the orders of the Central Authority. Though the Acts of Parliament are numerous--one or two for every session--they relate principally to the machinery of administration,[286] and (except in the case of children) deal only slightly with policy. Parliament had, in fact, ceased to be interested in the Poor Law, and furnished for many years practically neither independent criticism nor initiative. "The Poor Law Board," observed Sir George Cornewall Lewis in 1851, "has now become purely administrative and has no character or policy of its own."[287] It got from Parliament just what additional powers it chose to ask for.[288] We may therefore include in one analysis both the statutes and the orders relating to relief policy. [286] It is a noticeable fact that certain classes of paupers are never mentioned in the legislation of this period, presumably because Parliament was satisfied with the result of giving wide powers to the Central Authority, and did not wish to interfere with its discretion. Apparently there is no single clause dealing with the treatment either of the able-bodied or of the aged. Women are almost equally ignored, wives only being referred to, and they merely in connection with questions of chargeability, and in such a way as to indicate their complete dependence on their husbands. Children, on the other hand, are the subject of numerous enactments, and the sick, lunatics and vagrants also obtain recognition. [287] Lewis to Head, 19th May 1851, in _Letters of Sir G. C. Lewis_, edited by Sir G. F. Lewis, 1870, p. 245.