a4. 
LAISSEZ FAIRE 
arrangements for securing employment to the poor; this was 
sometimes done by a parish when paupers were employed on 
by pro- : 
zo (ding rs the maintenance of roads!, or even on the work of a small 
D TREN 
farm taken for the purpose? In other cases the paupers 
were roundsmen set to work by private persons, but partly at 
the parish expense®, Another practice which was specially 
Dolgelly stated that there were many apartments and small houses in the town 
not worth to let £1 a year, for which, in consequence of parochial interference 
with rents, from £1. 14s. to £2 was paid: and the clerk to the Directors of 
Montgomery House of Industry mentioned an instance of a person in his neigh- 
bourhood who obtained 10 cottages from the land owner at a yearly rent of £18, 
and re-let them separately for £50; eight of his tenants were parish paupers. 
“This species of property being thus a source of profitable investment, 
speculation, to a considerable extent, has taken that direction.” 
1 The pauper labour was so unprofitable that this practice was being dis- 
sontinued in 1834. ‘The superintendent of pauper labourers has to ascertain, 
not what is an average day's work, or what is the market price of a given service, 
but what is a fair day's work for a given individual, his strength and habits 
considered, at what rate of pay for that work, the number of his family con. 
sidered, he would be able to earn the sum necessary for his and their subsistence; 
and lastly, whether he has in fact performed the amount which, after taking all 
these elements into calculation, it appears that he ought to have performed. It 
will easily be anticipated that this superintendence is very rarely given; and that 
in far the greater number of the cases in which work is professedly required from 
paupers, in fact no work is done. In the second place, collecting the paupers in 
gangs for the performance of parish work is found to be more immediately in- 
jurious to their conduct than even allowance or relief without requiring work. 
Whatever be the general character of the parish labourers, all the worst of the 
inhabitants are sure to be among the number ; and it is well known that the effect 
of such an association is always to degrade the good, not to elevate the bad. It 
was among these gangs, who had scarcely any other employment or amusement 
han to collect in groups and talk over their grievances, that the riots of 1830 
appear to have originated” (Report, 1834, xxvir. p. 21). At Eastbourne, where 
the pauper labourer received sixteen shillings and the independent workman was 
only paid twelve, no wonder that two women there should complain of the conduct 
of their husbands in refusing to better their condition by becoming paupers. Ib. p. 23. 
2 See, in regard to the farm of the incorporated parishes in the Isle of Wight, 
Report, xxviI. 23 ; also for cases in East Anglia, App. A, pt. 1. 346. 
8 «The Parish in general makes some agreement with a farmer to sell to 
him the labour of one or more paunpers at a certain price, and pays to the pauper, 
out of the parish funds, the difference between that price and the allowance which 
the scale, according to the price of bread and the number of his family, awards to 
aim. In many places the roundsman system is effected by means of an auction. 
Mr Richardson states that in Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, the old and infirm are 
sold at the monthly meeting to the best bidder, at prices varying, according to the 
iime of the year, from 1s. 6d. a week to 3s.; that at Yardley, Hastings, all the 
anemployed men are put up to sale weekly, and that the clergyman of the parish 
told him that he had seen ten men the last week kmocked down to one of the 
farmers for 5s., and that there were at that time about 70 men let out in this 
manner out of a body of 170.” Report, 1834, xxvix. p. 19.