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Tories and Paupers: Christian Political Economy and the Making of the New Poor Law*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Peter Mandler
Peter Mandler
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Everyone knows that Edwin Chadwick wrote the New Poor Law; or, rather, that he wrote the report – issued in 1834 by the royal commission appointed two years earlier to inquire into the poor laws – which formed the basis for the New Poor Law. The well-informed among us might add the name of the political economist Nassau Senior as Chadwick's co-author. But few would be able to supply any of the further seven names which stood with Chadwick's and Senior's as co-signatories to the report. These seven royal commissioners were Bishop Blomfield of London, Bishop Sumner of Chester, William Sturges Bourne, M.P., the Rev. Henry Bishop, Henry Gawler, Walter Coulson, and James Traill.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 81 - 103
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 The original Commission had eight names upon it when issued in March 1832; Chadwick, at first only an Assistant Commissioner, was apparently promoted in April 1833. Collinge, J. M. (comp.), Officials of royal commissions of inquiry, 1815–1870 (London, 1984), pp. 16–18Google Scholar. Many authorities inaccurately cite only seven names, suggesting that Traill and Chadwick were both appointed later. The error may have originated with Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, English poor law history. Part II: the last hundred years (London, 1929), I, 49–50Google Scholar; it persists even in the latest authorities, e.g. Brundage, Anthony, The making of the New Poor Law (New Brunswick, 1978), p. 20Google Scholar.

2 The relative extent of their contributions was later a matter of debate, but it seems clear from contemporary memoranda by Chadwick that Senior wrote the whole of the first half of the report (the exposition of the old law's evils) as well as the sections of the ‘Remedial Measures’ relating to bastardy and settlement, and that he revised the remainder of the ‘Remedial Measures’ drafted by Chadwick. See Chadwick's draft letter to Senior, n.d. [July 1834], and also the separate draft letter to [Bishop Blomfield?], n.d. [July 1834]; the two are interleaved in Chadwick MSS, University College, London, 1782. The same memoranda make clear that Sumner, Gawler and Coulson were originally to share in the drafting of the report.

3 The Webbs acknowledged that the diffusion of classical political economy ‘among the ablest and most enlightened members of the ruling class’ laid the ideological basis for Poor Law reform well before 1834. But, like good administrative historians, they insisted that the essential novelty of the New Poor Law lay in its Benthamite-inspired administrative machinery. This conviction led them to identify the majority of the Royal Commissioners, and the vast preponderance of the Assistant Commissioners, as Benthamite or under the influence of Benthamites. Compare Webbs, , English Poor Law history, part II, II, 7–25Google Scholar, with 26–82, esp. 47–52.

4 Most influential was the brilliant biography by Finer, S. E., The life and times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (London, 1952)Google Scholar, which, by drawing so heavily on Chadwick's private papers, inevitably partook of its hero's megalomania.

5 This generalization necessarily masks a great diversity of interpretation. The broad argument for gradualism in early nineteenth-century administrative change can be found in Roberts, David, Victorian origins of the British welfare state (New Haven, 1960)Google Scholar and MacDonagh, Oliver, Early Victorian government 1830–1870 (London, 1977)Google Scholar. The argument is applied to the New Poor Law, in different ways, by Brundage, Making of the New Poor Law, and Digby, Anne, Pauper palaces (London, 1978)Google Scholar.

6 This has been the argument of Dunkley, Peter, notably in ‘Whigs and paupers: the reform of the English poor laws, 1830–1834’, Journal of British Studies (1981), 124–49Google Scholar.

7 Dunkley, , ‘Whigs and paupers’, esp. pp. 135–9Google Scholar.

8 The argument is pursued further in ‘The making of the New Poor Law Redivivus’, Past and Present, CXVII (11 1987), 131–57Google Scholar.

9 For the understanding of liberal toryism which follows, I am much indebted to Hilton, Boyd, ‘Peel: a reappraisal’, Historical Journal, XXII (1979), 585–614CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. p. 607, and, most recently, The age of atonement (Oxford, 1988), esp. pp. 203–8, 220–31Google Scholar.

10 Brundage, Making of the New Poor Law, ch. I, stresses the resumption of control.

11 e.g. Hobsbawm, E. J. and Rudé, George, Captain Swing (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 27Google Scholar; Ignatieff, Michael, A just measure of pain (London, 1978), pp. 207–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dunkley, , ‘Whigs and paupers’, pp. 144–9Google Scholar.

