For seventy years Parliament had been making legislative experiments with regard to the public relief of the poor and before 1597 at least nine different plans had been tried. At last a law was produced which as re-enacted four years later is unrepealed at the present day and for more than two centuries was almost unaltered. Parliament grudged neither its own time nor that of its ablest men to solve the question. The personal side of the history of the discussion is interesting. We see Sir Francis Bacon, to use his own phrase, "not with polished pen but with polished heart," Raleigh neither as courtier nor sea rover but as a stickler for the privileges of Parliament and leader of a committee on the poor, Whitgift, not as ecclesiastical disciplinarian, but as practical philanthropist. Burleigh appears but seldom in the discussions but he too sat on the committee in the House of Lords in 1597. The most important part of the work seems to have been done by the committee appointed by the Commons on November 19th. The law for the relief of the poor was a new Bill framed by the committee after many other Bills had been considered and seems to have been accepted at once by the House. This committee was an enormous committee and the number of bills considered by it was altogether exceptional, and it is to the meetings of its members in the Middle Temple Hall that we owe the making of a workable Poor Law and all its lasting effects on English social life. [Sidenote: Conclusions.] Even by looking at the provisions of the statutes, we can see that opinion on the subject had greatly changed since 1569. During the earlier years of the period Parliament tried to exterminate beggary by increasing the severity of the punishment of beggars. If we except the law of 1547, this policy culminates in the statute of 1572, though, even in 1572, increased provision for the impotent poor accompanied increased severity towards able-bodied vagrants. The Act of 1576 indicates the beginning of a great change of thought and policy. Legislators have given up the idea that the existence of masterless men is entirely owing to the idleness and wickedness of the men themselves; they provide materials for employment and Houses of Correction and so recognise that the evil was partly caused by a want of training and by a want of work. In 1597 there was a further change; the most severe punishments against vagrants had been repealed and the most important part of the legislation of this year was the statute for the relief of the poor. [Sidenote: 5. The chief characteristics of the action of the Privy Council.]