ANTI-PAUPERISM 
7167 
enquiries had been instituted by a Select Committee in 1817 ; AD Jr 
but no useful result accrued from their labours, Matters 
dragged on till the Reformed Parliament set to work to 
investigate the subject with characteristic energy, and a 
Royal Commission was appointed in 1832. 
The Report of the Commission! testifies to the most 
curious variety in regard to the machinery for the adminis- under 
sration of relief in different districts? and to the disastrous forms 7 
results of the policy which had been generally pursueds, 24min 
There were some exceptions which proved the rule. At 
Southwell in Nottinghamshire, Sir George Nicholls had 
given great attention to the management of the work- 
house ; under his advice out-door relief was refused to the 
able-bodied, and given but rarely to others. The rates 
were reduced by this means between 1820 and 1823 from 
£2,006 to £517, and they remained at the latter figures, 
Similar experience was adduced from Bingham and Cookham 
and Hatfield’, where the able-bodied men were only al- 
lowed the opportunity of work at less than the current 
rates of wages; but on the other hand there were parishes 
where the pauper appeared to be supreme. At Cholesbury 
in Buckinghamshire, the poor-rate had risen from £10. 11s. 
in 1801 to £367 in 1832. Here the whole land was offered 
to the assembled poor, but they thought it wiser to decline 
and have it worked for their advantage on the old system. 
This was an extreme instance of an evil that existed in 
different degrees throughout the country generally. The 
Report of the Commissioners helps us to understand how 
this disastrous state of affairs had been brought about; their 
suggestions as to remedial legislation were based on a careful 
diagnosis of the nature of the disease. 
The whole machinery which had been created by the 
Elizabethan statute had got out of working order; the 
control which had been exercised by the Council in the period 
4 Report from Commissioners for inquiring into the Administration and 
Practical Operation of the Poor Laws. (Reports, etc., 1834, xxvir.) 
3 Many parishes retained the Elizabethan system, some were incorporated 
ander Gilbert's Act, and some had private Acts. See p. 578 above. 
! See above, 719 n. 3. 
+ Nicholls, Hist. of Poor Law, 11. 229, 230; Becher, The Anti-pauper System 
1828), 18 & Reports, 1834, xxvx. 6 Ashcrott. op. eit. 82.