Attempts were made to describe this principle of work or maintenance as the logical result of the Elizabethan Statutes, under which parish authorities were bound to provide work for the unemployed at wages paid out of a fund collected from persons of substance in the parish, at first voluntarily subscribed, but later raised by tax, and were accustomed to grant “relief in lieu of labour” to persons out of work, for whom work could not be found. Owing to the difficulty of finding work the overseers resorted largely to the latter alternative. The Labour Party’s Bill, needless to say, omitted the stern Elizabethan methods provided by law for treatment of the work-shy—whipping, boring through the ear—and for those who ran away, imprisonment for life. The social and industrial abuses to which the system gave rise in the early days of the nineteenth century are well described by Mr. Harold Cox in Chapter 5, “The Right to Work,” of his book _Economic Liberty_. It is to be feared Mr. Thomas Pearce (p. 57), labourer in husbandry, who was examined before the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834, would even to-day experience similar treatment. “Asked whether in his parish there were many able-bodied men ‘upon the parish,’ he replied: “_Ans._ There are a great many men in our parish who like it better than being at work. “_Ques._ Why do they like it better? “_Ans._ They get the same money and don’t do half so much work. They don’t work like me; they be’ant at it so many hours, and they don’t do so much work when they be at it. They’re doing no good, and are only waiting for dinner-time and night; they be’ant working, it’s only waiting. “_Ques._ How have you managed to live without parish relief? “_Ans._ By working hard. “_Ques._ What do the paupers say to you? “_Ans._ They blame me for what I do. They say to me, ‘What are you working for?’ I say, ‘For myself.’ They say, ‘You are only doing it to save the parish, and if you didn’t do it you would get the same as another man has, and would get the money for smoking your pipe and doing nothing.’ ’Tis a hard thing for a man like me.” The Failure of Work or Maintenance in France