12 Norris, John, Shelbume and reform (London, 1963), pp. 278–93Google Scholar; Chitnis, Anand, The Scottish Enlightenment and early Victorian English society (London, 1986), pp. 45–8Google Scholar.

13 Foxite whigs, who professed to believe in ‘natural rights’ in theory and parliamentary reform in practice, were uninterested in political economy. See Mitchell, L. G., Charles James Fox and the disintegration of the whig party (Oxford, 1971), pp. 257–8Google Scholar; Southgate, Donald, The passing of the whigs, 1832–1886 (New York, 1962), pp. 112–13Google Scholar.

14 See the discussion in Collini, Stefan, Winch, Donald and Burrow, John, That noble science of politics (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 30–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, commerce and history (Cambridge, 1985). PP. 250–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Notably by Burke, , in his famous Thoughts and details on scarcity (1795)Google Scholar, and even in his writings on the French Revolution. See Poynter, J. R., Society and pauperism (London, 1969), pp. 52–5Google Scholar; Macpherson, C. B., Burke (Oxford, 1980), ch. 5Google Scholar;Pocock, J. G. A., ‘The political economy of Burke's analysis of the French Revolution’, Historical Journal, XXV (1982), 331–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the general appraisal by Baugh, Daniel A., ‘Poverty, protestantism, and political economy: English attitudes toward the poor, 1660–1800’, in Baxter, Stephen B. (ed.), England's rise to greatness (Berkeley, 1983)Google Scholar.

16 Poynter, Society and pauperism, ch. 3.

17 Stone, Lawrence and Stone, Jeanne C. F., An open elite? England 1540–1880 (New York, 1984), pp. 226–7Google Scholar, 2 32–3; Duman, Daniel, The English and colonial bars in the nineteenth century (London, 1983), p. 16Google Scholar.

18 Thompson, F. M. L., English landed society in the nineteenth century (London, 1963), pp. 216–37Google Scholar.

19 Cannon, S. F., Science in culture (New York, 1979), pp. 30–63Google Scholar.

20 I apply the term Noetic not only to those in and around Oriel College in the 1820s-e.g. Copleston, Davison, Whately, and Senior – but also to others who shared their fundamental views of the political economy. I n what is now the definitive work on Christian political economy, Boyd Hilton draws a rather sharper distinction that I do between the more evangelical political economists like Chalmers and the more utilitarian Whately and Senior (Copleston taking up an intermediate position). But Hilton also recognizes that these distinctions can be overdrawn, and I hope that my discussion here will show at what points the Noetics were closer to the evangelicals than to the utilitarians; that is, where they were more pessimistic, more distanced from pure Benthamite consequentialism, and generally (in Hilton's terms) more Butlerian. Hilton, , Age of atonement, pp. 28–34Google Scholar, 45–6, 50–5, 79–80, 108, 170–83, 217, 245.

21 Sumner, J. B., A treatise on the records of Creation and on the moral attributes of the Creator, 2 vols. (London, 1816), I, i, xii-xviii, 5–6Google Scholar, 11–14, 250–3. There is an excellent discussion of Sumner's economic thought and its impact on the post-war clergy in Soloway, R. A., Prelates and people (London, 1969), pp. 95–125Google Scholar.

22 Sumner, , Records, I, 22–5, 75Google Scholar.

23 Ibid. 11, 101–23. The argument is repeated in Whately, Richard, Introductory lectures on political economy (London, 1831), pp. 148–52Google Scholar.

24 Sumner, , Records, 11, 75–98Google Scholar; Copleston, W. J., Memoir of Edward Copleston (London, 1851), pp. 332–5Google Scholar; Whately, , Introductory lectures, pp. 175, 183–4Google Scholar.

25 He was palpably relieved when, in later editions, Malthus gave due prominence to the effects of prudential restraint in forestalling demographic crisis. Sumner, , Records, II, 378–9Google Scholar; [Copleston, Edward], A second letter to the Rt. Hon. Robert Peel on the causes of the increase of pauperism and on the Poor Laws (London, 1819), p. 23Google Scholar; [Sumner, J. B.], review of 5th edition of Malthus' Essay, Q[uarterly] R[eview], XVII (07 1817), 373–4Google Scholar, 377–8.

