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 THE AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOR LAW

(1834–1838)

Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was passed with little or no opposition in Parliament in accordance with the report issued by the commission of inquiry appointed in 1832. The provisions of the Act may be divided into two parts, those concerning the new organisation of the system of relief, and those dealing with the principles on which relief was to be administered. The unit of local administration under the new Act was the union of parishes. For each union an elective board of Guardians of the Poor was set up. As the poor rates were exclusively levied upon buildings and land, the franchise was a property franchise admitting of both plural and proxy votes, a system which placed chief control in the hands of the wealthier owners of property. The central administration, created for the first time, was a Parliamentary Commission of three members, whose powers, though wide, were defined by the Act, and whose competence was limited to a period of five years from the passing of the Act. The principles on which relief was to be granted were frankly deterrent. They may be summarised thus: That relief should not be offered to able-bodied persons and their families, otherwise than in a well-regulated workhouse. That the lot of the able-bodied pauper should be made less eligible than that of the worst situated independent labourer outside.

For two years the Commissioners, or rather their secretary, Edwin Chadwick, laboured successfully to introduce the new system into the rural districts. When, however, they commenced operations in the manufacturing areas in 1836, they met with an opposition whose violence and fury grew with the passing of the period of good trade into a period of unparalleled