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economic difference between aid to the unemployed and aid-in-wages to the em-
ployed.
However, the choice in 1795 was between minimum wages and aid-in-wages.
The difference between the two policies can be best discerned by relating them to
the simultaneous repeal of the Act of Settlement of 1662. The repeal of this Act cre-
ated the possibility of a national labor market, the main purpose of which was to
allow wages "to find their own level." The tendency of Whitbread's Minimum
Wage Bill was contrary to that of the repeal of the Act of Settlement, while the ten-
dency of the Speenhamland Law was not. By extending the application of the Poor
Law of 1601 instead of that of the Statute of Artificers of 1563 (as Whitbread sug-
gested), the squires reverted to paternalism primarily in respect to the village only
and in such forms as involved a minimum of interference with the play of the mar-
ket,
while actually making its wage-fixing mechanism inoperative. That this so-
called application of the Poor Law was in reality a complete overthrow of the Eliz-
abethan principle of enforced labor was never openly admitted.
With the sponsors of the Speenhamland Law pragmatic considerations were
paramount. The Rev. Edward Wilson, Canon of Windsor, and J. P. for Berkshire,
who may have been the proponent, set out his views in a pamphlet in which he de-
clared categorically for laissez-faire. "Labour, like everything else brought to the
market, had in all ages found its level, without the interference of law," he said. It
might have been more appropriate for an English magistrate to say, that, on the
contrary, never in all the ages had labor found its level without the intervention of
law. However, figures showed, Canon Wilson went on, that wages did not increase
as fast as the price of corn, whereupon he proceeded respectfully to submit to the
consideration of the magistracy "A Measure for the
quantum of relief to be
granted to the poor." The relief added up to five shillings a week for a family of
man, wife, and child. An "Advertisement" to his booklet ran: "The substance of
the following Tract was suggested at the County Meeting at Newbury, on sixth
of last May." The magistracy, as we know, went further than the Canon: it unani-
mously allowed a scale of six shillings (if the first child was counted).
T O C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N
12. Disraeli's "Two Nations" and the Problem of Colored Races
Several authors have insisted on the similarity between colonial problems and
those of early capitalism. But they failed to follow up the analogy the other way,
that is, to throw light on the condition of the poorer classes of England a century
ago by picturing them as what they were—the detribalized, degraded natives of
their time.
The reason why this obvious resemblance was missed lay in our belief in the
liberalistic prejudice which gave undue prominence to the economic aspects of
what were essentially noneconomic processes. For neither racial degradation in
some colonial areas today nor the analogous dehumanization of the laboring peo-
ple a century ago was economic in essence.