With regard to the non-able-bodied classes--the children, the sick and the aged--who now comprise four-fifths of the whole pauperism, it is hardly too much to say that the precisely opposite principle has been adopted, that of permitting experimental variations by the 646 boards of guardians. The maintenance of children in a general workhouse, in "barrack schools," in cottage homes, in scattered homes, in certified schools or institutions, in families within the union, in families outside the union, with their relatives on a boarding-out allowance or with their own parents on outdoor relief--at a cost to the rates varying from 1s. up to more than 20s. per head per week--are all policies actually in operation in one union or another, to the knowledge and with the permission of the Central Authority. No one of them is prescribed or universally recommended to the exclusion of the others. The same may be said of the policy for the sick. Workhouse sick wards, separate infirmaries of general character, specialised hospitals and sanatoria for particular diseases, subsidies to voluntary institutions, dispensaries, and domiciliary treatment, with or without nurses, are among the different ways of relieving the destitute sick which different boards of guardians are authorised to adopt, according to their fancies or to the circumstances of their unions. The aged are less open to experimental variations, but even here we find the "workhouse test," the comfortable aged ward, the special "almshouses" for the well-conducted, and the grant of adequate outdoor relief to every "deserving" person, all recommended to different boards of guardians, simultaneously or alternately, by order, letter, or inspector's advice. A minor uniformity insisted on in the 1834 Report concerned the grant of outdoor relief. The Report emphatically pointed out that, in the award of outdoor relief, any attempt to discriminate according to merit was dangerous and likely to lead to fraud. This was promptly given up as regards women in the policy of discriminating between chaste and unchaste. With regard to the aged, the policy of non-discrimination according to merit or character has not only been abandoned by the Central Authority, but even expressly condemned, boards of guardians being now directed to give adequate outdoor relief to all deserving aged persons. The Unemployed Workmen Act carries this contrary policy of discrimination according to merit into the class of the able-bodied. Only with regard to the wayfarer does the Central Authority still adhere to the policy of an undiscriminating uniform refusal of outdoor relief to all applicants irrespective of merit. (ii.) _The Principle of Less Eligibility_