Statement of the Provision for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes in a Considerable Portion of America and Europe: Being the preface to the foreign communications contained in the appendix to the Poor-Law ReportSenior, Nassau William
History
Statement of the Provision for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes in a Considerable Portion of America and Europe: Being the preface to the foreign communications contained in the appendix to the Poor-Law Report
Senior, Nassau William
Poor -- Europe; Poor -- United States; Working class
And as a general rule, a pauper who requests admission without any
authority from his commune, may be received; but in that case his
commune is to be immediately informed of what has occurred. If it
offers to support him at home, he is to be sent back to it: if it
refuses, he is to remain in the depôt at the expense of the commune:
and the communes are to be informed that it depends on themselves to
diminish the expense of supporting their poor in the depôts, by the
judicious distribution of out-door relief, by the organization of
committees for the purpose of watching over the indigent, and inquiring
into the causes of their distress; by the erection of asylums for
lunatics, the deaf and dumb, the blind and the incurable; and by the
establishment of houses of employment (d’ateliers libres de travail) in
winter, and infant schools. For all which purposes they are recommended
to assess themselves. M. Lebeau says in his report, “Enfin chez, nous
nul ne peut exiger de secours en vertu d’un droit.”[14] (p. 594.) But
it must be admitted that these provisions, if not constituting a right
in the pauper to relief, give at least a right to the managers of the
depôts to force the parishes to relieve, either at home or in the
depôt, any pauper who presents himself: and M. Lebeau himself felt
the danger to which the parishes are exposed. In his circular of the
13th September, 1833, addressed to the provinces in which depôts are
established, he urges the importance of adopting regulations respecting
the reception and dismission of the poor voluntarily presenting
themselves, which may preserve parishes from “the indefinite burden
which would follow the too easy admission of applicants.” “These
establishments,” he adds, “must not be considered by the poor as places
of gratuitous entertainment, (des hôtelleries gratuites.) One of the
best methods of preventing this will be the strict execution of the law
which prescribes work to all those who are not physically incapable
of it; and for those who are incapable, the ordinary hospices and
hospitals are the proper receptacles. It is true that in some depôts
work has been discontinued, because the results did not repay the
expenditure; but this consideration ought not to prevail over the moral
advantages which follow its exaction. Labour is the essential condition
which must be imposed on the pauper; and if it require the sacrifice of
some expenditure, that sacrifice must be made.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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