POG 235 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Law Report, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, William Godwin
14 Dec 2017
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Enclosure and rural poverty: 6. 5 million achres by act of enclosure. Many villages: up to one half on parish relief. New poor law (1834): designed to force poor off relief into labour market. Labour must be exposed to the vicissitudes of hope and fear in order to reduce the pauper to a position below that of the independent labourer (poor law report) Commerce has tripled and so have the paupers . Child labour: the facts we collected seemed to me terrible beyond belief the mills were run sixteen hours a day and they did not scruple to employ children of both sexes from the age of eight. We actually found considerable number below that age (british parliamentary commission, 1815) Reverand thomas malthus (essay on principles of population, 1798) The poor have no natural right to life; excess pop should be allowed to die. Malthusian food issue diverted argument about inequality to a natural one.
