Guardians, elected by taxpayers, assembles on an appointed day in the
residence of the Union and decides upon the granting of relief. These
boards are coordinated and supervised by officials of the Government,
the Central Commission of Somerset House, the Ministry of Pauperism,
Frenchman has aptly described it. The capital which this
administration supervises is almost equal to the amount which the
French War Office costs. The number of local administrations which it
employs amounts to 500, and each of these local administrations keeps
at least twelve officials busy.

The English Parliament did not stop short at the mere reform of the
administration.

The chief source of the acute state of English pauperism it found in
the poor law itself. Benevolence, which is the legal remedy for social
crime, favours social crime. As regards pauperism in general, it is
an eternal natural law, according to the theory of Malthus: "As the
population unceasingly tends to overstep the means of subsistence,
benevolence is folly, a public encouragement to poverty. The State can
therefore do nothing more than leave poverty to its fate and at the
most soften death for the poor." With this amiable theory the English
Parliament combines the opinion that pauperism is poverty for which
the worker is himself responsible. It should therefore not be regarded
as a misfortune, but rather be suppressed and punished as a crime.

Thus the workhouse system arose, that is, the houses of the poor,
whose internal arrangements deter the poverty-stricken from seeking a
refuge from starvation. In the workhouse benevolence is ingeniously
combined with the revenge of the bourgeoisie upon the poor who appeal
to its charity.

England, therefore, at first attempted to destroy pauperism by
benevolence and administrative measures. Then it perceived in the
progressive increase of pauperism, not the necessary consequence of
modern industry, but rather the consequence of the English poor rate.
It regarded the universal distress as nothing more than a peculiarity
of English legislation. What was formerly ascribed to the lack of
charity was now attributed to a superfluity of charity. Finally,
poverty was regarded as the fault of the poor, and punished as such.

The general significance to which pauperism has attained in political
England is limited to the fact that, in course of development, in
spite of the administrative measures, pauperism has grown into a
national