172 LAISSEZ FAIRE
A.D. 1776 should be introduced, as the condition of the existing houses,
—18%0- especially in small parishes, was disgraceful in the extreme’,
The Poor The Act of 1834, which embodied the recommendations of
Law Oom- the Commissioners in a less stringent form than they would
themselves have desired, was passed by large majorities®
The new system did not get into complete working order for
nearly ten years; but during that period, local administration
was transferred to Boards of Guardians, elected for the pur-
pose in each newly constituted union, and they employed
salaried relieving officers’, A central authority was created in
the Poor Law Commissioners, who were charged with the ad-
ministration and control of public relief, and were empowered
to make rules for the management of the poor, the government
of workhouses, and the education and apprenticeship of poor
children. Much of their time, during the first years of the
Commission, was taken up with the formation of unions of
parishes for the provision of workhouses, with introducing a
proper classification of the inmates, and similar regulations in
regard to discipline and diet, and with the laying down of
orders in regard to the administration of relief. They were
also given power to remove any workhouse master and any
paid officer for incompetence, and without their permission
no salaried officer might be dismissed. In this way the per-
manent officials were taught to look to the central government
for orders rather than to the local board. Permanence was
assured to them only if they obeyed the orders of the central
government. The Act further directed the Commissioners
reformed
the work-
houses
1 A. Young, Conduct of Workhouses, 1798, in Annals, xxx. 887. Also the
following remarks of the Commissioners. * In sach parishes, when overburthened
with poor, we usually find the building called a workhouse occupied by 60 or 80
paupers, made up of a dozen or more neglected children (under the care, perhaps,
of a pauper), about twenty or thirty able-bodied adult paupers of both sexes, and
probably an equal number of aged and impotent persons, proper objects of relief.
Amidst these the mothers of bastard children and prostitutes live without shame,
and associate freely with the youth, who have also the examples and conversation
of the frequent inmates of the county gaol, the poacher, the vagrant, the decayed
beggar, and other characters of the worst description. To these may often be
added a solitary blind person, one or two idiots, and not unirequently are heard,
from amongst the rest, the incessant ravings of some neglected lunatic. In such
receptacles the sick poor are often immured.” Reports. 1834, XxViI. 170.
$ 4 and 5 Will. IV. ¢. 76.
8 Under the new régime the overseer was relieved of much of his responsibility
and sank into the position of a rate-collector.
