ABSTRACT
Poverty was the central social issue at the beginning of the period. At the same time as the industrial revolution was providing new jobs, largely in the north of England, a rapidly rising population resulted in growing structural underemployment in the rural sector of the economy. This brought lower wages, longer periods of unemployment or underemployment and much misery to agricultural labourers, particularly in the south. The natural resort of distressed Englishmen was to the old poor law. As poverty increased, poor law expenditure rose dramatically, from about £2,000,000 in 1784 to £7,871,000 at its pre-reform peak in 1817. Under such pressure, the viability of the old system of poor relief was called in question. Influenced by the view of Rev. Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) that increasing population pressure would destroy the delicate balance between people and available food supplies, resulting in famine and death, the political economists began their attack. They concentrated on the apparent wastefulness of expedients such as cash allowances to supplement inadequate wages – the Speenhamland system – which had been introduced into many southern counties during the food crises of 1793–1815. The main burden of their charge was that the old poor law encouraged both procreation and idleness, thus exacerbating the problem it was designed to alleviate. In particular, as David Ricardo (1772–1823) argued, it interfered with the sacred laws of supply and demand, and opened up the horrendous prospect of massively increased public expenditure to no practical purpose (4a).
