ed his weekly relief as
his right, not as a favour, and this became, at last, too much for the
bourgeoisie. In 1833, when the bourgeoisie had just come into power
through the Reform Bill, and pauperism in the country districts had just
reached its full development, the bourgeoisie began the reform of the
Poor Law according to its own point of view. A commission was appointed,
which investigated the administration of the Poor Laws, and revealed a
multitude of abuses. It was discovered that the whole working-class in
the country was pauperised and more or less dependent upon the rates,
from which they received relief when wages were low; it was found that
this system by which the unemployed were maintained, the ill-paid and the
parents of large families relieved, fathers of illegitimate children
required to pay alimony, and poverty, in general, recognised as needing
protection, it was found that this system was ruining the nation, was--

"A check upon industry, a reward for improvident marriage, a stimulus
to increased population, and a means of counterbalancing the effect of
an increased population upon wages; a national provision for
discouraging the honest and industrious, and protecting the lazy,
vicious, and improvident; calculated to destroy the bonds of family
life, hinder systematically the accumulation of capital, scatter that
which is already accumulated, and ruin the taxpayers. Moreover, in
the provision of aliment, it sets a premium upon illegitimate
children."

(Words of the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners.) {286} This
description of the action of the Old Poor Law is certainly correct;
relief fosters laziness and increase of "surplus population." Under
present social conditions it is perfectly clear that the poor man is
compelled to be an egotist, and when he can choose, living equally well
in either case, he prefers doing nothing to working. But what follows
therefrom? That our present social conditions are good for nothing, and
not as the Malthusian Commissioners conclude, that poverty is a crime,
and, as such, to be visited with heinous penalties which may serve as a
warning to others.

But these wise Malthusians were so thoroughly convinced of the
infallibility of their theory that they did not for one moment hesitate
to cast the poor into the Procrustean bed of their economic notions and
treat them with the most revolting cruelty. Convinced with Malthus and
the