and adaptation of any or all of these, which Parliament seems to have contemplated. The second limitation seems at first sight more serious. The Central Authority could not order any greater expenditure, on building or enlarging any workhouse, or sanction the borrowing for this purpose of any larger sum, than the average amount of the last three years' Poor Rate[189]--a limitation which, as we have seen, was, in 1844, repealed so far as the purchase of sites in the Metropolitan Police District and the parish of Liverpool was concerned.[190] But there was at no time any limitation to the aggregate amount of the expenditure out of Poor Rate that might be incurred by the local authority, or that might, with or without its consent, be ordered by the Central Authority to be spent, on the enlargement or adaptation of its various existing workhouses, provided that not more than the statutory maximum was spent on any one of them. In view of the strong objection expressed in the 1834 Report to the mixing of different kinds of paupers in a single institution,[191] and the positive recommendation, in preference, of distinct institutions, in separate buildings, with specialised rules and under different managements, for the several kinds of paupers[192]--for which it was expressly pointed out that the existing buildings were to be adapted[193]--these sections of the Act of 1834 indicate an intention of Parliament (as it certainly was the intention of the authors of the Report of 1834) that each union should have several small institutions, and should assign to those workhouses "separate classes of poor."[194] [186] p. 313 of Report of 1834 (reprint of 1905). [187] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 23. [188] _Ibid._ sec. 25. [189] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 24. [190] See _ante_, p. 19. [191] pp. 306, 307, 313 of Report of 1834. [192] _Ibid._ pp. 306, 307. [193] _Ibid._ p. 313. [194] _Ibid._ p. 314. It is startling to find that the Central Authority, between 1834 and 1847, pursued an entirely different policy. The published documents for this period do not afford any explanation of this difference. They do not show, for instance, whether it meant the deliberate adoption of a new policy, or whether it resulted merely from a discovery that the recommendations of the Report were impracticable in the rural unions. The documents simply assume the necessity for the establishment in each union, not of a group of specialised workhouses for the different classes, but of one institution, to be called "The Union Workhouse," for the paupers as a whole.