26 Copleston, Edward, ‘On agriculture’ [1796], in The Oxford English prize essays, II (Oxford, 1830), 6–7Google Scholar. Although this early essay was undoubtedly written under physiocratic influence, the Noetics were still insisting a generation later, in more classical terms, that the ‘increase…of the productive powers of labour, must enable increased comforts to be enjoyed by increased numbers’: Nassau, Senior, Two lectures on population (London, 1829), p. 35Google Scholar.

27 Copleston, , Second letter, p. 29Google Scholar; Senior, , Two lectures, pp. 25–35Google Scholar, 51. Sumner stressed that the check remained a physical (rather than a moral) one upon all but the very highest classes of society. Records, II, 53–74, 89–92.

28 The Noetics followed, not only Malthus, but also Burke on this point: e.g. Davison's, John sermon at St Hilda's, South Shields, 11 Sept. 1825, in his Remains and occasional publications (Oxford, 1841), pp. 250Google Scholar, 252. Burke, of course, writing before Malthus, foresaw political disorder rather than overpopulation as the most likely outcome. Pocock, , ‘Political economy of Burke’, pp. 336–7, 346–7Google Scholar

29 0Whately is most closely associated with the visible evidences of degeneration – e.g. Introductory lectures, pp. 120–35 – but the idea is also present in Sumner, , Records, I, 43–8Google Scholar, and Senior, Nassau, An introductory lecture on political economy (Oxford, 1827), pp. 17–23Google Scholar.

30 Whately, Introductory lectures, Lecture VIII; [White, J. Blanco], ‘Journals and reviews’, London Review, 1 (02 1829), 2Google Scholar.

31 Ibid. pp. 5–6; [Sumner, J. B], review on mechanics' institutes and infant schools, QR, XXXII (10 1825), 415–6Google Scholar, 425–6.

32 See Copleston's, celebrated ‘Replies to the Edinburgh Review’ (1810–1811)Google Scholar, reprinted in W. J. Copleston, Memoir; also White, Blanco, ‘Journals and Reviews’, pp. 4–5Google Scholar, 7–9, which concludes that the qualities needed in political judgement are similar to those employed in ‘choosing and purchasing an estate’.

33 The Noetics favoured comprehension – a National Church embracing the whole of the people – but also set very high standards for church leadership. On Noetic ecclesiology, see Brent, Richard, Liberal anglican politics (Oxford, 1987), ch. 4Google Scholar.

34 Davison, John, ‘A dialogue between a Christian and a reformer’ (1819)Google Scholar, reprinted in Remains, pp. 628–9; Whately, Richard, The Christian's duty with respect to the established government and its laws (Oxford, 1821)Google Scholar, though cf. the more candid version, ‘Ofwhigs and tories’, in Whately, E. J. (ed.), Miscellaneous remains from the commonplace book of Richard Whately (London, 1864), pp. 64–8Google Scholar. The Noetics, like the Pittites, were ‘whigs’ only in the sense that they upheld the legitimacy of the settlement of 1688.

35 Since the discovery of automatic Malthusian checks, the ‘counter-barrage of Christian Natural Law principles’ advocated by Burke had become less necessary. Macpherson, , Burke, p. 62Google Scholar.

36 Sumner, , Records, II, 124–9Google Scholar, 209n.; Copleston, , Second letter, p. 22Google Scholar.

37 The dictum that legislation had a great tendency to destroy virtue, a lesser tendency to eradicate vice, and no tendency at all to instill virtue seems to have originated with Davison, John, Considerations on the Poor Laws (Oxford, 1817), p. 63Google Scholar. It was later adopted by Copleston, , Second letter, p. 21Google Scholar, and by Senior, Nassau, A letter to Lord Howick on a legal provision for the Irish poor (London, 1831), pp. 11–12Google Scholar.

38 Whately, Richard, Five sermons on several occasions preached before the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1823), p. 76Google Scholar, and Essays on some of the peculiarities of the Christian religion (Oxford, 1825), pp. 71–3Google Scholar.

39 [Whately, Richard], review of select committee on criminal sentencing, London Review, I, (02 1829), 117–18Google Scholar; [Lewis, G. C.], ‘Secondary punishments’, Law Magazine, VII (1832), 1–2Google Scholar. Both these articles are reprinted, and their argument re-stated, in Whately, Richard, Thoughts on secondary punishments, in a letter to Earl Grey (London, 1832)Google Scholar.

