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 difficult to show that some of the most important questions are left unanswered. For example, the several Committees to whom the relief of poverty is to be entrusted will "provide, under suitable conditions and safeguards to be embodied in Statutes and regulative Orders, for the several classes of persons committed to their charge, whatever treatment they may deem most appropriate to their condition." But we have in the Report no clear statement of what these conditions and safeguards are to be; all we know is that they are to be laid down at some future period. We know indeed that the Committees are not to be bound by any of the automatic tests of 1834, and we are given to understand that there are still some conditions and safeguards to be "embodied in regulations and statutes." Surely we ought to know what these are to be.

The Registrar. In the next place the position of the Registrar is far from clear. We naturally ask ourselves whether his control, which is the sole check upon the powers of the Committees, is likely to be an effective substitute for the older automatic checks which are now to be discarded, and we cannot see that this is likely to be the case.

First, it is noticeable that his power in the matter of "home aliment" is only to be a power of revision. The original decision is arrived at by the local executives which the Minority are pleased to call the "many-headed" body. It would appear likely that the original decision will prevail in the vast majority of cases, and that the sanction of the Registrar will, except in extreme cases, be little more than a formality. This view is borne out by the fact that the Registrar will have "nothing to do with the treatment of the case" (p. 1111), but the