ABSTRACT
In England parishes had imposed taxes for the relief of the poor since the Tudors, and the money raised had sometimes been used to supplement the low wages of agricultural laborers. The emphasis of the Poor Law Report, which enunciated the principles incorporated in the law of 1834, was to get and keep the able-bodied off relief. The impotent poor –those unable to work –remained a parish charge, but young children of the able-bodied were consigned to workhouses until released by apprenticeship. Acceptance of relief, far from degrading the recipients, strengthens them by protecting them from misery and death and enables them to avoid resort to charity, violence, or breach of law. Writers –Trollope for one –find it difficult to make conventional charity and morality interesting. Mr. Harding in The Warden is interesting because he is not, as people might expect someone in his position would be, selfish and corrupt.
