oked at it, till it made it impossible. The most remarkable is that of
the Poor Law. The administration of that law is not now very good, but
it is not too much to say that almost the whole of its goodness has
been preserved by its having an official and party protector in the
House of Commons. Without that contrivance we should have drifted back
into the errors of the old Poor Law, and superadded to them the present
meanness and incompetence in our large towns. All would have been given
up to local management. Parliament would have interfered with the
central board till it made it impotent, and the local authorities would
have been despotic. The first administration of the new Poor Law was by
"Commissioners"--the three kings of Somerset House, as they were
called. The system was certainly not tried in untrustworthy hands. At
the crisis Mr. Chadwick, one of the most active and best administrators
in England, was the secretary and the motive power: the principal
Commissioner was Sir George Lewis, perhaps the best selective
administrator of our time. But the House of Commons would not let the
Commission alone. For a long time it was defended because the Whigs had
made the Commission, and felt bound as a party to protect it. The new
law started upon a certain intellectual impetus, and till that was
spent its administration was supported in a rickety existence by an
abnormal strength. But afterwards the Commissioners were left to their
intrinsic weakness. There were members for all the localities, but
there were none for them. There were members for every crotchet and
corrupt interest, but there were none for them. The rural guardians
would have liked to eke out wages by rates; the city guardians hated
control, and hated to spend money. The Commission had to be dissolved,
and a Parliamentary head was added; the result is not perfect, but it
is an amazing improvement on what would have happened in the old
system. The new system has not worked well because the central
authority has too little power; but under the previous system the
central authority was getting to have, and by this time would have had,
no power at all. And if Sir George Lewis and Mr. Chadwick could not
maintain an outlying department in the face of Parliament, how unlikely
that an inferior compound of discretion and activity will ever maintain
it!

These reasonings show why a changing Parliamentary head, a head
changing as the Ministry changes, is a necessit