Lord Grey, now that Parliamentary Reform had been conceded, was developing into an easy-going aristocratic Whig of somewhat contracted sympathies, and Stanley, though still in the Cabinet, was apparently determined to administer the affairs of Ireland on the most approved Tory principles. Althorp, Russell, and Duncannon were men whose sympathies leaned more or less decidedly in the opposite direction, and therefore, especially with O'Connell thundering at the gates with the Irish people and the English Radicals at his back, a deadlock was inevitable. Durham, in ill health and chagrin, and irritated by the stationary, if not reactionary, attitude of certain members of the Grey Administration, resigned office in the spring of 1833. Goderich became Privy Seal, and this enabled Stanley to exchange the Irish Secretaryship for that of the Colonies. He had driven Ireland to the verge of revolt, but he had nevertheless made an honest attempt to grapple with many practical evils, and his Education Bill was a piece of constructive statesmanship which placed Roman Catholics on an equality with Protestants. Early in the session of 1834 Althorp introduced the Poor Law Amendment Act, and the measure was passed in July. The changes which it brought about were startling, for its enactments were drastic. This great economic measure came to the relief of a nation in which 'one person in every seven was a pauper.' The new law limited relief to destitution, prohibited out-door help to the able-bodied, beyond medical aid, instituted tests to detect imposture, confederated parishes into unions, and substituted large district workhouses for merely local shelters for the destitute. In five years the poor rate was reduced by three millions, and the population, set free by the new interpretation of 'Settlement,' were able, in their own phrase, to follow the work and to congregate accordingly wherever the chance of a livelihood offered. One great question followed hard on the heels of another.