Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
Mr. Southey does not bring forward a single fact in support of these
views; and, as it seems to us, there are facts which lead to a very
different conclusion. In the first place, the poor-rate is very
decidedly lower in the manufacturing than in the agricultural districts.
If Mr. Southey will look over the Parliamentary returns on this subject,
he will find that the amount of parochial relief required by the
labourers in the different counties of England is almost exactly in
inverse proportion to the degree in which the manufacturing system has
been introduced into those counties. The returns for the years ending in
March 1825, and in March 1828, are now before us. In the former year we
find the poor-rate highest in Sussex, about twenty shillings to every
inhabitant. Then come Buckinghamshire, Essex, Suffolk, Bedfordshire,
Huntingdonshire, Kent, and Norfolk. In all these the rate is above
fifteen shillings a head. We will not go through the whole. Even in
Westmoreland and the North Riding of Yorkshire, the rate is at more than
eight shillings. In Cumberland and Monmouthshire, the most fortunate of
all the agricultural districts, it is at six shillings. But in the West
Riding of Yorkshire, it is as low as five shillings; and when we come
to Lancashire, we find it at four shillings, one-fifth of what it is in
Sussex. The returns of the year ending in March 1828 are a little,
and but a little, more unfavourable to the manufacturing districts.
Lancashire, even in that season of distress, required a smaller
poor-rate than any other district, and little more than one-fourth of
the poor-rate raised in Sussex. Cumberland alone, of the agricultural
districts, was as well off as the West Riding of Yorkshire. These facts
seem to indicate that the manufacturer is both in a more comfortable and
in a less dependent situation than the agricultural labourer.
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