arties were agreed in
believing that a great deal of the poverty which, especially in the
agricultural counties, had become the normal condition of the laborer,
might be ascribed to the pernicious working of the Poor-law, which
subsisted with scarcely any alteration as it had been originally enacted
in the reign of Elizabeth. There was even reason to doubt whether the
slight changes which had been made had been improvements. If they had
been in the direction of increased liberality to the poor man who needed
parish relief, and had to some extent lessened his discomforts, they had
at the same time tended greatly to demoralize both him and his employer,
by introducing a system of out-door relief, which, coupled with the
practice of regarding such relief as a legitimate addition to wages, led
the former to feel no shame at underpaying his workmen, and the workman
to feel no shame at depending on the parish for a portion of his means
of subsistence. It was not to be wondered at that under such a system
the poor-rates gradually rose to the prodigious amount of seven millions
and a quarter of money; or that the rate-payers began to clamor against
such a state of things, as imposing on them a burden beyond their power
to bear. It was evident that it was an evil which imperatively demanded
a remedy; and accordingly one of the first objects to which Lord Grey's
Cabinet turned its attention after the completion of the Reform Bill was
the amendment of the Poor-law.

The scheme which in the spring of 1834 they introduced to Parliament was
the first instance of the adoption in this country of that system of
centralization which has long been a favorite with some of the
Continental statesmen, but which is not equally in harmony with the
instincts of our people, generally more attached to local government.
But, if ever centralization could commend itself to the English mind, it
might well be when a new law and a new principle of action were to be
introduced, in the carrying out of which uniformity of practice over the
whole kingdom was especially desirable. Accordingly, the government bill
proposed the establishment of a Board of Commissioners to whom the
general administration of the Poor-laws over the whole kingdom was to be
intrusted. They were to have power to make rules and regulations as to
the mode or modes of relief to be given, subject to the approval of the
Secretary of State, that thus the establishment of one uniform system