Pauperism and poverty

Abstract

At the end of 1906 the Vice-regal Commission on Poor Law Reform in Ireland presented its Report and issued a statistical appendix and a volume of evidence running into a thousand closely printed double columns. Three years later a Royal Commission appointed to review the Poor Law of the United Kingdom issued a Majority Report and a Minority Report, and is now in course of publishing some forty volumes of appendices dealing with every phase of public assistance to the poor. Without pretending to have read the whole of this vast material, or to have entirely mastered the details thereof, I wish to invite your attention to the main practical proposals placed before us, and the theories of pauperism by which they are supported. I think it is important that we should reach some understanding of the theories before discussing the proposals. We all bring to the study of the Reports certain views?firmly or loosely held?of legal, economic, and moral dependence.