e system of poor-law relief, and report to the Government as
to the best means for its reorganization. Such a commission was
appointed and set at once to its work. Among the commissioners and the
assistant-commissioners nominated for the purpose were some men whose
names are well remembered in our own days. One of those was Mr. Nassau
Senior, a man of great ability and wide practical information, who
distinguished himself in many other fields of literary work, as well as
that which belonged to what may be called the literature of pure
economics. Another was Mr. Edwin (afterwards Sir Edwin) Chadwick, who
was a living and an active presence, until a very short time ago, among
those who devoted themselves to the study and the propagation of what are
called social science principles, and whose work was highly valued by so
well qualified a critic as John Stuart Mill. The commission made careful
inquiry into the operation of the poor-law relief system, and presented a
report which marked an epoch in our social history, and might well have a
deep interest even for the casual student of to-day. The result of the
inquiries made was such as to satisfy the commissioners that the
administration of the poor law had increased the evils of pauperism,
wherever it found them already in existence, and had created and fostered
evils of the same kind, even in regions which had not known them before
they were touched by its contagion. The report of the commissioners
pronounced that the existing system of poor law was "destructive to the
industry and honesty and forethought of the laborers, to the wealth and
morality of the employers of labor and the owners of property, and to the
mutual good-will and happiness of all." This may be thought a very
sweeping condemnation, but the more closely the evidence is studied the
more clearly it will be seen that where the poor-relief system had any
effect worth taking into calculation this was the sort of effect it
produced. The real objects of the legalized poor-law relief system were
well and even liberally described in the report of the {226}
commissioners. The object of poor relief, as the commissioners defined
it, should be to make provision for that proportion, to be found in
almost every community, which is plunged into such a condition of
distress that it never can hope to be self-supporting again, and for that
more fluctuating proportion made up of those who at the time are unable
to su