it, should be to make provision for that proportion, to be found in almost every community, which is plunged into such a condition of distress that it never can hope to be self-supporting again, and for that more fluctuating proportion made up of those who at the time are unable to support themselves, but whom some temporary relief may enable to return to their former condition of independence. In each class of cases it ought to be made equally clear, before public relief were called in, that those in distress, continuous or temporary, had no near relatives in a condition to afford them reasonable assistance without undue sacrifice. Of course it was understood that these conditions included the men and women who, owing to some temporary lack of employment, were actually unable to find the means of living by their own honest labor. The ideas of the commissioners were not pedantically economical in their range, nor did they insist that public relief must be given only as the reward of personal integrity when visited by undeserved misfortune. It was freely admitted that even where men and women had allowed themselves, by idleness or carelessness, to sink into actual poverty, it was better to give them temporary relief at the public expense than allow them to take up with the ways of crime, or leave them to pay the penalty of their wrongdoings by death from starvation. But it was strictly laid down that a healthy system of public relief was to help men and women for a time, in order that they might be able to help themselves once again, as soon as possible, and to make provision for those who had done their work and could do no more, and who had no near relatives in a condition to keep them from starvation. The report of the commissioners pointed out that the existing system "collects and chains down the laborers in masses, without any reference to the demand for their labor; that, while it increases their numbers, it impairs the means by which the fund for their subsistence is to be reproduced, and impairs the motives for using those means which it suffers to exist; and that every year and every day these evils are becoming {227} more overwhelming in magnitude and less susceptible of cure." [Sidenote: 1833--Plans to improve the relief system]