3o8 History of the English Lmided htterest. 



fication should be the possession of landed property within 

 the district. He differed from Gary in desiring that the guar- 

 dians should be elected by the entire body of the ratepayers 

 instead of by the freeholders only. 



Alcock, in 1752, suggested a resort to the supposed pre- 

 Elizabethan practice of voluntary poor relief, but doubting the 

 possibility of his own remedy, proposed, as an alternative, a 

 somewhat similar system to that of Lord Hale. The most 

 practical, perhaps, of any suggestion was, however, that of 

 Baron de Maseres, in 1772, for establishing life annuities in 

 parishes for the benefit of the poor. It was adopted in a Bill 

 brought before the House of Commons, passed successfully 

 through three readings, but w^as rejected by the Lords. 



The proposals of these last two reformers were probably 

 prompted by a desire to replace the increasingly unpopular 

 workhouse system by some method more palatable to the 

 pauper. Soon after the passing of 9 Geo. I. c. 7, many parishes 

 had carried out their powers of hiring or erecting work- 

 houses, and of letting out their poor to contractors. At first 

 the cost of workhouse maintenance proved less than that of 

 the weekly pension system, the result of which was to induce 

 the parish authorities to discontinue outdoor relief, and force 

 their poor into " The House." In vain thej^ changed the 

 obnoxious name of this establishment. It was no longer a 

 Workhouse,^ but a Poor House, or a House of Maintenance, 

 or a House of Protection, or a Bettering House. Unfortunately, 

 under each fresh guise, it continued equally distasteful to 

 those whose misfortunes reduced them to regard its walls and 

 fare as their last refuge from destitution.^ 



It remained for the patriotic Thomas Gilbert to invent 

 a more acceptable substitute, though unfortunately in thus 

 consulting the feelings of the pauper, he outraged those of the 



' John Sellers, as early as 169G, in his treatise, entitled General Essays 

 concerning the J'oor, refused the name as bespeaking too much of servi- 

 tude, and substituted that of colleice, which he maintained implies a 

 " general utility without any comi)u]sion or servitude of any kind." 

 See also Proposals for Haisinii a Collcye of Industry for all Useful 

 Trades and of JIusbatidry, London, 1G!J(>, by John Sellers. 



* Ede7i\s State of the I'Dor, vol. i. 