40 Sumner, , Records, 11, 183Google Scholar.

41 [Lewis, ], ‘Secondary punishments’, p. 25Google Scholar.

42 Davison, , Considerations, p. 63Google Scholar.

43 Copleston, , Second letter, p. 25Google Scholar.

44 Davison, , Considerations, pp. 79–80, 91Google Scholar.

45 Copleston, , Second letter, p. 29Google Scholar. Copleston thought relief levels should be raised as living standards rose, always keeping the relief level just beneath the lowest condition of life prevalent. This would help prevent the lowest classes from degrading, as ‘a higher idea is kept up of what is practically considered necessary’. But his students Whately and Senior strongly disagreed. Archbishop Whately to Nassau Senior, n.d. [1834]: Nassau Senior MSS, National Library of Wales, C514.

46 It is simply not the case, as Chadwick claimed, that he discovered the principle of less eligibility, or even that he was the first to apply it to poor relief. Finer, , Chadwick, pp. 74–5Google Scholar. See, in addition to Copleston's Second letter, John Rickman's espousal of less eligibility an d the workhouse test in his review (written with Southey) of Davison's, Considerations, QR, XVIII (01. 1818), 288–90Google Scholar.

47 For the view that public enterprise ‘in a country where trade is well understood’ always entails a misallocation of resources, see Davison, , Considerations, pp. 32–9Google Scholar, and Copleston, , Second letter, pp. 36–9Google Scholar.

48 Hilton, Boyd, ‘Chalmers as Political Economist’, in Cheyne, A. C. (ed.), The practical and the pious (Edinburgh, 1985), pp. 141–56Google Scholar, and Age of atonement, part one; Soloway, , Prelates and people, pp. 126–49Google Scholar.

49 Hilton, Boyd, Corn, cash, commerce (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar, esp. conclusion.

50 Richard Whately was particularly well-connected to backbenchers of both parties, with two uncles, a step-uncle, and a brother in parliament.

51 Tuckwell, W., Pre-tractarian Oxford: a reminiscence of the Oriel ‘Noetics’ (London, 1909), pp. 2–4Google Scholar, 32–3; Copleston, W. J., Memoir, pp. 7, 24–7Google Scholar.

52 Ibid. pp. 30–1.

53 See, e.g. Ward, J. W. to Copleston, Edward, 14 Feb. 1818: Letters of the earl of Dudley to the bishop ofLlandaff (London, 1840), pp. 191–4Google Scholar; Mozley, T., Reminiscences, chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement, 2 vols. (London, 1882), I, 18–19Google Scholar. Nor was Christ Church immune from Noetic influence. During Whately's temporary absence from Oxford in the early 1820s, Lloyd of Christ Church continued his work, leading a class of Christ Church and Oriel Fellows through a close study of Sumner's Records. Mozley, Anne (ed.), Letters and correspondence of John Henry Newman during his life in the English Church, 2 vols. (London, 1891), I, IIIGoogle Scholar.

54 Mackay, Thoma s, A history of the English Poor Law, III (London, 1899), 22Google Scholar.

55 Davison, Considerations, written before but published after the select committee reported in July.

56 [Smith, Sydney], Edinburgh Reviews, XXXIII (01. 1820), 91–108Google Scholar; [Rickman, John and Robert Southey], QR, XVIII (01 1818), 259–308Google Scholar. Local experiments by enlightened country gentlemen were facilitated by Sturges Bourne's Acts of 1818 and 1819, the only legislative by-products of the 1817 report.

57 Copleston, W. J., Memoir, pp. 86–7Google Scholar; Ward, J. W. to Copleston, Edward, 17 June 1822: Letters of the earl of Dudley, p. 321Google Scholar; Rashid, Salim, ‘Edward Copleston, Robert Peel, and cash payments’, History of Political Economy, XV (1983), 249–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Alfred Club and its role in liberal toryism, see Jones, Wilbur Devereux, ‘Prosperity’ Robinson (London, 1967), pp. 29–32Google Scholar.

58 The device of a royal commission, rarely employed in the eighteenth century, came into vogue after 1800, between when and 1832 no fewer than sixty commissions were appointed. Clokie, H. M. and Robinson, J. W., Royal commissions of inquiry (Stanford, 1937), pp. 54–60Google Scholar, 63–4.

