First Memoir on Pauperism, Second Part, Post 3

As time passed, England grew more and more committed to the acceptance of the principle of government charity.  Pauperism grew more quickly in Great Britain than anywhere else.  General causes and others specific to this country produced this sad result.  The English had outstripped the other nations of Europe in civilized life; all the reflections I previously made apply particularly well to them, but there are others that are peculiar to them alone.

The industrial class of England did not only provide for the needs and wants of the English people, but for a large part of humanity.  Her well being or misery did not only depend on what happened in Great Briten, but in a way everything that happened under the sun affected her.  When a resident of the Indies reduces his expenses and limits his consumption, some English manufacturer will suffer.  England, then, is the country where the farmer is most strongly attracted to industrial work and also finds himself most exposed to the vicissitudes of fortune.

After a century, an event that could be considered a phenomenon happened in England, if one compares it with the situation in the rest of the world.  For 100 years, land ownership divided unceasingly in all known countries; in England, it agglomerated unceasingly.  Medium-sized estates disappeared into vast domains, large scale agriculture displaced small farms.  The explanations for this perhaps would not fail to be of interest, but they would lead me far from my subject: the fact is enough, it is constant.  The result is that, while the farmer is solicited by his own interests to leave the plow and go into factory work, he is, in a way, pushed despite himself to do it by the agglomeration of real estate.  It takes proportionally a lot fewer workers to cultivate a large estate than small fields.  He lacks land, and industry calls.  This double movement carries him along.  Of 25 million people who live in Great Britain, only 9 million are agricultural workers; 14 million, or nearly two thirds follow their perilous opportunities in commerce and industry*.  Pauperism therefore has had to increase faster in England than in other countries whose level of civilization was equal to that of the English.  Enlgand, having admitted the principle of government charity, could not leave it.  Thus, English poor laws have reflected, for 200 years, a long development of the Elizabethan laws.

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* In France, the industrial class is yet only 1/4 of the population.