Poor Law

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.

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, …

One is the provision, at the expense of the tax-payers, of old age pensions, either for every applicant who has attained the age of sixty-five, or for any person of sixty-five who belongs to the indefinable class of the deserving poor.

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