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cise any authority over the guardians of the different unions was received, and if they doubt the evidence given by witnesses opposed to the Poor Law Board, they have only to read the evidence given by the officers connected with the Board itself. One of the most able officers connected with the Poor Law Board, in answer to a question about the resistance offered to the Poor Law Board, said: "My experience obliges me to say that they resist any order, or almost any suggestion which is made to them; they eventually, perhaps, submit, and do as they are requested to do after a considerable number of letters have been written." And when asked: "Have they not gradually submitted in many cases?" he replied, "They do submit, when you have gone to law with them, and they are beaten; but I am quite satisfied that I am right in saying that this species of hostility to the central authority has prevented some of the rules and regulations of the Poor Law Board, and very wholesome rules and regulations, those which have acted well elsewhere, being sent to these places." This will be found at page 112 of the First Report of the Select Committee on Poor Relief, published in April 1861.
While suggesting a remedy for this state of things, I cannot conceal from the House my opinion that though reforms in the administration of the poor law may check the pauperism of this country, and may even tend to effect a considerable diminution in it, we shall after all have to make a change in the principle on which we have acted. But for this change, I fear, the country is not yet prepared. I do not think that it is a sound or beneficial principle that a pauper, however indolent and however vicious, should have an absolute right to relief at the expense of the industrial portion of the community. That principle is not recognized in Scotland, and yet people do not starve there. But it is contended that it is a hard proposition to refuse to the pauper, whatever may be his moral qualities, that absolute right to relief which he now possesses. I can only say from my own experience, derived from an intimate acquaintance with the crowded streets and courts of a large town and its workhouses, I would infinitely rather that those for whom I care most in the "world should be exposed to any amount of physical suffering, or even to death itself, than be subjected to the degradation and temptations which are inseparable from the system at present adopted in our large towns, under which multitudes of our working classes are continually
