SADLER, Michael Thomas. Ireland ; Its Evils, and Their Remedies : being Refutation of the Errors of the Emigration Committee and Others, Touching that Country. To which is Prefixed, a Synopsis of an Original Treatise about to be Published on The Law of Population ; Developing the Real Principle on which it is Universally Regulated.

ALTERNATIVE TO MALTHUS

London: John Murray, 1829. octavo. Second edition. pp. lvii, 464, [1]. Quarter green linen on grey paper boards, title on printed label in spine. Ex lib with neat small stamps. Untrimmed. A very good copy.
Michael Thomas Sadler, (1780-1835), radical politician, philanthropic businessman, and leader of the factory reform movement in England, who was a forerunner of the reformers from the working class whose activities (from the late 1830s) became known as Chartism. He was an importer of Irish linens in Leeds. Sadler served as a Tory member of the House of Commons in 1829-30 and again in 1831-32, and then, in December 1832, sought a new parliamentary seat created for Leeds. He took up in Parliament the argument he had already made outside it that the English Poor Law system should be extended to Ireland. Sadler was a prominent English political economist and social reformer. In this book he assailed the dominant contemporary British analysis of the problem of poverty in Ireland which was based on ‘Classical’ individualistic or ‘laissez faire’ political economy. He considered in detail and rejected that school’s four main proposed solutions. (1) Emigration (2) Clearances of the land. (3) Encouragement of a taste for better living (4) An ecclesiastical confiscation. He advocated the establishment of a poor law for Ireland based on the principle that in proportion to its means ‘wealth’ should be compelled to assist the destitute poor, but, that dissimilar to English practice, assistance should in all cases, except in those of actual incapacity from age or disease, be connected to labour.” The book had a profound impact and a poor law was enacted a few years later establishing the workhouse system. Under Nicholl’s influence the English practice was later adopted in Ireland so that Ironically, the workhouses came to be dreaded by generations of the Irish poor. His suggested alternative to Malthus’s population theory was later refuted.

[Cat 157]