private relief were officially defined, and the necessity of bringing about a co-operation between the two agencies was for the first time officially enunciated. "The question arises," it says, "how far it is possible to mark out the separate limits of Poor Law and charity. One of the most recognised principles in our Poor Law is that relief should only be given to the actually destitute, and not in aid of wages, and this lies at the root of our present system of relief. … Nothing could be more mischievous both to the working classes and the ratepayers than to supplement insufficiency of wages by the grant of public money." Such a policy is fatal, for the further reason that it "allows a belief in a legal claim to public money, in every emergency, to supplant in a further portion of the population the recognition of the necessity for self-reliance and thrift." This latter class can best be dealt with by charitable people, "whose alms could in no case be claimed as a right." It deprecates, accordingly, the supplementation of Poor Law relief by charity, and recommends that charity should confine itself to such cases, and such forms of relief, as cannot properly be given by the Poor Law, each agency assuming the whole responsibility for its own department of the work. As a practical suggestion, it advocates co-operation between Guardians and charitable agencies with a view to the co-ordination of relief work together with the registration of relief in every district, the interchange of lists of those helped, and other means of attaining the objects aimed at. The Circular remains the standing authoritative and official declaration upon the subject before us. I hope that the slight sketch of the circumstances preceding it may be sufficient to indicate the reasons for its issue and the principles upon which it is based. This Circular induced a few Boards of Guardians, the names of which are already familiar to these Conferences, to remodel their methods upon the lines suggested at the time, and a few more have since approximated to it, but the vast majority remained unaffected. Where its recommendations
