over the whole country might be secured. Power was to be given to unite
several parishes into one union, and to erect large workhouses for the
several parishes thus massed together;[230] and every union was to be
under the management of boards of guardians, elected by the rate-payers
of the different parishes, with the addition of the resident magistrates
as ex officio guardians. Lord Althorp, who introduced the bill, admitted
that such extensive powers as he proposed to confer on the Board of
Commissioners were "an anomaly in the constitution," but pleaded the
necessity of the case as their justification, since it was indispensable
to vest a discretionary power somewhere, and the government was too
fully occupied with the business of the nation, while the local
magistrates would be destitute of the sources of information requisite
to form a proper opinion on the subject. The commissioners alone, being
exclusively devoted to the subject, and being alone in possession of all
the information that could be collected, were really the only body who
could fairly be trusted to form correct opinions on it.[231] The fact of
the creation of such a board being "an anomaly," or, as it might rather
have been called, a novelty in the constitution, does not seem an
insuperable objection, unless it were also inconsistent or at variance
with the fundamental principles of the constitution, and that can hardly
be alleged in this instance. It is true that local management, whether
its range were wide or narrow, whether covering the business of a county
or limited to a single parish, had been the general rule; but, like
every other arrangement for the conduct of affairs of any kind, that
local management was inherently subject to the supreme authority and
interference of Parliament. Nor, as the maintenance of this
Parliamentary authority, as the supreme referee in the last resource,
was provided for by the subordination of the commissioners for the
approval of their regulations to the Secretary of State, does it seem
that the arrangement now proposed and adopted can be said to have been
inconsistent with constitutional principle. And the necessity for some
change of that nature was clearly made out by the abuses which,
undeniably, had been suffered to grow up under the old system.

If the habitual condition of the Irish peasant were to be taken into
account, it would be correct to say that there was less distress at this
time in England th