ABSTRACT
FACTORY legislation was by no means the earliest exampleof the tendency of the modern state to interfere onbehalf of the economically weaker classes of society. Since the period of the Reformation, most of the great European states had definitely accepted the principle that the destitute poor had a legal claim on society for support, and in the compulsory systems of poor relief established throughout Europe in the sixteenth century we have the first notable illustrations of State intervention with a social purpose. The sixteenth century was an era of new departures-in social legislation no less than in religion and politics. During the Middle Ages the alms distributed by the Church and the charity of private persons enabled society satisfactorily to discharge its obligations to its poorer members. But the break-up of the medieval economic system, the destruction of the older forms of village life, the expansion of commerce and industry, and the victory of freedom of enterprise over custom and prescription, all combined to create a mass of pauperism with which private agencies could no longer cope. In Protestant countries the problem was complicated by the disendowment of the ancient Church, which removed the principal source of charitable relief, and left the State with no alternative but to accept itself complete responsibility for the care of the destitute. Even in the countries which rejected the Reformation and where the old Church continued to discharge its charitable functions, the unprecedented growth of pauperism compelled the State to assume new obligations. Thus in Catholic and Protestant countries alike, the sixteenth century witnessed the development of State systems of poor relief. But in Catholic countries the survival of the charitable institutions controlled by the Church enabled the State to evade complete responsibility for the destitute and to establish a system of poor relief which was semi-private in character, the care of the poor being left very largely to voluntary agencies. No such course was open to the governments of
25 Protestant countries. In England, as early as 1601, the law explicitly recognized the right of every destitute person to receive relief from the public authorities. In France no such right was recognized until 1893, prior to which date rigid individualists could comfort themselves with the reflection that in at least one European state the semi-socialist principles implicit in every compulsory system of poor relief had never received public recognition. This broad distinction between the poor laws of Protestant and Catholic countries is an interesting illustration of the influence which the Reformation has exercised on the social development of the European nations.
