The setting of the poor to work in this period cannot be judged as if it were part of the system of free competition of modern England. There was little notion of free competition; state and town interfered in wages and in the management of industry; everyone was subject to restrictions in the supposed interests of the nation, and the stocks for the poor were almost a necessary complement of this national organisation of industry. The idea of the time was to maintain a stable condition of affairs; the attempt to find employment for the poor in their slack times corresponded to the measures taken to lower prices in the years of bad harvests and to secure the interests of the employers when labourers were scarce and wages rising. Whatever effect these attempts may have had on industry as a whole they certainly lessened the immediate sufferings of the unemployed during this time of transition and they must be taken into account in any attempt to estimate the condition of the poor at the period. So far as the temporary difficulties of the seventeenth century were concerned therefore, the system established by the Book of Orders lessened the misery of the poor and contributed to the establishment of order. But the whole of the poor law did not disappear during the Civil War. It is true that the existing schemes for the employment of the poor were discontinued but the relief of the impotent and the care of children have continued down to our own time. [Sidenote: 4. Results of poor relief in later times.] We have been so accustomed to hear of the evils of the law of settlement and the abuses of the relief granted in aid of wages, that we perhaps fail to consider the better effects of the existence of a system of poor relief. [Sidenote: 4 _a_. The increased union of rich and poor.] In the first place the method of administration has helped to unite the different classes of the nation together. The rich may have known little about the poor but the country gentlemen as justices have been obliged to know something. Besides every ratepayer has suffered when any cause has permanently depressed the labouring class. All have to pay more poor rates and so are led to discuss, and if possible to remedy, abuses and grievances. In this way the evils of bad administration of relief have been checked and interest in all matters affecting the poor has been stimulated. But the existence of the poor law may have had even more important effects. [Sidenote: 4 _b_. Decrease of bitterness in competition and increase of order.] Many are affected by the poor law who never receive relief; it takes away some of the horror of failure from all who may if unfortunate need help of the kind and so renders the struggle for existence less brutal to the whole of the labouring class. In the seventeenth century this assistance to the poor helped to make England a peaceful community and it has probably had the same effect ever since.