Notwithstanding the apparent decisiveness of policy as to vagrants embodied in the Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act of 1864, we find the Central Authority, disturbed by the steady growth of vagrancy throughout the country,[312] still continuing to talk about discrimination. In 1868, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, in announcing that the Poor Law Board contemplated extending to the whole country the Metropolitan system of dealing with vagrants, added, with an inconsistency which we do not understand, that "it would be required ... that guardians should take the responsibility of a sound and vigilant discrimination between deserving travellers in search of work and professional vagrants not really destitute, by the appointment of officers capable of exercising such discrimination; and that, where practicable, the police should be appointed assistant relieving officers. The forthcoming Order would likewise suggest, in cases where it might be practicable, that the accommodation for deserving travellers should be different from that given to professional vagrants."[313] Yet even for the professional vagrant the promiscuous London casual ward of 1864 was not to be extended. "It was," said the President of the Poor Law Board in 1868, "very desirable that ... each person should have a separate or divided bed place."[314] The new policy, which the President seems to have thought was the London policy of 1864, but which was really a revival of Mr. Charles Buller's policy of 1848, was embodied in a Circular, which admittedly reproduced, in all essentials, the Minute of 1848--the necessity of discrimination, the employment of the police, the issue of tickets to genuine honest wayfarers, their comfortable accommodation in workhouses without task of work, and the desirability of uniformity of treatment in the different unions.[315] [312] Reports on Vagrancy made to the President of the Poor Law Board, 1866. [313] Sir M. Hicks Beach, 28th July 1868 (_Hansard_, vol. 193, p. 1910). [314] Sir M. Hicks Beach, 28th July 1868 (_Hansard_, vol. 193, p. 1910). [315] Circular of 28th November, 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 74-76. It is curious that the dietary suggested in this Circular allowed (without explanation), the guardians to give male adults eight ounces of bread and a pint of gruel, whereas the General Order to the Metropolitan Unions of the preceding year had definitely limited adult males to six ounces of bread and a pint of gruel.