up lists of all inhabitants
able to contribute to such a fund, and on a persistent refusal the
justices in sessions were empowered to assess the offender at a fitting
sum and to enforce its payment by imprisonment.

The principles embodied in these measures, that of local responsibility
for local distress, and that of a distinction between the pauper and the
vagabond, were more clearly defined in a statute of 1572. By this Act
the justices in the country districts, and mayors and other officers in
towns, were directed to register the impotent poor, to settle them in
fitting habitations and to assess all inhabitants for their support.
Overseers were appointed to enforce and superintend their labour, for
which wool, hemp, flax, or other stuff was to be provided at the expense
of the inhabitants; and houses of correction were established in every
county for obstinate vagabonds or for paupers refusing to work at the
overseer's bidding. A subsequent Act transferred to these overseers the
collection of the poor rate, and powers were given to bind poor children
as apprentices, to erect buildings for the improvident poor, and to
force the parents and children of such paupers to maintain them. The
well-known Act which matured and finally established this system, the
43rd of Elizabeth, remained the base of our system of
pauper-administration until a time within the recollection of living
men. Whatever flaws a later experience has found in these measures,
their wise and humane character formed a striking contrast to the
legislation which had degraded our statute-book from the date of the
Statute of Labourers; and their efficacy at the time was proved by the
cessation of the social danger against which they were intended to
provide.

[Sidenote: Growth of wealth.]

Its cessation however was owing, not merely to law, but to the natural
growth of wealth and industry throughout the country. A middle class of
wealthier landowners and merchants was fast rising into importance. "The
wealth of the meaner sort," wrote one to Cecil, "is the very fount of
rebellion, the occasion of their indolence, of the contempt of the
nobility, and of the hatred they have conceived against them." But Cecil
and his mistress could watch the upgrowth of national wealth with cooler
eyes. In the country its effect was to undo much of the evil which the
diminution of small holdings had done. Whatever social embarrassment it
might bring about, the revolution i