POOLE 



POOR-LAWS 



311 



1400 kept the seas against France and Spain ; and 

 there was William Thompson, who, with a man and 

 a lx>y, captured a French privateer in 1695. Till 

 1867 the borough returned two members, and then 

 till 1885 one. Pop. (1851) 9255; (1881) 12,310; 

 (1891) 15,405. See works by Hutchins (1788), 

 Sydenham (1839), and Brannon (3d ed. 1859). 



Poole, JOHN, playwright, born in 1792, died in 

 February 1879 at Kentish Town, London, wrote 

 the immortal Paul Pry, first produced at the 

 Haymarket in 1825, and several other farces and 

 comedies, such as Turning the Tables, Deaf as a 

 Punt, ' T wu id d Puzzle a Conjuror, The. Wife's Strata- 

 iimi, &c. Resides these theatrical pieces he wrote 

 also the satirical Little Pedlington (1839), The 

 '/;;'<; Sketch ISook ( 1859), Comic Miscellany ( 1845), 

 '.u-istiniu Festivities (1845), and other books of a 

 li.u'lii, InniioHiu- kind. 



Poole (or POOL ; Latinised Poltis), MATTHEW, 

 divine, was torn at York about 1624, educated at 

 Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and held from 1648 

 till the passing of the Act of Uniformity (1062) 

 the rectory of St Michael le Querne in London. 

 He retired to Holland and died at Amsterdam in 1679. 

 HU principal work was his Synopsis Criticonun 

 Biblicorum (5 vols. fol. 1669-76), in which the 

 opinions of 150 biblical critics were summarised. 

 In his English Annotations on the Holy Bible he 

 had only reached Isaiah Iviii., but the work 

 was completed by his friends (2 vols. fol. 1685). 

 Effective contributions to the Romish controversy 

 were The Nullity of the Romish Faith (1666) and 

 Dialogues between a Popish Priest anil an English 

 Protestant (1667). 



Poole, WILLIAM FREDERICK, the compiler of 

 the 'Index,' was liorn at Salem. Massachusetts, 

 24th December 1821, and graduated at Yale in 1849. 

 While there he was librarian of a literary society, 

 and prepared an index (pp. 154) of periodical 

 literature, enlarged in the 2d and 3d editions (pp. 

 1469), the latter published in 1882, with the assist- 

 ance of the American and British Library Associa- 

 tions. A supplement ( pp. 496 ), by Poole and W. J. 

 Fletcher, of Amherst, was issued in 1888. A sim- 

 ilar one was promised for every five years ; further 

 issues were in 1893 and (after Poole s death) 1897. 

 Poole was librarian of the Boston Athenieum 1856- 

 69, the Cincinnati Public Library 1869-73, the Chi- 

 cago Public Library 1875-87, and the Newberry 

 Library, Chicago, from 1887 until his death at 

 Evanston, 111., 1st March 1894. 



1'oona. or PUNA, a town of British India, 119 

 miles by rail SE. of Bombay, is the military capital 

 of the Deccan and the seat of the government of 

 the presidency during the last half of the year. 

 The city is embmomM in gardens, but its streets 

 are mostly narrow or crooked, and the houses 

 poor. The ruins of the peshwa's palace, burned in 

 1827, still remain. Under the peshwas the city 

 was the capital of the Mahratta princes and power ; 

 it was occupied and annexed by the British in 1818. 

 Here have l>een built the Ueccan College and the 

 College of Science, the latter for training civil 

 engineers, a normal school and normal college, a 

 high school, and other educational establishments. 

 The Europeans live chiefly at the cantonments, 

 north-west of the city. The natives manufacture 

 cottons and silks, gold and silver jewellery, ivory 

 and grass ornaments, and clay figures. I'op. 

 <1851) 73,209; (1872) 90,436; (1881) 90,622, to 

 which must be added 30,129 in the cantonment; 

 <1891) 160,460. The visitations of the sanitary 

 authorities to native houses during the plague here 

 in 1897 led to riots and murderous assaults. 



Poon-WOOd is the timber of the Poon trees 

 of India and Burma (CnloplniUum inophyllum and 

 C. ungnitifolium). It is very commonly used in 



the East Indies, particularly in shipbuilding, for 

 planks and spars. See TACAMAHACA. 



Poor Clares. See CLARE (ST). 



Poor-laws. Charity, like Christianity, had 

 its origin, or earliest development, in the East. 

 Among the primitive nations of the world alms- 

 giving was inculcated as a religious observance, 

 and is prescribed as such in their sacred records. 

 Among the European nations of antiquity we find 

 a provision for the poor adopted as a matter of 

 state policy. In early times Athens could boast of 

 having no citizen in want ; ' nor did any disgrace 

 the nation by lagging.' But war at length brought 

 poverty in its train, and the Athenian people 

 decreed the maintenance of those who were muti 

 lated in battle, and, at a later period, of the 

 children of those who fell. Plutarch mentions 

 Pisistratus as the originator of the first decree, 

 though others derive it from Solon. By the latter 

 decree the state provided for the orphans of its 

 soldiers tip to their eighteenth year, and then sent 

 them into the world with a new suit of armour. 

 The bounty given to the disabled is mentioned by 

 Lysias, Harpocration, Aristotle, Isocrates, and 

 others ; it is variously stated at one, two, and 

 three oboli a day, and it seems to have been 

 increased with the increased cost of subsistence. 

 There were also societies for the relief of distress 

 among the democratic states of Greece, called 

 eranoi a sort of friendly societies, in which the 

 members relieved were expected to pay back the 

 money advanced to them when they had raised 

 themselves to better circumstances. But it must 

 be remembered that these so-called democratic 

 states were in reality slave-holding aristocracies. 



Among the Romans the Agrarian Law of Licinius 

 Stolo (367 B.C.) was framed in order to prevent 

 the extremes of riches and poverty in the state. 

 It limited the extent of property in public land 

 to be held by each citizen, and directed that 

 all such land above the allotted portion should 

 be taken away from the holders, and given to 

 those who hacl none. The distribution of grain 

 at reduced prices, which at length became gratui- 

 tous, was introduced by Cains Gracchus, and lasted 

 till the fall of the Roman empire. Augustus 

 in vain tried to suppress it. In his time 200,000 

 citizens were thus fed. Cicero makes mention of 

 this provision as in great favour with the Roman 

 people, because it furnished them with an abundant 

 subsistence without labour; other Roman writers 

 describe its results as disastrous both to agriculture 

 and to manners, creating a nation of mendicants, 

 and causing the land to fall out of cultivation. 



In the middle ages the great body of the labour- 

 ing classes were in a state of serfdom, and looked 

 to their feudal lords for maintenance. The obliga- 

 tion to provide for their slaves, or serfs, seems to 

 have been fully recognised, so that many, encoun- 

 tering in a state of freedom the miseries of want, 

 went back to bondage as a refuge from destitution. 

 The villeins -in Saxon England were attached to 

 the soil, and received from their lord a portion 

 of land for the support of themselves and their 

 families. But the Church of Rome constituted 

 herself the great receiver and dispenser of alms. 

 The rich monasteries and abbeys distributed doles 

 to the poor, as is still done at the mosques under 

 the Mohammedan system. 



In most states of continental Europe the church 

 remains to a larger or smaller extent the public 

 almoner, the state only stepping in to supplement 

 the offerings of the church and voluntary charity 

 when they become deficient. The disseverance 

 from the church is hardly anywhere so complete as 

 in England. The laws of different countries vary 

 as to the degree of want entitling a pauper to 



