Fortunately we are not left to conjecture in this matter. In 1847, on the eve of their transformation into the Poor Law Board, the Commissioners (then Sir George Nicholls, Sir George Cornewall Lewis and Sir Edmund Head) put officially on record what in their view had been the intention of the legislature in passing the Act of 1834, and what, in this respect, had been their own consistent policy. In a special report to the Home Secretary in 1847, they declare that: "In exercising the discretion entrusted to them by the legislature, the Commissioners have been placed between two extreme opinions with respect to the manner of framing their regulations. On the one hand, it is held that the main object of the Poor Law Amendment Act is the extinction or repression of outdoor relief _generally_ (and not merely of the outdoor relief of the _able-bodied_), with the consequent diminution of the expenditure from the poor's rate; and that the Commissioners ought to proceed to the accomplishment of this end with little regard to public opinion. On the other hand, it is asserted that the existing law, and the regulations made under it, have gone much too far in the limitation of the outdoor relief of the able-bodied, have effected too great a reduction in the amount of pauperism and the expenditure for the relief of the poor, and have thereby deprived the poorer classes of a vested right in the property of the rate-paying part of the community. "The Commissioners have pursued a middle course, almost equally removed from each of these extremes. They have considered the main object of the legislature in passing the Poor Law Amendment Act to have been the extinction of the _allowance system_;[284] or the system of making up the wages of labourers out of the poor's rate. With this view their regulations respecting the limitation of outdoor relief have been almost exclusively confined to the able-bodied in health; and these regulations have been issued particularly to the rural unions inasmuch as it was in the agricultural counties, and not in the large towns or manufacturing districts, that the allowance system was most prevalent, and led to the most dangerous consequences.... The Commissioners ... have to the utmost of their power given effect by their regulations to the views of the legislature."[285] [284] _See_ the preamble to Sec. 52 of the Poor Law Amendment Act. [This footnote, like the italics, is in the original.] [285] Letters addressed by the Poor Law Commissioners to the Secretary of State respecting the Transaction of the Business of the Commission, 1847, House of Commons, No. 148 of 1847, pp. 30-1. In 1847 the Poor Law Commissioners were, by Act of Parliament, abolished, and their duties transferred to the Poor Law Board, under a minister responsible to Parliament.