But the facts remain as they have been stated by the Archbishop. There is poverty; there is distress; the community suffers grievous loss while strong men lose their power to work and hearts are hardened by want. All the time “out relief is administered so as to foster and encourage dirt, disease, and immorality, and the workhouse accommodation for the aged is in some cases so dreary as to be absolutely appalling, while in others it is palatial”. The Archbishop “absolutely challenged the statement that these difficulties could be met except by a new system under a new law”. The whole evidence showed that things are radically wrong, and rendered it impossible to argue that “we are getting on well enough”. Mr. Burns rests in the progress under the Guardians’ administration during the last sixty years. “In-door pauperism has dropped from 62 to 26 per 1000, out-door pauperism from 54 to 16, and child pauperism from 26 to 7 per 1000,” while “the cost per head of in-door paupers has risen from £7 18s. to £13 5s. and out-door pauperism from £3 11s. to £6 1s. 5d.” Striking figures, but they do not alter the facts which the inquiries of the Commissioners have brought to light. There are still workhouses which are hot-beds of corruption; there are still thousands of children brought up under pauper influences, which the boasted education for a few hours a week in an elementary school cannot stem; there are still feeble-minded people of both sexes who, for want of care, increase the number of lunatics and criminals; there are still thousands of children who cannot be properly clothed or fed on the pittance of out relief; there are still strong men and women, stirred by a deterrent system to become enemies of society, and to defy, by idleness, the authority which would, by severity, force them to work. Let any one whose mind Mr. Burns’s figures satisfy dip into the pages of the Poor Law Commission Report, and certainly his heart will be indignant. “No greater indictment” it has been truly said, “has ever been published against our civilization.”