practically unchanged for 230 years, up to the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.
Within a few years of its enactment a flood of pamphlets and publications upon the question of poor relief began and continued through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sir F. Eden gives a list of some 300 of these, making all sorts of proposals for the improvement of the methods of dealing with the poor, and putting forward a host of schemes many of them almost identical with some of those proposed to-day. Upon three points they are unanimous, viz., as to the increasing misery of the poor, the increasing burden of taxation, and the failure of the existing law. They differ, indeed, as to the causes of the evil, some ascribing it to the law itself, others to the administration of the law. They are marked throughout by a strong vein of humanity, and amongst their writers may be found the names of the best men of the day, whose names are familiar even now to all of us, such as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, John Locke, author of the "Essay on the Human Understanding," and these names are sufficient indication that the best brains of two centuries applied themselves to the subject. It is impossible to do more than glance at a few of these pamphlets. In 1622 we have one entitled "Grievous Grones of the poor by a well wisher who wisheth that the poore of England might be so provided for that none need go a begging": in 1646 "Stanleyes Remedy wherein is shown that Sodomes sin of idleness is the poverty and misery of this Kingdom": in 1673 a pamphlet entitled " The grand concern of the nation explained," and which estimates the poor rate at £840,000." This (it says) is employed only to maintain idle persons; doth great harm rather than good; makes a world of poor more than there would otherwise have been … men and women growing so proud and idle that they will not work, but lie upon the parish where they dwell for maintenance." Sir Matthew Hale says pithily of the Act of Elizabeth: "The plaister is not so
