The board-room at the workhouse is a large and apparently comfortable apartment.  The fire is piled with glowing coals, the red light from which gleams on the polished fender.  A vast table occupies the centre, and around it are arranged seats, for each of the guardians.  The chairman is, perhaps, a clergyman (and magistrate), who for years has maintained something like peace between discordant elements.  For the board-room is often a battle-field where political or sectarian animosities exhibit themselves in a rugged way.  The clergyman, by force of character, has at all events succeeded in moderating the personal asperity of the contending parties.  Many of the stout, elderly farmers who sit round the table have been elected year after year, no one disputing with them that tedious and thankless office.  The clerk, always a solicitor, is also present, and his opinion is continually required.  Knotty points of law are for ever arising over what seems so simple a matter as the grant of a dole of bread.

The business, indeed, of relieving the agricultural poor is no light one—­a dozen or fifteen gentlemen often sit here the whole day.  The routine of examining the relieving officers’ books and receiving their reports takes up at least two hours.  Agricultural unions often include a wide space of country, and getting from one village to another consumes as much time as would be needed for the actual relief of a much denser population.  As a consequence, more relieving officers are employed than would seem at first glance necessary.  Each of these has his records to present, and his accounts to be practically audited, a process naturally interspersed with inquiries respecting cottagers known to the guardians present.

Personal applications for out-door relief are then heard.  A group of intending applicants has been waiting in the porch for admission for some time.  Women come for their daughters; daughters for their mothers; some want assistance during an approaching confinement, others ask for a small loan, to be repaid by instalments, with which to tide over their difficulties.  One cottage woman is occasionally deputed by several of her neighbours as their representative.  The labourer or his wife stands before the Board and makes a statement, supplemented by explanation from the relieving officer of the district.  Another hour thus passes.  Incidentally there arise cases of ‘settlement’ in distant parishes, when persons have become chargeable whose place of residence was recently, perhaps, half across the country.  They have no parochial rights here and must be returned thither, after due inquiries made by the clerk and the exchange of considerable correspondence.