ral board established,
next came the powers of the commissioners. He proposed one uniform
system operating over the whole country, in order to obtain which they
were to have power to make general rules and orders as to the mode of
relief, and for the regulation of workhouses, and the mode of relief
afforded therein. As a check against any abuse, every such rule, order,
or regulation so proposed by the commissioners would be submitted to the
secretary-of-state: forty days were to elapse before it could be brought
into operation, and during that period it should be competent, by an
order in council, issued for that purpose, to prevent it from being
carried into effect. The commissioners would further have power, he
said, to make specific rules and orders for the regulation and mode of
relief of the poor in separate districts and parishes: to form unions of
parishes, in order to make larger districts; to arrange classifications
of the poor in the same or different workhouses; to exercise a general
control in such unions as might be established without their consent;
and to dissolve unions which might now exist. Unions having been
formed, each parish in the union would have to maintain its own poor,
or contribute to the general fund the proportion of expense which it had
hitherto borne by itself. The commissioners would likewise have power
to call the attention of parishes and unions to the state of their
workhouse establishments, and to suggest to them the propriety of adding
to those formed, or of building separate and distinct establishments.
Another fertile source of mischief had been the practice of ordering
relief to the poor in their own houses. The bill would provide that
justices should have no power for the future, thus bringing back the
law to the state in which it had been previous to the year 1796. Other
features of the bill, he explained, consisted in simplifying the law of
settlement and removal; in rendering the mother of an illegitimate child
liable for its support, and, for its ailment, to save from imprisonment
the putative father to whom she might swear it. The great principles
of the proposed plan, therefore, went to stop the allowance system;
to deprive the magistracy of the power of ordering out-door relief; to
alter, in certain cases, the constitution of parochial vestries; to give
large discretionary powers to the commissioners; to simplify the law
of settlement and removal; and to render the mother o