Dissatisfaction with Poor-Law administration has steadily increased in the years since 1834, as the problem of the able-bodied pauper has diminished and the Poor Law has been concerned more and more with the sick and infirm, the aged, and children. These at the present time form some 98 per cent. of the total population relieved. The fundamental principles of the Poor Law were rightly attacked. It did not comprise elements tending to build up disabled families, or to prevent families from falling hopelessly and permanently into destitution. The law was administered almost entirely with a view to _relief_; practically not at all as a _curative_ agency. In medical language, symptomatic and not rational causal treatment was the rule. In medical relief, poor-law administration has been a constant struggle between increasingly humane treatment and the conception that the pauper’s position must remain inferior to that of the non-pauper; an important principle when applied to the able-bodied adult who has drifted into willing dependence; mischievous when applied to sick persons, and to dependent women and children. The general dissatisfaction with poor-law administration led to the appointment of a Royal Commission on the Poor-Laws which, after several years’ deliberation, published in 1909 a majority and a minority report. Both these reports recommended the abolition of boards of guardians, and the transfer of their duties to the 144 largest public health authorities in the country (County Councils, 44; and the Councils of county boroughs, 82), and the abolition of the general workhouse. The majority report would have continued the Poor-Law Guardians as a Committee of the new Authority; the minority report proposed to distribute the duties of the guardians to different committees of the Public Health Authority; thus medical treatment to the Public Health Committee; the care of lunacy and the feeble-minded to the Asylum Committee; care of children to the Education Committee; vagrants, etc., to the Police Committee; a special committee concerning itself with all questions of monetary assistance.