59 J. S. Mill acknowledged that his London Debating Society remained small and dull until galvanized by an influx of tory lawyers in the mid 1820s. Autobiography (London, 1873), pp. 127–9Google Scholar.

60 For illustrations of the distinction drawn between Benthamites and ‘low’ radicals, see T. H. Villiers to Lord Howick, 19 Jan. 1832: Senior MSS, C855; G. C. Lewis to Edward Villiers, 3 Feb. 1834: Harpton Court MSS, National Library of Wales, C/2756.

61 Henry Taylor to T. H. Villiers, 24 May 1825: Dowden, Edward (ed), Correspondence of Henry Taylor (London, 1888), pp. 4–5Google Scholar. At the Cambridge Union and the London Debating Society, George and Hyde Villiers consistently defended the status quo, while Charles consistently attacked it. Laws and transactions of the Union Society (Cambridge, 1829), pp. 16–27Google Scholar; Laws and transactions of the London Debating Society (London, 1826), pp. 15–19Google Scholar.

62 Copleston, , Second letter, p. 22Google Scholar.

63 [Whately, Richard], review of the select committee on criminal sentencing et al., London Review, I (02 1829), 112–39Google Scholar, esP. 115–18.

64 [Edwin Chadwick], review of the select committee on police and the Parisian codes, ibid. pp. 252–308, esp. 307–8.

65 Whately had to give up his Oriel Fellowship on his marriage in 1820. For a few years he devoted himself to pastoral duties – one of which was the abolition of relief to the able-bodied at Halesworth, a family living in Suffolk, before returning to Oxford as Principal of St Alban's Hall in 1825. At the same time, his brother Thomas, installed in another family living at Cookham, Berks, set afoot a Poor Law reform which was to be hailed as a model by the royal commission. Whately, E.Jane, Life and correspondence of Richard Whately, 2 vols. (London, 1866), I, 3Google Scholar, 44–5, 199; Whately, Richard, [Letter to the directors of the house of industry at Bulcamp] (Halesworth, 1823)Google Scholar, also reprinted in [parliamentary] P[apers], XXXVII (1834), royal commission on the Poor Laws, Appx. C, pp. 260–1.

66 Williams, Odo, Life and letters of John Rickman (London, 1912), p. 306Google Scholar; John Rickman to Sir Robert Peel, 1 June 1831: British Library, Additional MSS 40,402 (Peel papers), fo. 86; Johnston, H. J. M., British emigration policies, 1815–1830 (Oxford, 1972), pp. 154–8Google Scholar.

67 Copleston, W. J., Memoir, pp. 141, 143Google Scholar.

68 Whately, , Life and correspondence, I, 67Google Scholar.

69 See, e.g. J. L. Mallet's account of the Political Economy Club meeting, 13 Jan. 1831, where Whately and others blamed the disorders on landlords' misgovernment. Political Economy Club, Minutes of proceedings, 1899–1920. Roll of members and questions discussed, 1821–1920 (London, 1921), pp. 221–2Google Scholar.

70 Senior had already undertaken an inquiry into combination for Melbourne, the exCanningite Home Secretary, and been asked to join George Villiers on a commercial embassy to France by Althorp, the chancellor of the exchequer. He had in addition become an intimate of Lansdowne, the Lord President of the Council, and engaged in a public correspondence on Irish Poor Laws with Howick, Melbourne's deputy at the Home Office.

71 Villiers consulted with his closest friend Henry Taylor, a Colonial Office civil servant and a decided tory, before sending his letter to Howick on 19 Jan. 1832; at the same time he evidently forwarded a copy to Senior. Senior then addressed a similar letter to Brougham on the 27th, had Melbourne to dine the same evening, had Villiers to dine two days later, and on the 31 st went with Whately to dine at Lansdowne's. See Taylor, Henry, Autobiography, 2 vols. (London, 1874), I, 91–2Google Scholar; T. H. Villiers to Lord Howick, 19 Jan. 1832: Senior MSS, C855; Nassau Senior to Lord Brougham, 27 Jan. 1832: Brougham MSS, University College, London, 13,648, and draft in Senior MSS, D17, miscatalogued as 1835; Mrs Senior's diary, Senior MSS, E742.

