A 
7 
3 
»f 
THE PROBLEMS OF POVERTY 577 
was to treat their poverty as a crime. The local adminis- AD Los 
tration was carried on in the same spirit, for every overseer 
seemed to regard it as his primary duty to keep down the 
rates at all hazards’. The policy proved successful in its but at the 
main object, though at what expense of suffering we shall pg 
never know. Under the influence of the workhouse test and *# 4. 
the harshness of overseers the sums expended in poor relief 
diminished from £819,000 in 16982 to about £689,000 in 1750. 
The last half of the eighteenth century saw the begin- 
ning of a reaction against this stringent administration of 
poor relief; the change was not merely due to the ebb 
and flow of sentiment, but was to some extent Justified by 
intelligent consideration of the causes of pauperism. If it Since some 
had been true to say that all poverty was due to the fault of a 
the distressed and his idleness, there would have been some Hoy no 
excuse for insisting that the poor should be treated harshly. Lib 
But as Joseph Massie showed most clearly, distress did not ’ 
always arise from the fault of the sufferers, but sometimes 
from their misfortune. He pointed out that the tendency 
of the new development of manufactures?®, as well as the effect; 
of enclosure on the tenantry, was to divorce the poor man 
from the soil, and to expose him to risks from all the un- 
certainties of business. “Many People are reduced to that 
pitiable Way of Life, by Want of Employment, Sickness or 
some other Accident; and the Reluctance, or ill Success, 
with which such unfortunate People do practise begging, 
is frequently manifested by a poor and emaciated Man or 
Woman being found drowned or starved to Death, so that 
though Choice, Idleness, or Drunkenness may be reasons 
why a number of people are Beggars, yet this Drowning, 
and perishing for Want, are sad Proofs that the general 
cause is Necessity. And if any person thinks those Proofs 
are insufficient, the great Numbers of Thieves, and Pick- 
pockets which daily infest this metropolis, will put the 
Matter beyond all Doubt; for their not being Beggars 
1 See below, p. 768. 
1 Bee above, p. 562 n. 4, and 571, also 608 and 638 below. 
# Samuel Richardson in his additions to Defoe’s Tour notes the heavy poor 
rates at Bocking in Essex in consequence of the decay of manufactures (1742), 
I. 118. See above, 562 n. 4.