ems to be admitted by common
consent that the measure has accomplished all the beneficial results
which its promoters anticipated from it, and has, in many of its
provisions, worked even better than some of its supporters had expected.
Of course, our poor-law system has since that time been always undergoing
modifications of one kind or another, and public criticism is continually
pointing to the necessity for further improvement. We hear every now and
then of cases in which, owing to local maladministration, some deserving
men and women, honestly struggling to keep their heads above pauperism,
are left to perish of hunger or cold. We read well-authenticated, only
too well-authenticated, instances of actual starvation taking place in
some wealthy district of a great city. We hear of parochial funds
squandered and muddled away; of the ratepayers' money wasted in
extravagance, and worse than extravagance; of miserable courts and alleys
where the deserving and undeserving poor are alike neglected and uncared
for. But it would be utterly impossible that some such defects as these
should not be found in the management of any system worked by {230} human
mechanism for such a purpose as the relief of a great nation's poverty.
The predominant fact is that we have a system which is based on the
representative principle, which is open to the inspection and the
criticism of the whole country, and which frankly declares itself the
enemy of professional beggary and the helper of the poverty which is
honestly striving to help itself. Much remains yet to be done for the
improvement of our national system of poor relief, but it has, at least,
to be said that the reformed Parliament did actually establish a system
founded on just principles and responsible to public judgment.

[Sidenote: 1833--The East India Company's charter]

Another of the great reforms which was accomplished in this age of reform
found its occasion when the time came for the renewal of the East India
Company's charter. The Government and the Houses of Parliament had to
deal with the future administration of one of the greatest empires the
world had ever seen, brought together by events and forces the like of
which had not been at work in any previous chapter of the world's
history. We have already traced, in this book, the growth of the East
India Company's possessions, a growth brought about by a combination of
the qualities which belonged to the Alexanders