ravagance, jobbery, and fraud." Mr.
Chadwick points out that "if no relief were allowed to be given to the
able-bodied or to their families, except in return for adequate labor or
in a well-regulated workhouse, the worst of the existing sources of
evil--the allowance system--would immediately disappear; a broad line
would be drawn between the independent laborers and the paupers; the
numbers of paupers would be immediately diminished, in consequence of the
reluctance to accept relief on such terms, and would be still further
diminished in consequence of the increased fund for the payment of wages
occasioned by the diminution of rates; and would ultimately, instead of
forming a constantly increasing proportion of our whole population,
become a small, well-defined part of it, capable of being provided for at
an expense less than one-half of the present poor rates." And finally it
was urged that "it is essential to every one of these improvements that
the administration of the poor laws should be intrusted, as to their
general superintendence, to one central authority with extensive powers;
and, as to their details, to paid officers, acting under the
consciousness of constant superintendence and strict responsibility." On
these reports and recommendations the new measure for the reorganization
of the poor-law system was founded. The main objects of the measure were
to divide these countries, for poor-relief purposes, into areas of
regular and, in a certain sense, of equal proportions, so that the whole
burden of poverty should not be cast for relief on one particular
district, while a neighboring and much richer {228} district was able to
escape from its fair measure of liability; to have the relief
administered not by local justices, or parish clergymen, but by
representative bodies duly elected and responsible to public opinion; and
by the creation of one great central board charged with the duty of
seeing to the proper administration of the whole system. Thus, it will
be observed that the main principle of the Reform Bill, the principle of
representation, had been already accepted by statesmanship as the central
idea of a department of State which had nothing to do with the struggles
of political parties.

[Sidenote: 1834--Passage of the Poor-law Bill]

The measure when it came before Parliament met, of course, with strong
opposition, first in the House of Commons and then in the House of Lords.
Much of the opposi