[Sidenote: 5. Reasons for failure under the Commonwealth to restore the old state of things.] This disorganisation, we have seen, was owing to the Civil War. It is easy to see that when the war was ended, it would be difficult to restore the old state of things because the old conditions were altered. The Privy Council after the Restoration had a much less paternal method of governing, and moreover the nation had outgrown the old methods of organisation: the Council of State of the Commonwealth did however try to restore some of the old remedies. But under the Commonwealth the justices could no longer have been as efficient instruments for carrying out the poor law as before. Many of those who had formerly had most local influence were in banishment or disgrace; others had lost heavily by the sacrifices made for the war. Probably those who remained were chiefly interested in the more exciting political and religious questions of the time. But without an energetic Council and vigorous and powerful justices acting in sympathy with them, the administration of the poor law had been ineffectual in the reign of Elizabeth and in that of James I. We should therefore expect the same result under the Commonwealth and Charles II., except for the difference made by the ten years in which the relief of the poor had been efficient. The whole of the improvement was not lost, but enough of it to show how much the execution of the law had depended on the Book of Orders, and enough to make the poor relief granted in the years immediately preceding the war different from that of any future time. [Sidenote: 6. History of Legislation on poor relief in Scotland.] We will now briefly glance at the history of poor relief in Scotland. Prof. Ashley has shown us that poor laws were not at first peculiarly English institutions. In every country of Western Europe like difficulties seem to have occurred at about the same time. Every one of these countries was developing in new industrial and commercial directions, and all were becoming more peaceably and quietly governed. France, Germany, Holland and Scotland were alike troubled with unemployed vagrants and unrelieved poor. The monastic houses and hospitals under the old system certainly failed to cure the evil, perhaps they only increased it. Municipal regulations and state laws dealing with beggars and almsgiving therefore appear alike in France, Germany, Scotland, and England, and at about the same time[671]. [671] Ashley, _Economic History_, Vol. II., p. 346 sqq. In the sixteenth century the history of poor relief in Scotland and in France is so like that of England as to suggest similar conditions or possibly conscious imitation. In all three countries it is a history of successive enactments in which the legal right of the poor to relief is created, and in which more and more pressure is employed to obtain the necessary funds. [Sidenote: 6 _a_. History of legislation in Scotland before 1597.]