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Poverty, Savings Banks and the Development of Self-Help, C. 1775-1834

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Poverty, Savings Banks and the Development of Self-Help, C. 1775-1834 View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Apollo Poverty, savings banks and the development of self-help, c. 1775-1834 By David Filtness, Queens’ College, University of Cambridge This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 Poverty, savings banks and the development of self-help, c. 1775-1834 By David Filtness, Queens’ College, University of Cambridge Summary This thesis examines the development of self-help as an ideology and as an organisational principle for poor relief and how it came to dominate discussions over poverty and crucially inform the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The continuity of self-help with earlier discussions and reviews of the poor laws is explored and emphasised, as is the continuing moral core of poor relief despite historians’ frequent ascription of de-moralisation to the new political economy that came to heavily influence poor law discourse. The thesis analyses the evolution of the poor laws and of attitudes to poverty and begins with an examination of a divergence in the discourse relating to poverty between a more formal and centralised institutional approach and a more devolved, permissive institutional approach; the latter gained precedence due to its closer proximity to a dominant mode of thinking (as analysed by A. W. Coats) about the poor that held self-betterment as offering a solution to poverty most appropriate to the governance structures of the day. The greater role given to self-betterment and the natural affinity of more devolved schemes with a macroeconomic political economy framework pushed the evolution of poor law discourse along a route of emphasising individual probity and agency over the established model of community cohesion. Parallel to this divergence was the development of distinct intellectual traditions within poor law discourse between the older natural-law tradition of a natural right to subsistence and a new ideology of the natural law of markets and of competition for resources. By analysis of the thought of writers such as Thomas Robert Malthus, Jeremy Bentham, Patrick Colquhoun, David Davies, Frederick Morton Eden, Edmund Burke, etc., it is shown that this newer conception of natural law, encompassing a less interventionist and more macroeconomic approach (involving the deployment of statistics and abstraction, as explored by S. Sherman), proved more compatible with the devolved, more permissive institutional approach and so came to take precedence over that of the natural right to subsistence, which was associated more with traditional paternalism and community-level responses to scarcity and poverty. The natural law tradition spoke more to the abstract conceptions of poverty associated at this time with the greater deployment of statistics and tables in the analysis of social problems. It is demonstrated how writers of the period utilised utilitarian conceptions and nascent political economic arguments to portray the greater good of the country as a whole as possessed of greater moral and economic authority than more traditional ‘moral economy’ responses, and that vocabularies of virtue and duty were used to illustrate and justify such a shift. This set the scene for self-betterment as an economic strategy to evolve into an ideology of self-help which was developed as the panacea of poverty and the answer to the social dislocations caused by industrialisation. Self-help came to the fore as an approach that was more politically resonant in the era of revolutionary France and which enabled a more permissive institutional apparatus to be advanced. These institutions, such as allotments, savings banks and schools of industry, came to prominence in the period 1816-1820 and pertained more to macroeconomic understandings of poverty. They were expounded using a theme, that of ‘character’, that described poverty as the result of personal 2 imprudence and hence as treatable, the most appropriate level for this treatment being that of the individual. The reforms of 1818-19 and the debates that informed them are given an extended analysis as they formed the crucial juncture in the cohering of self-help as an ideology and a paradigmatic shift in poor law policy towards greater discrimination underwritten by self-help. Finally, the 1834 Poor law Reform Act is explained in terms of the ideological development of arguments of self-help and character towards a more punitive and disciplinarian platform for enforcing self-help, with the cost-efficient and systematic institutional approach of Bentham adapted to the purpose. 3 Preface This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted or will be submitting for a degree or diploma or other qualification at any other University. I wish to record my thanks to Dr Craig Muldrew, who has provided support, encouragement and excellent advice during the research and writing of this dissertation, and to all those at the History Faculty of the University of Cambridge and the Economic and Social Research Council, without whose support and funding this dissertation would not have been produced. I would also wish to express my gratitude to all those at Queens’ College, Cambridge for all their support and help during the research and writing process. This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, for their unwavering support, and secondly to Hayley Sae Kang, to Chihiro Watanabe and to James Brown for all their encouragement, and to my nephew Oscar – sorry there is not more material in it about anthropomorphic trains! Statement of word length: This dissertation does not exceed the University of Cambridge Faculty of History stipulated word limit for a PhD dissertation of 80,000 words. Signed: __________________________ DAVID FILTNESS DATE: 4 CONTENTS Introduction p. 6 Chapter 1: Intellectual tensions in the Poor laws p. 33 Chapter 2: The Natural Law Reformers: Self-responsibility, Virtue and Abolition p. 48 Chapter 3: Malthus p. 89 Chapter 4: The Institutions of Self-Help p. 130 Potatoes and Allotments p. 133 Savings Banks p. 144 Education and Schools of Industry p. 164 Character and Discrimination p. 185 The reform agenda of 1817 p. 193 ‘New Paternalism’ p. 203 Chapter 5: Concluding Remarks p. 207 The 1834 Poor Law reforms p. 207 Ideology and Governmentality p. 213 Bibliography p. 219 5 Poverty, savings banks and the development of self-help, c. 1775-1834 Introduction At some given period…it would be reasonable and just to treat such as become chargeable from neglecting or refusing to contribute towards their support as ‘culpable poor’. In proportion as the morals and sentiments of the labouring classes were improved and enlightened, so would the fear of disgrace operate as a punishment; and there would be, were the plan of benefit societies generally established, a fair criterion to distinguish between the meritorious and culpable poor, which does not at present exist, and which thereby renders the existing laws on that head nugatory.1 The issue of self-help is one that has captured the modern imagination. Redolent of more modern political creeds such as Thatcherism and conservative austerity rhetoric, it is perhaps principally recognised as one of the era-defining ideas of the Nineteenth Century, quintessentially Victorian with its laissez-faire overtones and replete with connotations of urban slums and associational culture. The classic text of the Victorian period on this theme is Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help, with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), a didactic work designed to encourage ordinary working men to help themselves and, in the process, to improve society. Smiles (1802-1904), a biographer and writer, had been editor of the radical Leeds Times 1838-42 and first secretary of the Leeds Household Suffrage Association. A keen exponent of radical politics at this point in his life he nevertheless remained cautious of Chartism and came to see individual improvement as more important than structural change as the surest means of social progress. Self-Help was based on one (in March 1845) of a series of lectures delivered to a mutual improvement society in Leeds, with significant changes to reflect the calmer and more optimistic political mood of the 1850s. The book sold 20,000 copies in its first year, prompting Smiles to develop his ideas in subsequent texts such as Character (1871), Thrift (1875), Duty (1880) and Life and Labour (1887).2 For Smiles, self-help developed ‘character’, the attainment and deployment of a variety of desirable traits such as thrift, independence and self-reliance, which would enable workingmen to improve their own condition. This collective of individuated endeavour would in turn lead to societal development and progress 1 J. C. Curwen, Hints on the economy of feeding stock and bettering the condition of the poor (London, 1808), pp. 362-3. 2 For biographical detail on Smiles, see the entry by H. C. G. Matthew in the Oxford dictionary of national biography. For the development of his politics and its influence on his thinking see A. Tyrrell, “Class consciousness in early Victorian Britain: Samuel Smiles, Leeds politics, and the self-help creed”, Journal of British Studies Vol. 9, No. 2 (May, 1970), pp. 102-125. 6 for character was “the true antiseptic of society” and the most promising and inclusive response to social and industrial change.3 As Smiles
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