The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

602 THE FREEMAN Octobersizes the advantages of enclosure:no one can or will improve his landor livestock until he has a deed tothe property and a fence (hedge)around it. These are simply thefacts of life. By contrast, the lateWilhelm Roepke 12 seems to haveregarded the loss of England'speasantry as a misfortune and anunnecessary one at that. Comparingthe decline of English agriculturein the last century with thephenomenal rise of Danish farmingduring the same period, hecomments: "This decay overcamean agricultural system which hadlost its strength, its vitality andits social soundness because it hadlost its peasantry."Whatever the cause of widespreadpauperization - monopoly,enclosures, or even the rising factorysystem, as has often been suggested- the English had problems.With the Terror in Parisrising to new heights of ferocity,the English ruling class was profoundlyuneasy and looking for instantanswers. They thought theyhad found their panacea in an arrangementworked out by the justicesof Berkshire in May, 1795,and generally adopted by the othercounties of England, althoughnever enacted by Parliament. ThePoor Law of 1795 became knownas Speenhamland, because the initialmeetingwasheld in a villageof that name.The Right to LiveThe new welfare system was awage-supplement plan based onthe "right to live" principle. If afamily man could earn half a living,the government supplied theother half. If he earned nothing,he was completely on the dole. Ifhe made enough to survive, he gotnothing from the government. Detailsvaried across the nation, butit was a comprehensive schemewith a "cost of living" escalatortied to the price of bread, additionalbenefits with more dependents,and all the rest. It sounds'quite modern. As Karl Polanyjl3says, "No measure was ever moreuniversally popular."The "war on poverty" was won- all they needed now was to conquerNapoleon. Actually, the latterproved· the easier foe to vanquish.He was defeated at Waterloo in1815 and sent to Saint Helena. Asevere postwar depression thenadded to the misery and havoc ofthe war. Poverty was still verymuch with them. Even thoselanded aristocrats, who had donewell on the high food prices of thewar era, now found they were landpoor. No small part of the blamefor the misery of this period, traditionallyheaped on the manufacturersof the early Industrial Revolution,properly belongs to Napoleon- if he was responsible forthe war with its destruction and