72 Sturges Bourne was preferred to the more liberal T. L. Hodges and R. A. Slaney, respectively Villiers' and Senior's off-the-cuff nominees. Senior also suggested G. C. Lewis, the son of the 1817 report author Thomas Frankland Lewis, though he misnamed him Henry; Lewis was subsequently appointed as one of the assistant commissioners for Ireland.

73 Villiers to Howíck, 19 Jan. 1832.

74 Blomfield was a particularly clever choice, as he had moderate political views and practical Poor Law experience, and yet was more orthodox in religious matters than the Noetics. His name was probably added by Althorp, whose parents were Blomfield's principal patrons. Blomfield, Alfred, A memoir of Charles James Blomfield, 2 vols. (London, 1863), I, 141Google Scholar, 165–73, 178–81.

75 Denis LeMarchant's diary, 1 Mar. 1831: Aspinall, A. (ed.), Three early nineteenth century diaries (London, 1952), p. 16Google Scholar.

76 Bishop was the younger brother of William Bishop, Copleston's colleague as college tutor at Oriel. A student of Whately's at Oriel in the early 'teens, he was thereafter a member of his inner circle. He was soon to marry Louisa Pope, the sister of Whately's wife Elizabeth. See Whately, , Life and correspondence, I, 389Google Scholar; II, 341; Mozley, T., Reminiscences…of Oriel, I, 357Google Scholar. It is worth noting that Henry Taylor proposed to include yet another Noetic, John Davison, who was passed over perhaps on account of his age. Taylor; Autobiography, I, 91–2.

77 Gawler has been difficult to trace because he appears as ‘Gowler’ in the Lincoln's Inn books and ‘Gawlee’ in the Alumni Oxonienses, and because his brother and nephew changed their names to Bellenden Ker! But he was a younger son of a Hampshire country gentleman and a lawyer, latterly the chief secretary to the Master of the Rolls and a clerk of Chancery. After his clerkship was abolished, Gawler was appointed to the Boundary commission and after its expiration to the Poor Law commission.

78 See his memorandum to Senior, I Nov. 1832, in Senior MSS, Dr, an d his report on ‘North Hampshire’, no. I in the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge's series of Farm Reports [1830?], 20–7. The Webbs identified him as a Benthamite on the strength of his relationship to his more radical nephew C. H. Bellenden Ker. Webbs, , English Poor Law history, part II, I, 49nGoogle Scholar.

79 Traill was the younger son of a leading Scottish Highlands landowner and younger brother of the whig M.P. for Orkney. He had been pestering Brougham for legal patronage ever since his appointment as Lord Chancellor. He made no apparent contribution to the Poor Law commission and won the job he really sought, a Police Court magistracy, in October 1833. James Traill to Lord Brougham, 27 Apr. 1831: Brougham MSS, 25,665; Nassau Senior to Denis LeMarchant, 1 Apr. 1833: ibid. 43,840; Traill, James, A letter to…Brougham…on the police reports and the Police Bills (London, 1839)Google Scholar, miscatalogued in the British Library as by his son J. C. Traill.

80 Levy, S. Leon, Nassau Senior, 1790–1864 (Newton Abbot, 1970), pp. 55–6Google Scholar.

81 George Taylor was probably the author of an article on the poor laws endorsing Davison's, JohnConsiderations, QR, XXXVII (10 1827), 484–96Google Scholar. His wife forced him to retire from the Royal Commission after only a few months, but as Senior and Sturges Bourne said later he had already laid the basis for the report of 1834. Taylor, , Autobiography, I, 91–4Google Scholar, and Taylor's, reports to the Commission in PP, XXXVII (1834), 51–132Google Scholar.

82 In addition to the eight assistant commissioners identified as Senior's friends by Levy, , Senior, pp. 81–3Google Scholar, Ashhurst Majendie, an Essex country gentleman, was the brother of an Oriel student of Whately's, and Stephen Walcott was Senior's conveyancing student.

83 The brother-in-law, Sir David Barry, employed as a medical assistant commissioner, was paid £200 in addition to the travelling expenses allowed his colleague Cusack Rooney. S. M. Phillips to Treasury, 24 Apr. 1834: Public Record Office, T1/4100.

