e seemed some hope of
creating a system of relief in connexion with them. They were tried,
and, very naturally, failed. In the poverty of the time it seemed that
the poor could be relieved only by a compulsory rate, and the
administration of statutory relief naturally devolved on the central
government--the only vigorous administrative body left in the country.
The government might indeed have adopted the alternative of letting the
industrial difficulties of the country work themselves out, but they had
inherited a policy of minute legislative control, and they continued it.
Revising previous statutes, they enacted the Poor Law, which still
remains on the statute book. It could be no remedy for social offences
against charity and the community. But in part at least it was
successful. It helped to conceal the failure to find a remedy.

PART VI.--AFTER THE REFORMATION

The Reformation theory of charity.

During the Reformation, which extended, it should be understood, from
the middle of the 14th century to the reign of James I., the groundwork
of the theory of charity was being recast. The old system and the narrow
theory on which it had come to depend were discredited. The recoil is
startling. To a very large extent charitable administration had been in
the hands of men and women who, as an indispensable condition to their
participation in it, took the vows of obedience, chastity and "wilful"
poverty. Now this was all entirely set aside. It was felt (see _Homilies
on Faith and Good Works, &c._, A.D. 1547) that socially and morally the
method had been a failure. The vow of obedience, it was argued, led to a
general disregard of the duties of civic and family life. Those who
bound themselves by it were outside the state and did not serve it. In
regard to chastity the _Homily_ states the common opinion: "How the
profession of chastity was kept, it is more honesty to pass over in
silence and let the world judge of what is well known." As to wilful
poverty, the regulars, it is urged, were not poor, but rich, for they
were in possession of much wealth. Their property, it is true, was held
_in communi_, and not personally, but nevertheless it was practically
theirs, and they used it for their personal enjoyment; and "for all
their riches they might never help father nor mother, nor others that
were indeed very needy and poor, without the license of their father
abbot" or other head. This was the negative position. The pos