had formerly received? Not the poor, but the army, the debt, the clergy, the sinecurists, the pensioners, the privy councillors, were swallowing up the estates of the landlords.
The object of the Act was to compel the people of England to live on a coarser diet. He, Cobbett, had seen the official instructions to this effect. As no one but the weakest would accept relief under the new system, labourers would be prepared to work for any wages they could get. Thus the English labourer would be screwed down to Irish wages and Irish diet. Oastler paraphrased this into a corrupt bargain between landlords and factory masters to provide cheap labour for the factories.[1] Further, the Act abrogated that "neighbourly," system of relief which had flourished so long, in favour of a tyranny exercised by three distant commissioners and their secretary, who were perfectly unmoved by pity or compassion, and whose minions were to steel themselves to equal callousness.[2]
This publication found an echo everywhere in the manufacturing districts. The new Act was denounced as the "Coarser Food Bill," and "Irish wages" became a very useful and effective bogey. The evil effects of the old system Cobbett and his readers absolutely ignored. It is true that the wholesale demoralisation which accompanied the old system was not so prevalent amongst the manufacturing people, but even there it had the effect of prolonging the agony of the handloom weavers and similarly situated workers, by subsidising them in their hopeless conflict with the machine weavers. The relief paid in aid of wages benefited no one but the employer of handloom weavers, who was able to extract the current rate of profits without having to set up expensive power-looms. The competition of subsidised labour only tended to reduce wages all round, even in the factories. Thus the old system tended to make the situation of the half-pauperised labourer the normal standard of life, whilst the new aimed at setting up that of the independent labourer. There is little evidence to show that the new system actually did tend towards reducing wages, so that the "coarser food" and "Irish wages" cries were sheer absurdities, although they acquired a certain show of reality during the very distressful years of industrial depression which followed the collapse of 1836.
The centralisation which characterised the Act of 1834 was its strongest point, and it was this which earned the new system the deepest hatred of the classes affected by it. Under
