There appears upon the scene for the first time the isolated individual,a figure unknown to medieval society,but who constitutes so striking a phenomenon in the modern world.And hence springs up a new relation between the State and the individual.Since the latter is no longer a member of a compact group,the State itself has to enter into direct connection with him.Thus,by the growth at once of freedom and of poverty,the whole status of the working classes had been changed,and the problem of modern legislation came to be this:to discover how we can have a working class of free men,who shall yet find it easy to obtain sustenance;in other words,how to combine political and material freedom.
All the principles of our modern Poor Laws are found in the next Statute we have to notice,the great law of the 43rd year of Elizabeth,which drew the sharp distinction,ever since preserved,between the able-bodied and the impotent poor.The latter were to be relieved by a compulsory rate collected by the overseers,the former were to be set to work upon materials provided out of the rates;children and orphans were to be apprenticed.From this date 1601,there were no fundamental changes in the law till the end of the eighteenth century.The law of settlement,however,which sprang directly out of the Act of Elizabeth,was added;it was the first attempt to prevent the migration of labourers by other means than punishment.It began with the Statute of 1662,which allowed a pauper to obtain relief only from that parish where he had his settlement,and defined settlement as forty days'residence without interruption;but after this Statute there were constant changes in the law,leading to endless complications;and more litigation took place on this question of settlement than on any other point of the Poor Law.It was not till 1795that the hardship of former enactments was mitigated by an Act under which no new settler could be removed until he became actually chargeable to the parish.
Two other modifications of the Act of Elizabeth require to be noticed.In 1691the administration of relief was partially taken out of the hands of the overseers and given to the Justices of the Peace,the alleged reason being that the overseers had abused their power.Henceforth they were not allowed to relieve except by order of a Justice of the Peace,and this provision was construed into a power conferred upon the Justices to give relief independently of any application on the part of the overseers,and led,in fact,to Justices ordering relief at their own discretion.The other important change in the Poor Law was the introduction of the workhouse test in 1722.It is clear that pauperism had grown since the reign of Charles II.There are many pamphlets of the period full of suggestions as to a remedy,but the only successful idea was this of the workhouse test.Parishes were now empowered to unite and build a workhouse,and refuse relief to all who would not enter it;but the clauses for building workhouses remained inoperative,as very few parishes would adopt them.
The question remains to be asked:Why was pauperism still slowly increasing in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in spite of a rise in wages,and,during the first half of the eighteenth century,a low price of corn?Enclosures and the consolidation of farms,though as yet these had been on a comparatively small scale,were partly responsible for it,as they were in an earlier century.Already,in 1727,it was said that some owners were much too eager to evict farmers and cottagers,and were punished by an increase of rates consequent on the evicted tenants sinking into pauperism.By Eden's time the practice of eviction had become general,and the connection between eviction and pauperism is an indisputable fact,though it has been overlooked by most writers.Eden's evidence again shows that pauperism was greatest where enclosures had taken place.At Winslow,for instance,enclosed in 1744and 1766,'the rise of the rates was chiefly ascribed to the enclosure of the common fields,which,it was said,had lessened the number of farms,and from the conversion of arable into pasture had much reduced the demand for labourers.'Again,at Kilworth-Beauchamp in Leicestershire,'the fields being now in pasturage,the farmers had little occasion for labourers,and the poor being thereby thrown out of employment had,of course,to be supported by the parish.'Here too the evil was aggravated by the fate of the ejected farmers,who sank into the condition of labourers,and swelled the numbers of the unemployed.'Living in a state of servile dependence on the large farmers,and having no prospect to which their hopes could reasonably look forward,their industry was checked,economy was deprived of its greatest stimulation,and their only thought was to enjoy the present moment.'Again,at Blandford,where the same consolidation of farms had been going on,Eden remarks that 'its effects,it is said,oblige small industrious farmers to turn labourers or servants,who,seeing no opening towards advancement,become regardless of futurity,spend their little wages as they receive them without reserving a pension for their old age;and,if incapacitated from working by a sickness which lasts a very short time,inevitably fall upon the parish.'
