ANTI-PAUPERISM 765 injurious to the chances of the non-pauper in securing employ- 4-D. 1776 ment was the labour-rate. By this system a ratepayer was ’ obliged to employ a certain number of pauper labourers in accordance with his assessment; and to pay them regulated wages without reference to their work’. An employer might thus be forced to dismiss good hands in order to give employ- ment to inefficient paupers. But by far the most common and . . rants: form of relief was the granting of money allowances to oarnes supplement wages according to a definite scale? though the practice of different counties was dissimilar, and some had hardly adopted it at all>. The granting of allowances per child has been freely stigmatised as a mischievous stimulus to population*; as a matter of fact it was much worse; there is some evidence to show that it acted as a direct 1 Reports, etc., 1834, xxvix. 108. 2 The calculations for the original Berkhampstead scale have been preserved by Eden, The State of the Poor, 1. 577. The Cambridge scale issued by the magis- trates for the town of Cambridge on 27 November, 1829, was as follows— “The Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor are requested to regulate the {incomes of such persons as may apply to them for relief or employment, according to the price of fine bread, namely, ¢ A gingle woman, the price of ¥ P . 8% quartern loaves per week. A single man ” . 43 ’ » “ A man and his wife ,, » “ . . 8 ” » and one child the price of . 93 BH » and two children " +1 ” ” » and three ” ” .13 1 ” “Man, wife, four children and apwards at the price of 24 quartern loaves per head per week. “Tt will be necessary to add to the above income in all cases of sickness or other kind of distress; and particularly of such persons or families who deserve encouragement by their good behaviour, whom parish officers should mark both by commendation and reward.” Reports, etc., XXVII. 13. # In Northumberland, Cumberland, Lincolnshire, and parts of Worcestershire and Staffordshire, there was very little ground for complaint; in Suffolk, Sussex, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorsetshire and Wiltshire, things were at their worst. There was a serious difference in the rates of wages, and amount of relief allowed in the Wigan and in the Oldham districts of Lancashire. Report from the Select Committee on Labourers’ Wages, 1824, v1. 405. 4 « A gurplus population is encouraged; men who receive but a small pittance know that they have only to marry, and that pittance will be augmented in pro- portion to the number of their children. Hence the supply of labour is by no means regulated by the demand, and parishes are burdened with thirty, forty, and fifty labourers, for whom they can find no employment, and who serve to depress the situation of all their fellow-labourers in the same parish. An intelligent witness, who is much in the habit of employing labourers, states that, when complaining of their allowance, they frequently say to him, ‘ We will marry, and you must maintain us’.” Report from Select Committee om Labourers’ Wages, 1824. vi. 404. .