The Law and the Poor

"Yes," resumed the stranger after a moment's interval. "Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws."

"You speak of----," said Egremont, hesitatingly.

"THE RICH AND THE POOR."

BENJAMIN DISRAELI: "Sybil, or The Two Nations."

The rich have many law books written to protect their privileges, but the poor, who are the greater nation, have but few. Not that I should like to call this a law book, for two reasons: firstly, it would not be true; secondly, if it were true, I should not mention it, as I want people to read it.

You cannot read law books, you only consult them. A law book seeks to set out the law, the whole law, and nothing but the law on the subject of which it treats. There are many books on Poor Law, there are hundreds of volumes about the Poor, and many more about the Law, but the Law and the Poor is a virgin subject.

It is a wonder that it should be so because it is far more practical and interesting than either of its component parts.

It is as if poetry had dealt with beans or with bacon and no poet had hymned the more beautiful associations of beans and bacon. In the same way the Law and the Poor is a subject worthy of treatment in drama or poetry, but that that may be successfully done someone must do the rough spade work of digging the material out of the dirt heaps in which it lies, and presenting it in a more or less palatable form. When this has been done the poet or the politician can come along and throw the crude metal into the metres of sonnets or statutes or any form of glorious letters they please.

From the very earliest I have taken a keen interest in this subject. I remember well when I was a schoolboy the profound impression made upon me by Samuel Plimsoll's agitation to rescue merchant seamen from the horrible abuses practised by a certain class of shipowner. My father, Serjeant Parry, was engaged in litigation for Plimsoll, and I heard many things at first hand of that great reformer's hopes and disappointments.

There were a class of traders known as "ship knackers," who bought up old unseaworthy vessels and sent them to sea overloaded and over-insured. Plimsoll, for years, devoted himself to prevent this wickedness. There was the usual parliamentary indifference, the customary palavering and pow-wowing in committees until, after six or seven years of constant fighting, the public conscience was awakened, and, in 1875, Disraeli produced a Merchant Shipping Bill. But then, as now, there was no parliamentary time for legislation dealing with the poor, and the Bill was one of the innocents to be sacrificed at the annual summer massacre.

This would have been the end of all hope of reform had not Samuel Plimsoll, in a fine frenzy of rage and disgust, openly charged the Government with being parties to the system which sent brave men to death in the winter seas and left widows and orphans helpless at home, "in order that a few speculative scoundrels, in whose heart there is neither the love of God nor the fear of God, may make unhallowed gains."