missioners and local Boards of Guardians who could not be coerced. Against such a system parochial agitation was powerless. The only remedy was the repeal of the Act. That required a more than local movement.
The agitation against the New Poor Law began in 1836. It was divided into two parts: an organised attempt to prevent the introduction of the law, and a popular movement of protest against the law itself. This latter movement, which was later absorbed into the Chartist Movement, was of a totally different character from the agitations which were then commencing in London and Birmingham under the auspices of the Working Men's Association and the Political Union. This difference was of decisive influence upon the fate of Chartism.
The Anti-Poor Law Movement, on its popular side, was, in fact, a rebellion in embryo which never came to full development. Its historical ancestry may be traced back through the Pilgrimage of Grace, Jack Cade, and the Peasants' Revolt. It was a protest against social oppression, against a tyranny which hurt the poor by making them poorer. It was a mass demonstration of misery. It had no programme but redress of grievances. It had no social theory but the restoration of rights which had been taken away, and no political theory except a belief that the sovereign's duty was to protect the poor against the oppressor. It has been well said that the reasons which men give for an opinion they hold are often totally different from the reasons which led them to take up such an opinion. Thus whilst the theoretical opposition to the New Poor Law was based on Cobbett's book, the real grounds of protest were far older in origin than that. The leaders of the movement drew their inspiration from the Bible, from a belief that the Act was a violation of Christian principles. Now this tendency to hark back to the Bible and to Christianity as a basis of political and social practice is the most interesting phase of the whole Chartist Movement. Religious sanction for radical opinions is the only refuge for persons unacquainted with abstract political, or social, or economic theory. And naturally so, for nowhere do we get the standards of eternal justice so clearly set up for us as in the pages of the New Testament. Thus we find that the authority of the Bible or of Christian teaching in some form or other is claimed in all the movements we have mentioned. John Ball's famous couplet may well furnish the text on which all the later popular movements may furnish the sermon. Thus the Anti-Poor Law agitation,
