Appendix: Spencer's article of 1836 on the Poor Law

Summary

SIR – In the last number of the Bath Magazine, I see an article from you, advocating the late system of Poor Laws. Being one of those who think that the “Poor Laws are bad in principle, and that they have in their effects operated most injuriously,” I am desirous of making a few observations on your letter. – You say that the poor have a right to a maintenance out of the land. Who gave them that right? and where does nature declare, that “the earth was made productive for the support of all its inhabitants,” without those inhabitants using the proper means for obtaining the produce? But, waiving the question of right, there is that natural tendency in human nature to lean upon any support that may be afforded, and that tendency in such support to corrupt and unhinge the mind, that even on this account alone, the Poor Laws ought to be considered as injurious. Your supposition that one person might “amass in his own possession all the means of subsistence that the earth has produced in that part of the country where he dwells,” to the starvation of the rest, is an impossibility, since every person who has accumulated much property, must employ and pay labourers and shop-keepers, who therefore cannot starve. The whole tenor of your argument implies, also, that a person is not to be allowed to raise himself by his own exertions.