第34章 SOCIAL PROBLEMS(4)

and one main purpose of his publication was to point out the objections to the plan.He desires what seemed at that time to be almost hopeless,a national system of education;but his main doctrine is the wisdom of reliance upon individual effort.The truth of the maxim 'pas trop gouverner,'he says,(21)has never been better illustrated than by the contrast between friendly societies and the poor-laws.Friendly societies had been known,though they were still on a humble scale,from the beginning of the century,and had tended to diminish pauperism in spite of the poor-laws.Eden gives many accounts of them.They seem to have suggested a scheme proposed by the worthy Francis Maseres1(1731-1824)in 1772for the establishment of life annuities.A bill to give effect to this scheme passed the House of Commons in 1773with the support of Burke and Savile,but was thrown out in the House of Lords.In 1786John Acland (died 1796),a Devonshire clergyman and justice of the peace,proposed a scheme for uniting the whole nation into a kind of friendly society for the support of the poor when out of work and in old age.It was criticised by John Howlett (1731-1804),a clergyman who wrote much upon the poor-laws.

He attributes the growth of pauperism to the rise of prices,and calculates that out of an increased expenditure of £700,000,£219,000had been raised by the rich,and the remainder 'squeezed out of the flesh,blood,and bones of the poor.'An act for establishing Acland's crude scheme failed next year in parliament.(22)The merit of the societies,according to Eden,was their tendency to stimulate self-help;and how to preserve that merit,while making them compulsory,was a difficult problem.I have said enough to mark a critical and characteristic change of opinion.One source of evil pointed out by contemporaries had been the absence of any central power which could regulate and systematise the action of the petty local bodies.The very possibility of such organisation,however,seems to have been simply inconceivable.When the local bodies became lavish instead of over-frugal,the one remedy suggested was to abolish the system altogether.

II.THE POLICE

The system of 'self-government'showed its weak side in this direction.

It meant that an important function was intrusted to small bodies,quite incompetent of acting upon general principles,and perfectly capable of petty jobbing,when unrestrained by any effective supervision.In another direction the same tendency was even more strikingly illustrated.Municipal institutions were almost at their lowest point of decay.Manchester and Birmingham were two of the largest and most rapidly growing towns.By the end of the century Manchester had a population of 90,000and Birmingham of 70,000.Both were ruled,as far as they were ruled,by the remnants of old manorial institutions.

Aikin(23)observes that 'Manchester (in 1795)remains an open town;destitute (probably to its advantage)of a corporation,and unrepresented in parliament.'

It was governed by a 'borough-reeve'and two constables elected annually at the court-leet.William Hutton,the quaint historian of Birmingham,tells us in 1783that the town was still legally a village,with a high and low bailiff,a 'high and low taster,'two 'affeerers,'and two 'leather-sealers.'

In 1752it had been provided with a 'court of requests',for the recovery of small debts,and in 1769with a body of commissioners to provide for lighting the town.This was the system by which,with some modifications,Birmingham was governed till after the Reform Bill.(24)Hutton boasts(25)that no town was better governed or had fewer officers.'A town without a charter,'he says,'is a town without a shackle.'Perhaps he changed his opinions when his warehouses were burnt in 1791,and the town was at the mercy of the mob till a regiment of 'light horse'could be called in.Aikin and Hutton,however,reflect the general opinion at a time when the town corporations had become close and corrupt bodies,and were chiefly 'shackles'upon the energy of active members of the community.I must leave the explanation of this decay to historians.I will only observe that what would need explanation would seem to be rather the absence than the presence of corruption.The English borough was not stimulated by any pressure from a central government;nor was it a semi-independent body in which every citizen had the strongest motives for combining to support its independence against neighbouring towns or invading nobles.The lower classes were ignorant,and probably would be rather hostile than favourable to any such modest interference with dirt and disorder as would commend themselves to the officials.Naturally,power was left to the little cliques of prosperous tradesmen,who formed close corporations,and spent the revenues upon feasts or squandered them by corrupt practices.Here,as in the poor-law,the insufficiency of the administrative body suggests to contemporaries,not its reform,but its superfluity.

The most striking account of some of the natural results is in Colquhoun's(26)Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis.Patrick Colquhoun (1745-1820),an energetic Scot,was born at Dumbarton in 1745,had been in business at Glasgow,where he was provost in 1782and 1783,and in 1789settled in London.

In 1792he obtained through Dundas an appointment to one of the new police magistracies created by an act of that year.He took an active part in many schemes of social reform;and his book gives an account of the investigations by which his schemes were suggested and justified.It must be said,however,parenthetically,that his statistics scarcely challenge implicit confidence.

Like Sinclair and Eden,he saw the importance of obtaining facts and figures,but his statements are suspiciously precise and elaborate.(27)The broad facts are clear enough.