The New American Tories: A Critique of Nixon’s Welfare Program

IN ENGLAND 1795 was a gloomy year. Respectable opinion divided its concern between the wild French revolutionaries, their possible impact upon discontented Englishmen, and the soaring domestic price level. As usual it was worse to be poor and unrespectable. Bread, the staple diet of English working-folk, was so expensive that industrious farm laborers were unable to feed their families.

Economic necessity as well as altruism compelled some sort of official action. One response was that of the justices of the peace of Berkshire who decided to deploy some of the statutory powers over wages and prices which the still-operative Elizabethan Poor Law confided to them. At their May 6, 1795, meeting in the district of Speenhamland the justices fatefully decided that subsidies should be given to the honest and deserving poor, whether or not they were currently employed, on a scale related to the price of bread. This was, if you like, an early version of a guaranteed income.

As ...