deprecating certain things, because they would both abolish Boards of Guardians and mixed workhouses, because they both advocate labour exchanges, labour colonies, and, though in different ways, workmen's insurance, that there is, therefore, no very fundamental difference between them. Thus Mr Russell Wakefield, in a short speech to the Central Unemployed Body, recently expressed the opinion that "there is no necessary antagonism between the two Reports." An article in the "Athenæum " expresses the same opinion. In an admirable "Synopsis" issued by Messrs Knight, the well-known publishers, it is stated that the "root difference" between the two Reports is that the Minority Report divides necessitous persons into non-able-bodied and able-bodied, and deals with them by separate methods, whilst the Majority makes no such distinction, and it is plain that the author has very imperfectly grasped the fundamental divergence between the two Reports. What, then, is this "root difference"?
In the first place, the Minority Report definitely breaks with all tradition, and dissociates itself from the Report of 1834. Its authors are industriously circulating the suggestion that the Majority Report does the same. They have said that the Majority do not render "even lip service" to the conclusions of their predecessors. It will not be difficult to show that such statements are contrary to the facts.
The main principle adopted by the Majority Report, in comparison with which all others sink into insignificance, is that the basis of all Poor Law legislation should be to "foster the instincts of independence and self-maintenance amongst those assisted," and thereafter, upon almost every page, we find some reference to this principle, which is, of course, a simple restatement of the
