obtain by their own exertions."[184] [184] Special Report of Poor Law Commissioners on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 47. _I._--_Non-Residents_ A new class of persons arises in the documents after 1834, namely those who are not residing in the parish or union to which they apply for relief. There had grown up a custom under the old Poor Law by which, in order to save the expense and hardships of removal, parishes agreed to grant outdoor relief to persons belonging to them by settlement, who were residing elsewhere. The Central Authority set itself to restrict this practice. By various of its early Orders it prohibited it altogether, and at once (with the usual exceptions of sickness, accident, and urgent necessity) in the case of able-bodied male persons between sixteen and sixty. It prohibited it as regards all new cases for all other persons with the same exceptions.[185] Between this date and 1844 we find the same series of exceptions allowed to this general prohibition as in the case of outdoor relief to the able-bodied and their families; and these exceptions became stereotyped in Art. 3 of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844 (still in force). [185] p. 85 of First Annual Report, 1835. _J._--_The Workhouse_ As we have shown, the Act of 1834 and the subsequent legislation left to the Central Authority complete discretion as to the kind of indoor maintenance to be provided for the destitute by the local authority. In view of the fact that the action taken between 1834 and 1847--culminating in the General Consolidated Order of 1847, which is still in force--determined, in the main, the character of the modern workhouse, it is necessary to analyse in some detail exactly what the policy was which the Central Authority in these years imposed from one end of England to another. The common understanding at the time was, we believe, that the policy to be carried out was that of the 1834 Report. Two limitations only were imposed on the power of the Central Authority in this respect. The building of entirely new workhouses--which the Report had thought would not be requisite in many instances[186]--was dependent on the assent either of a majority of the board of guardians or of a majority of the rated owners and occupiers.[187] The Central Authority was, however, empowered, without any local consent, peremptorily to order a local authority to enlarge or alter any existing workhouse or building capable of being converted into a workhouse; subject to the limitation that the principal sum to be raised on any parish could not exceed £50, or one-tenth of the average Poor Rate of the last three years.[188] As every board of guardians in the United Kingdom found itself in possession of several parish workhouses--sometimes of a large number of such buildings--it was within the statutory power of the Central Authority, even without local consent, to have given directions for the moderate enlargement