out the bill altogether, Mr O'Connell moved, as an amendment, that tithes, instead of being commuted into a rent-charge on land, should be instantly abated 40 per cent. "This," said he, "would be intelligible to the people of Ireland. Every man can understand the difference between twelve shillings and twenty shillings-and if adopted, my opposition shall cease, and the bill may pass in two sittings." This offer proved irresistible to a Government so recently shaken to its centre by this very Irish question. Deeply as the proposed clause trenched on the principle of the bill, and obviously as it admitted that of extinguishing Church property for temporal purposes, it was tacitly admitted by the new Government. Mr O'Connell's amendment was carried, against a very feeble and simulate opposition on their part, by a majority of 82 to 33; and such was the subsequent departure from the original bill, that Mr Lyttleton moved, amidst much laughter, the omission of seventy clauses "at one fell swoop ;" and when the bill at last passed, it consisted only of 111 Aug. 5. clauses, instead of 172, the original number. In this mutilated state it was read a third time without a division. But as the weakness of Ministers, in thus submitting to have a foreign bantling forced upon them instead of their own offspring, was now evident to all, and had Ann. Reg. gone far to discredit them, the House of Peers mustered 161; Parl. up courage to throw out the bill entirely, which was done 795, 1143. by a majority of 67, the numbers being 189 to 122.1 To Earl Grey's Administration belongs the credit of 1 1834, 151, Deb. xxiv. XXXI. 1834. 145. Amend CHAP. an important measure, which was only finally matured and passed under their successors, and which at the time excited a much greater interest and anxiety than its subPoor-Law sequent effects would appear to justify. This was the ment Bill. POOR-LAW AMENDMENT BILL, which, although not, like all those relating to Ireland, a party measure, yet excited the utmost interest in the country, from the magnitude of the interests involved in, and the persons affected by it, and the immensity of the burden which it was the object of the act to reduce. Numerous abuses had in process of time insensibly ingrafted themselves on the original wise and humane system introduced by the 43d Elizabeth; and they were the more serious, that they had arisen from benevolent feelings on the part of the legislature, or those intrusted with the administration of the laws, and had come by the people to be regarded as not the least valuable part of their birthright. In particular, the 36th Geo. III., c. 39, had established the principle, that the relief to paupers should be given in such a manner as to place them in a state of comfort. However desirable it might be to effect this, if practicable, by legislative enactment, the operation of the act was most serious in practice for as the poor were undoubtedly more comfortable in their own houses than they could ever be made in public workhouses, the practice became general of ordering the poor out-door relief, and of this being done by magistrates at a distance from the applicant, and often very little acquainted with the real circumstances of each particular case. From this had arisen another evil still more serious, which was the system of making up wages, as it was called, which consisted in the justices giving the applicant an order to get his wages made up to a certain amount, in proportion to the number of his family, from the parochial funds, if he could not earn so much by his own labour. Farmers, manufacturers, and all the employers of labourers, were not slow in taking advantage of this system to throw a considerable part of the wages of XXXI. 1834. their workmen, especially during winter, upon the parish; CHAP. and to such a length did this go, that in many of the counties, especially the agricultural ones in the south of England, nearly half of the entire sums paid annually for the wages of labour had come to be defrayed by the Progress of parishes, to the effect of entirely swallowing up the whole 87, 89. rental.1 1 Porter's the Nation, of the con the currency Serious as these evils were, they did not excite any 146. general attention as long as they were partial, or con- Vast effect fined chiefly to particular localities. But during the last traction of fifteen years another cause of general influence had come on this matinto operation, which had rendered the evils complained ter. of universal, and engendered a general feeling of the necessity of its removal. This was the contraction of the currency, the prolific parent of all the social and political changes which have taken place in Great Britain during the last thirty years, and the effects of which are far from being yet exhausted. The burden of the poor-rates between 1810 and 1818 was, on an average, an average, about £6,000,000 a-year; and in the last of these years it had attained its maximum amount before or since, having reached £7,870,000. Still no great complaints were heard, and no demand for a change arose; for the profits and remuneration of industry were in the same proportion. Wheat was, before 1819, at 83s. But by the alteration in the monetary laws introduced in 1819, this auspicious state of things was immediately changed. By the contraction of the currency by the law of that year, and by the bill of 1826 suppressing small notes, which came into full effect in 1829, prices were so far altered that the remuneration of industry was reduced fully a half. And such was the effect of this cause, coupled with the three fine harvests preceding 1834, that in that year the price of wheat fell to 39s. 8d., and in the next to 39s. 4d., being less than a half of what it had been when the change was introduced. Add to this, that from the terror inspired by the Reform agitation, the 1834. CHAP. flames of Nottingham and Bristol, employment of every XXXI. kind had sensibly declined, and the number of those thrown on the poor-rates by being deprived of bread had greatly increased. The effect of these two concurring causes was such, between the year 1829, when small notes finally disappeared from the circulation and the Reform agitation began, and the spring of 1834, that the burden. of the poor-rates in England and Wales, as measured by the number of quarters of wheat required to provide for them (the true measure, since they were paid exclusively by the land), had increased fourfold since 1800, and doubled since 1811, though the population in the same period had only advanced 45 per cent.* The effect of * The following Table, compiled by Mr Porter, puts the increasing weight of the poor-rates, from the change in the value of money since 1819, in a clear light : XXXI. 1834. this vast increase in the burden of the poor, contempo- CHAP. raneous with the reduction in the resources of those who were to pay it, was the same as always occur in the case of a great reduction of wages paid to workmen. Both employers and employed go sharply to work, and look closely into small sums, and numerous grievances are discovered and complained of which had passed unnoticed in previous and more prosperous times. 147. the Poor missioners recommend ing a change. So great was the clamour raised by these causes, that Earl Grey's Ministry, soon after their accession to office, Report of had appointed a committee to inquire into the operation Law Comand present state of the poor-laws; and they had made most extensive inquiries, and brought to light a great number of important facts, particularly illustrative of the extreme inequality of the burden of the poor-rates, not only in different counties, but in different parishes in the same county, and even in those immediately adjoining each other. The report was printed and extensively circulated; and such was the effect it produced, as well as the general sense of the necessity of the case, that Government, though perfectly aware of the difficulties with which the question was beset, and the violent resistance which any proposed change would meet with, resolved to grapple with it, and Lord Althorpe brought 1834, 222, forward the Poor-Laws Amendment Bill in the House ter, 89, 90. of Commons on the 17th April.1 1 Ann. Reg. 223; Por in support On the part of Government it was argued by Lord 148. Althorpe and Mr Lyttleton: "The necessity of inter- Argument ference arises from this, that the poor-laws, as at present of the bill. administered, tend directly to the destruction of all property in the country. Even to the labouring classes, whom they have been intended to benefit, nothing could be more fatal than to allow them to continue in their present course. It was the abuse of the system, however, not the system itself, which was to be condemned. These abuses were scarcely older than the commencement of the present century, when a feeling got abroad that |