O direito à subsistência em xeque: um olhar sobre a Lei dos Pobres e o Ato de Emenda de 1834

Abstract

The study analyzes the Poor Laws as a question of socioeconomic debate in England during the Industrial Revolution, highlighting the defamation campaign moved against this institution, culminating with the Amendment Act of 1834 and the creation of the New Poor Law. It’s understood that this movement represents a important landmark to the emergence of a own political program of the sectors linked to the industrialized economy. Although it wasn’t a finished project, it’s possible to identify from the 1830s the strengthening of arguments that, seated on the defence of the free market, proposed a structural reordering of society that would favoured the accumulation of industrial capital, being the reform of the poor relief practices a important banner in this sense.