the poor those who refused to enter them. This was the germ of the later
'workhouse test.'[82] When grievances arose, the invariable plan, as
Nicholls observes,[83] was to increase the power of the justices. Their
discretion was regarded 'as a certain cure for every shortcoming of the
law and every evil arising out of it.' The great report of 1834 traces
this tendency[84] to a clause in an act passed in the reign of William
III., which was intended to allow the justices to check the extravagance
of parish officers. They were empowered to strike off persons improperly
relieved. This incidental regulation, widened by subsequent
interpretations, allowed the magistrates to order relief, and thereby
introduced an incredible amount of demoralisation.

The course was natural enough, and indeed apparently inevitable. The
justices of the peace represented the only authority which could be
called in to regulate abuses arising from the incapacity and narrow
local interests of the multitudinous vestries. The schemes of
improvement generally involved some plan for a larger area. If a hundred
or a county were taken for the unit, the devices which depopulated a
parish would no longer be applicable.[85] The only scheme actually
carried was embodied in 'Gilbert's act' (1782), obtained by Thomas
Gilbert (1720-1798), an agent of the duke of Bridgewater, and an active
advocate of poor-law reform in the House of Commons. This scheme was
intended as a temporary expedient during the distress caused by the
American War; and a larger and more permanent scheme which it was to
introduce failed to become law. It enabled parishes to combine if they
chose to provide common workhouses, and to appoint 'guardians.' The
justices, as usual, received more powers in order to suppress the harsh
dealing of the old parochial authorities. The guardians, it was assumed,
could always find 'work,' and they were to relieve the able-bodied
without applying the workhouse test. The act, readily adopted, thus
became a landmark in the growth of laxity.[86]

At the end of the century a rapid development of pauperism had taken
place. The expense, as Eden had to complain, had doubled in twenty
years. This took place simultaneously with the great development of
manufactures. It is not perhaps surprising, though it may be melancholy,
that increase of wealth shall be accompanied by increase of pauperism.
Where there are many rich men, there will be a better field for thiev