trious and the idle, were held worthy of equal reward, the actual
allowance to each being measured by his need and not by the value of his
work; while the parochial authorities, figuring as an earthly
providence, exercised a benevolent superintendence over the welfare and
liberty of every day-labourer in the village community. The fruits of
that superintendence were the decline of a race of freemen into a race
of slaves, unconscious of their slavery, and the gradual ruin of the
landlords and farmers upon whom the maintenance of these slaves
depended.[118]

[Pageheading: _NEW POOR LAW._]

The evidence laid before the commissioners not only showed how
intolerable the evil had become in many counties, but also how purely
artificial it was. While the aggregate amount of the poor rate had risen
to more than eight millions and a half, while some parishes were going
out of cultivation and in others the rates exceeded the rental, there
were certain oases in the desert of agricultural distress where
comparative prosperity still reigned. These were villages in which an
enlightened squire or parson had set himself to strike at the root of
pauperism, and to initiate local reforms in the poor-law system. It was
clearly found that, where out-door relief was abolished or rigorously
limited, where no allowances were made in aid of wages, and where a
manly self-reliance was encouraged instead of a servile mendicity, wages
rose, honest industry revived, and the whole character of the village
population was improved. Fortified by these successful experiments, the
commissioners took a firm stand on the vital distinction, previously
ignored, between poverty and pauperism. They did not shrink from
recommending that, after a certain date, "the workhouse test" should be
enforced against all able-bodied applicants for relief, except in the
form of medical attendance, and even that women should be compelled to
support their illegitimate children. They also advised a liberal change
in the complicated and oppressive system of "parish settlement," whereby
the free circulation of labour was constricted. They further proposed a
very large reform in the administrative machinery of the poor laws, by
the formation of parishes into unions, the concentration of workhouses,
the separation of the sexes in workhouses, and, above all, the creation
of a central poor-law board, to consist of three commissioners, and to
control the whole system about to be tran