Poor Law

For example, the whole way in which, during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, men looked at the regulation of labour or the fixing of prices by the State,—a view which finds expression in Tudor legislation, and has the closest connection with the Elizabethan poor law,—is the result of a body of beliefs favouring State intervention in matters of trade no less than in matters of religion, …

it revived, even among the poor, pride in independence, and enforced upon the whole nation the faith that in the battle of life men must rely for success, not upon the aid of the State, but upon self-help.

The strength of this tendency will be best seen by a comparison or contrast between the ideas which produced and characterised the Poor Law reform of 1834, and the ideas which in 1905 have already to a certain extent changed the law, and to a still greater extent modified the administration of poor relief.

while others again defend the poor-laws as a safety valve against revolution, and without any other justification.