Note (return) — Chapter V

Compare for instance the methods of the present Commission on the Poor Law with those of the celebrated and extraordinarily able Commission which drew up the new Poor Law in 1833-34. The argument of the earlier Commissioners' Report runs on lines which it would be easy to put in a priori syllogistic form. All men seek pleasure and avoid pain. Society ought to secure that pain attaches to anti-social, and pleasure to social conduct. This may be done by making every man's livelihood and that of his children normally dependent upon his own exertions, by separating those destitute persons who cannot do work useful to the community from those who can, and by presenting these last with the alternative of voluntary effort or painful restriction. This leads to 'a principle which we find universally admitted, even by those whose practice is at variance with it, that the situation [of the pauper] on the whole shall not be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class.'[46] The a priori argument is admirably illustrated by instances, reported by the sub-commissioners or given in evidence before the Commission, indicating that labouring men will not exert themselves unless they are offered the alternative of starvation or rigorous confinement, though no attempt is made to estimate the proportion of the working population of England whose character and conduct is represented by each instance.