he attempt had been made to
introduce state relief in reliance on voluntary alms (1 Mary 13, 5
Eliz. 3, 1562-1563), subject to the right of assessment if alms were
refused. But the position was anomalous. Charity is voluntary, and
spontaneously meets the demands of distress. Such demands have always
a tendency to increase with the supply. Hence the very limitations of
charitable finance are in the nature of a safeguard. At most economic
trouble can only be assuaged by relief, and it can only be met or
prevented by economic and social reforms. If a compulsory rate be not
enforced, as in Scotland and formerly in some parishes in England, a
voluntary rate may be made in supplementation of the local charities.
In Scotland, where the compulsory clauses of the Poor Relief Act of
James I. were not put in force, the country weathered the storm
without them, and the compulsory rate, which was extended throughout
the country by the Poor Act of 1844, came in very slowly in the 18th
and 19th centuries. In France (1566) a similar act was passed and set
aside. If a compulsory rate be enforced, it is inevitable that the
resources of charity, unless kept apart from the poor-law and
administered on different lines from it, will diminish, and at the
same time, as has happened often in the case of endowed charities, the
interest in charitable administration will lapse, while the charges
for poor-law relief, drawn without much scruple from the taxation of
the community, will mount to millions either to meet increasing
demands or to provide more elaborate institutional accommodation. The
principle once adopted, it was enacted (1572-1573) that the aged and
infirm should be cared for by the overseers of the poor, a new
authority; and in 1601 the duplicate acts were passed, that for the
relief of the poor (43 Eliz. 2), and that for the furtherance and
protection of endowed charities. Thus the poor were brought into the
dependence of a legally recognized class, endowed with a claim for
relief, on the fulfilment of which, after a time, they could without
difficulty insist if they were so minded. The civic authority had
indeed taken over the alms of the parish, and an _eleemosyna civica_
had taken the place of the _annona civica_. It was a similar system
under a different name.

Poor Relief Acts and statutory serfdom.

A phrase of Robert Cecil's (1st earl of Salisbury) indic