1601, which has formed the basis of the poor-law system of England to the present time. It taxed every inhabitant of every parish for the relief of the poor and directed the justices in every county to appoint three or four substantial householders in each parish to be overseers of the poor in connection with the churchwardens.
Various efforts were made to remedy abuses which arose under this system, of which the workhouse-system was one of the earliest. All who refused to be lodged in the workhouse were refused relief. But the act of 1796 repealed the workhouse test and allowed relief to be given in aid of wages, so that the poor-laws were practically turned into a mode of paying wages. Various changes were made from time to time, and finally in 1871 the poor-law board was abolished and its powers transferred to the local government-board. The fundamental rule in England and Wales is that each parish is bound to maintain its own poor, and this is done by a poor-rate which churchwardens and overseers may levy on all persons occupying land in the parish. In 1906 the poor-rates raised for the year, under the local-government act of 1894, amounted to £16,741,663.
In the United States a system of relief somewhat similar to that of England prevails in most of the states. Poor-houses are established by the county, to which persons unable to support themselves are transferred and cared for, such work as they are able to do being provided for them. In some states provision has been made for children's homes, where all children under a certain age, whose parents are dead or unable to provide for them, are fed, clothed and educated. Happily thus far the number of dependent persons in America is so small that the tax for their support is not seriously felt.
Poore, Benjamin Perley, an American journalist, was born at Newburyport, Mass., Nov. 2, 1820. He was apprenticed to a printer when a boy and grew up in a newspaper office. From 1838 to 1840 he edited The Southern Whig at Atlanta, Ga. He was sent with the embassy to Belgium in 1841 as an attaché, and remained in Europe seven years. While abroad, he collected valuable data for the archives of Massachusetts. He became editor of The Congressional Directory in 1867. He published a number of works, among which those most largely sold were the Life of Zachary Taylor, the Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of Abraham Lincoln and Sixty Years at the Federal Metropolis. He died at Washington, D. C., May 30, 1887.
Pope, a title first given to all bishops of the Christian church, but now exclusively applied to the bishop of Rome or head of the Roman Catholic church. Tradition, confirmed by the faith of the church, represents St. Peter as the first bishop of Rome. Whether he were such or not, it was natural that the early bishops residing in the imperial city should acquire a large measure of influence and importance and that after the empire became Christian they should attain considerable temporal power. The temporal power was not fully established, however, until 754, under Pepin, king of the Franks. From that time the history of the papacy has been a contest of greater or lesser intensity with the princes and rulers of Europe, in which now one and now the other of the contending parties prevailed. At present the pope is stripped of all temporal power, but his authority over the church in all matters spiritual and ecclesiastical is supreme and unquestioned, the Vatican Council which assembled at Rome in 1870 having proclaimed his infallibility on all questions of faith and morals. Whenever a vacancy occurs in the papal chair, it is filled by the cardinals choosing one of their number to occupy the place. A history of the more important popes will be found under their several titles.
Pope, Alexander, English poet, was born at London, May 21, 1688, his father being a Roman Catholic and a man of means. Although Pope's early education was irregular and unsystematic, his father retiring from business soon after the son's birth, his application to study must have been close, for even in his juvenile poems are traces of profound thought. In 1711 Pope published his Essay on Criticism, which placed him at once in the front rank of the literary men of his day; and in 1712 appeared the Rape of the Lock, the most imaginative of his poems. Soon after appeared his translation of Homer's Iliad, which brought a fortune of $30,000. (See Homer). A translation of the Odyssey followed a few years later, and in 1728 he issued the third volume of The Dunciad. The Essay on Man, published in 1734, is a didactic poem, and, although almost wholly deficient in the imaginative quality, is a masterpiece of wit and versification. Pope's command of terse and smooth expression is at its highest here; and it has been well said that this poem contains more familiar quotations than any other poem of equal length in the English language. Pope died at Twickenham, near London, May 30, 1744, leaving behind him a literary fame that has suffered no eclipse in over a century and a half.
Pope, John, an American general, was born at Louisville, Ky., March 16, 1822, and graduated at West Point in 1842, after which he entered the engineer-corps of the United States army. He served in the Florida War of 1842-44 and in the Mexican War, winning the rank of captain for his conduct at Monterey and Buena Vista. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, and in the spring of 1862 distinguished him-
