The Express.
London, England, 1866-08-15 00:00:00

HIGH WATS& AT LONDON BRIDGE,

-..---
Intt DAY —Morning. 4h. 54m Afternoon. Sh. 11m.
To-Yonnow—Morning, sh. YSm Afternoon, Mx 47m.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY. AUGUST 15.

'Paz outspoken jubilations of what may be
termed the party of obstruction are not the least
ominous consequence of the recent proceedings of
the Poor-law Board. It is undoubtedly strange
that alterations professedly made with an eye to
improvement should command the admiration of

men desperately opposed to change; and when

parish official and the consistent advocates of

routine unite in praising, reformers may be par-
doned if they look their gift-horse somewhat
curiously in the mouth. Mr. GATHORNY HARDY
represents that typical quadruped. After many
angry denunciations from fortuitous concourses of
vestrymen, after patient investigations into the
causes of the evils which lay heavy on
the conscience of the country, and just
as the difficulties attending a change were being
generally recognised, the gods sent the present
PIAESIDRNT of the POOR-LAW BOARD upon the
scene. Mr. VlLmass, remembering the interested
opposition with which his Union Chargeability
Bill and the Metropolitan Homeless Poor Act had
been met, had publicly confessed his powers to be
insufficient, and that until definite control over
parish guardians was awarded by Parliament, he
had little hope of effecting any radical or compre-
hensive change. Every independent inquirer,

philanthropist, politician, or publicist, who had
made the Poor-law abuses of London his study,
endorsed a view which constant newspaper re-
ports and the frequent speeches and acts
of parish guardians tended to confirm. An
action in the Court of Queen's Bench
had been the penalty paid by the Poor-law
Board for one of its inspectors attempting to
perform his bounden duty ; official instructions
had been openly defied until public opinion was
brought to bear upon the offenders ; the gauntlet
had been repeatedly thrown down by vestry-mom
oracles. Workhouses were notoriously mis-
managed sick paupers tortured and starved ;
the houseless poor stacked away in noisome holes;
while the rules and regulations, which in theory
made all these things impossible, were quoted
with amazement by those seeking to solve
the difficulty. In the typical cases of Ber-
mondsey, Lambeth, and Clerkenwell, the cen-
tral authority was defied or defrauded.
The indignant questions put by the House
of Commons were met by renewed confessions of
inadequate power ; no man or body of men
seemed directly—that is, penally—responsible for
the inhumanities so frequently proved ; and the
country stood aghast at the shameful fact of the
first duty of the wealthiest and most powerful
city in the world being entrusted to incapablea,
who were too stupid or too corrupt to mend their
ways. Such was the situation when Mr. VILLIZIS
met the influential deputation advocating the cause
of the sick poor, with a frank endorsement of
the charges they preferred. It was then
patent to us all that reform was needed,
and that neither petty interests nor local
dignity must be allowed to impede common jus-
tice. For the argument used by the Archbishop
of YORE, at the initiatory meeting of the Sick
Poor Association, was the one which formed the
common-sense basis of the discussions held. The
poorer class of ratepayers had no guarantee
against ill-treatment if they fell upon evil times,
and it was insisted that to ensure them this was
no less the duty than the policy of the State.
Just as these arguments were known to be
bearing fruit, Mr. HARDY astonished the country
by declaring existing evils to be due, not to the
legal powerlessness, but the personal incapacity of
the late Poor-law Board. Nothing could be
e osier, he argued, than to keep guardians
to their duty ; nothing less difficult than
to ensure proper treatment to paupers. Scandals
had arisen only because the remedies at the com-
mand of the central authority had been neglected ;
and it was with the modest inference that, as a
really able steersman now held the helm, rocks and
breakers would be avoided, that the new Presi-
dent inaugurated his term of office. The transfer
of Mr. FARNALL from the metropolitan to the pro-
vincial district, and the formal refusal to annoy
guardians by an official inquiry into the suspicious
circumstances under which a pauper died, have up
to this time been the only noteworthy incidents of
the new reign. It is, however, widely rumoured
that Mr. FARNALL'S removal is due to
other causes than a wish for unbiassed
information respecting the evils rampant in
the metropolitan district ; and this hypothesis
gains force and strength when the officials who
were assn many thorns in the aide of Mr. Vumeas
are found to be retained in office by his successor.
It would have been far less startling to learn that
an official nonentity had been sent as inspector to
a distant province than that the inspector whose
honest endeavours to carry out the law have
identified him with progress should have been
roughly shelved by (he President, who ostenta-
tiously vaunted himself as a reformer. But in
truth the constitution of the Poor-law Board
needs modification as strongly as the most ill-
conducted board of guardians of them all. At
present a change of Ministry bestows absolute
power upon some gentleman whose party services
entitle him to office. The permanent officials