e and systematise the action of the petty local
bodies. The very possibility of such organisation, however, seems to
have been simply inconceivable. When the local bodies became lavish
instead of over-frugal, the one remedy suggested was to abolish the
system altogether.

NOTES:

[74] See _Dictionary of National Biography_.

[75] _Works_, i. 255.

[76] See Sir G. Nicholls's _History of the Poor-law_, 1854. A new
edition, with life by H. G. Willink, appeared in 1898.

[77] _History_, i. 175.

[78] M'Culloch's note to _Wealth of Nations_, p. 65. M'Culloch in his
appendix makes some sensible remarks upon the absence of any properly
constituted parochial 'tribunal.'

[79] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. i. ch. x.

[80] See passage quoted in Eden's _History_, i. 347.

[81] Thomas Firmin (1632-1677), a philanthropist, whose Socinianism did
not exclude him from the friendship of such liberal bishops as Tillotson
and Fowler, started a workhouse in 1676.

[82] Nicholls (1898), ii. 14.

[83] _Ibid._ (1898), ii. 123.

[84] _Report_, p. 67.

[85] William Hay, for example, carried resolutions in the House of
Commons in 1735, but failed to carry a bill which had this object. See
Eden's _History_, i. 396. Cooper in 1763 proposed to make the hundred
the unit.--Nicholls's _History_, i. 58. Fielding proposes a similar
change in London. Dean Tucker speaks of the evil of the limited area in
his _Manifold Causes of the Increase of the Poor_ (1760).

[86] Nicholls, ii. 88.

[87] _Parl. Hist._ xxxii. 710.

[88] A full abstract is given in Edens _History_, iii. ccclxiii. etc.

[89] Bentham observes (_Works_, viii. 448) that the cow will require the
three acres to keep it.

[90] Cobbett's _Political Works_, vi. 64

[91] I need only note here that the first edition of Malthus's _Essay_
appeared in 1798, the year after Eden's publication.

[92] Eden's _History_, i. 583.

[93] _Ibid._ i. 587.

[94] Maseres, an excellent Whig, a good mathematician, and a respected
lawyer, is perhaps best known at present from his portrait in Charles
Lamb's _Old Benchers_.

[95] It maybe noticed as an anticipation of modern schemes that in 1792
Paine proposed a system of 'old age pensions,' for which the necessary
funds were to be easily obtained when universal peace had abolished all
military charges. See _State Trials_, xxv. 175.

II. THE POLICE

The system of 'self-government' showed its weak side in this direction.
It meant that an