Note 285 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

Letters addressed by the Poor Law Commissioners to the Secretary of State respecting the Transaction of the Business of the Commission, 1847, House of Commons, No. 148 of 1847, pp. 30-1.

It is therefore more correct to treat, as Mr. Mackay does, the policy of abolishing outdoor relief to all classes as a further development of the "principles of 1834," rather than as part of them. "The administrative success of the Act of 1834," he writes, "consists in the fact that the offer of the workhouse served quite as well as an absolute refusal of relief. It obliged the able-bodied to assume responsibility for the able-bodied period of life; and, as we shall presently see, it is now argued that an application of the same principle to the other responsibilities of life would produce equally advantageous results.... That the able-bodied period of life must be responsible for the period that is not able-bodied is an incontrovertible proposition. But the first step, at that date the only practicable step, in recreating the personal responsibility of the labourer, was to hold him responsible for the able-bodied period of his own life" (History of the English Poor Law, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii., pp. 137 and 154).