84 See Nassau Senior to Lord Brougham, 14 Sept. 1832: reprinted in Levy, Senior, pp. 247–54, and the two memoranda on Senior's letter in Senior MSS, DrBourne, William Sturges, ‘Observations upon Mr Senior's letter to the Lord Chancellor’, 10, 1832Google Scholar, and Henry Gawler, Memorandum, 1 Nov. 1832; and Taylor's, George second and third reports (3, 30 May 1832), PP, XXXVII (1834), 54–76Google Scholar. The other commissioners did not leave written statements, but they were not sleeping partners. Weekly meetings were apparently held from autumn 1832 to spring 1833, and Blomfield attended nearly all of them; Bishop and Coulson were in frequent attendance. See Blomfield, , Memoir, pp. 203–4Google Scholar, and the financial records of the commission in Public Record Office, T1/4102.

85 Brundage argues that the question of implementation is significant because the system ultimately enacted left considerable discretion to local elites. I respond to this argument in ‘Making of the New Poor Law Redivivus’, pp. 153–6.

86 Lord Lansdowne to Nassau Senior, 27 Sept. [1832]: Senior MSS, C171, miscatalogued as 1834.

87 In the spring of 1833, both the rough outline of the report and a division of labour for writing it up were agreed upon. Senior was assigned the ‘exposition of the evils of the existing system’, Chadwick the bulk of the ‘remedial measures’, Sturges Bourne the revision of the law of settlement, Sumner the revision of the law of bastardy, Gawler the treatment of vagrancy, and Coulson the provisions for emigration. In the end, however, Senior took over Sturges Bourne's and Sumner's portions. See the draft memorandum from Chadwick to [Blomfield?], n.d. [July 1834], interleaved with similar to Senior in Chadwick MSS, 1782.

88 [Nassau Senior], ‘Account of the Poor Law Amendment Bill Conferences’, University of London Library. The parliamentary draughtsman, John Meadows White, had played a role in Whately's Suffolk Poor Law reform in the 1820s. Whately recommended him to Senior, who contracted him to draw up the bill in December 1833. See J. M. White to Treasury, 4 Nov. 1834: Public Record Office, T1/4101.

89 While much effort has been expended to prove the Benthamite origins of the new administrative arrangements, the more significant Benthamite attachment to ‘collateral aids’ to improvement has been neglected. But see the Webbs, , English Poor Law history, part II, I, 82n, and Finer, Chadwick, ch. 3Google Scholar.

90 Nassau Senior to Edwin Chadwick, n.d. [late 1833]: Chadwick MSS, 1782; Edwin Chadwick to Denis LeMarchant, n.d. [Dec. 1833]: Brougham MSS, 27,617. See also Brundage's, discussion of the point: Making of the Mew Poor Law, p. 37Google Scholar.

91 Nassau Senior's defence of Whately's report and Lewis, G. C.' critique can be found in PP, LI (1837)Google Scholar. I have brutally condensed here a very complicated situation. See, further, Black, R. D. Collison, Economic thought and the Irish question (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 86–105Google Scholar, and Macintyre, Angus, The Liberator (London, 1965)Google Scholar, ch. 6.

92 Lewis was the son of Thomas Frankland Lewis whom Senior had nominated for the royal commission in 1832, and a campaigner with Whately for a deterrent penal system. He and Head, an Oriel man, had been the closest of friends since Oxford days, and formed a kind of triumvirate with Edward Villiers, brother of George and Hyde and Charles. Two other Orielenses served as assistant commissioners, Thomas Stevens and Edward Twisleton.

93 Nassau Senior to Archbishop Whately, 27 Feb. 1846: Senior MSS, C655. The Noetic beau ideal, in the 1840s just as in the 1820s, was to secure a junction of ‘national’ reformers from both parties.

94 Certainly, Senior seemed to think that the scandal lay not in the Andover workhouse but in the Andover inquiry, while Chadwick welcomed the inquiry as an attack on Lewis and Head. Nassau Senior's draft memorandum, n.d. [1846]: Senior MSS, D27a.

95 Goldstrom, M J. M., ‘Richard Whately and political economy in school books, 1833–80’, Irish Historical Studies, XV (1966–1977), 131–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, examining the diffusion of Whately's political economy through popular magazines and Anglican tracts as well as school books; Rashid, Salim, ‘Richard Whately and Christian political economy at Oxford and Dublin’, History of Political Economy, XIII (1981), 147–55Google Scholar.

96 From a review of Whately, on Bacon, , originally in the North British Review for 08 1857Google Scholar, reprinted in Nassau Senior, Biographical sketches (London, 1863), pp. 384–6.