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1683
HALE' S DISCOURSE ON THE POOR
THE POOR TO BE SET ON WORK |
007. HALE, Sir Matthew. A Discourse touching Provision for the Poor. London: Printed for William Shrowsbery, at the Bible in Duke-Lane, 1683. [6],26p. Rebound in half calf, marbled boards. Trimmed a little close with the loss of some catchwords. Still a good copy.
WING H 242; KRESS 1579; GOLDSMITHS 2533.
This tract, written about 1659 but not published until 1683, after his death, is one of the most important early treatments of the subject and remained a key point of reference for most of the later authorities such as Burn, Ruggles and Eden. Hale began with the opinion that "At this day, it seems to me that the English nation is more deficient in their prudent provision for the poor than any other cultivated and Christian State." The main idea was that the labour of the poor should be turned into a source of actual profit to the nation. Together with Sir Josiah Child, Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale was among the most important philanthropic projectors of the second half of the seventeenth century. Both saw as the only solution to the social problems of vagrancy and destitution the creation of new organisations for employing, at a commercial profit, all the able-bodied poor who presented themselves. In spite of repeated failures this idea of the profitable employment of the poor for more than a century never ceased to influence both the Poor Law administration itself, and the criticisms by which it was assailed. In the second place, the efforts of these seventeenth century philanthropists resulted in the statutory establishment, over a large part of the kingdom, of unions of parishes under new Local Authorities, called Guardians, Trustees, Governors, Directors or Corporations of the Poor, that lasted right down to 1834.
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