The study of political economy was even already beginning to be a part of the education of most men who took any guiding place or even any observant interest in the national life. Writers who dealt with such subjects were beginning to find readers among the general public. Some of the members of Lord Grey's own Administration had taken a close interest in such questions. The whole subject of poor relief and its distribution was one of the earliest which came under the consideration of the Liberal Government after the passing of the Reform Bill. It was clear that something would soon have to be done, and, as the Whig ministers had a good deal of other work on their {225} hands, the natural course, at such a time, was to appoint a commission which should inquire into the whole system of poor-law relief, and report to the Government as to the best means for its reorganization. Such a commission was appointed and set at once to its work. Among the commissioners and the assistant-commissioners nominated for the purpose were some men whose names are well remembered in our own days. One of those was Mr. Nassau Senior, a man of great ability and wide practical information, who distinguished himself in many other fields of literary work, as well as that which belonged to what may be called the literature of pure economics. Another was Mr. Edwin (afterwards Sir Edwin) Chadwick, who was a living and an active presence, until a very short time ago, among those who devoted themselves to the study and the propagation of what are called social science principles, and whose work was highly valued by so well qualified a critic as John Stuart Mill. The commission made careful inquiry into the operation of the poor-law relief system, and presented a report which marked an epoch in our social history, and might well have a deep interest even for the casual student of to-day. The result of the inquiries made was such as to satisfy the commissioners that the administration of the poor law had increased the evils of pauperism, wherever it found them already in existence, and had created and fostered evils of the same kind, even in regions which had not known them before they were touched by its contagion. The report of the commissioners pronounced that the existing system of poor law was "destructive to the industry and honesty and forethought of the laborers, to the wealth and morality of the employers of labor and the owners of property, and to the mutual good-will and happiness of all." This may be thought a very sweeping condemnation, but the more closely the evidence is studied the more clearly it will be seen that where the poor-relief system had any effect worth taking into calculation this was the sort of effect it produced. The real objects of the legalized poor-law relief system were well and even liberally described in the report of the {226} commissioners. The object of poor relief, as the commissioners defined