relief is concerned. "No encouragement whatever," they say, "should be given to any distribution of food, clothes, or money in the homes of the poor by voluntary charity" (p. 1022). They would thus throw everything that is now done by voluntary chanty at the home upon the rates. It is strange that, after all the evidence that they have received as to the evils of outdoor relief, both now and in the past, that they should give it this preference over charity. The truth may be that voluntary charity is incompatible with the Socialist ideals.
Conclusion.
The Minority then invite us to pass a sponge over the slate of Poor Law history from 1601 onwards; to discard all experience; to set at nought the teaching and conclusions of all responsible writers upon the Poor Law; and, more particularly, to reverse the "principles of 1834." And yet many eminent thinkers of wide experience have endorsed those principles. Mr Gladstone, shortly before his death, told us that the Poor Law of 1834 "rescued the English peasantry from the total loss of its independence" (Life, vol. i., p. 115), and Mr Gladstone had lived under both the old Poor Law and the new. The evidence before the present Commissioners shows that since the reform of 1834 rural able-bodied pauperism has almost disappeared, which is no small testimony in their favour. Dr Munsterberg, the eminent director of poor relief in Berlin, has told us in his evidence that in Germany they have adopted the principle of "less eligibility," which is at the root of the principles of 1834. Yet, in spite of all this, we are asked to embark upon a revolutionary scheme of "constructive Socialism," which is contrary to all experience,
