Board of Guardians

“ The most important subject which demanded attention was the construction of a governing power for each Union, in conformity with the terms and intention of the act of Parliament. It was to consist of a Board of Guardians, one-third being resident magistrates, and the remainder freely elected by the rate-payers. The Commissioners were authorised to fix the number for each Union, and they were of opinion that a number of elected Guardians, varying from 16 to 24, would be best calculated for carrying out the provisions of the act. ”

“ The Guardians picked a quarrel with him, the Poor Law Board instituted an inquiry, and apparently instructed their Inspector as to what he should report, and the President gave solemnity to the farce by removing him from his office. The ground on which he was dismissed was that "he could not get on with the Board of Guardians." Of [Pg xx] course he could not. No man of sense, honour, humanity, decency, and conscientiousness, could get on with them, or, in those evil days, with the Poor Law Board either ”

“ Section 50.—The board of guardians are to appoint a fit person in each parish or townland within the union to be the warden thereof, who is to provide for the conveyance to the workhouse of such destitute poor persons as the guardians shall direct, and perform such other duties as the orders of the commissioners shall prescribe. ”

“ In a single year the local government board may issue nearly two thousand orders, over a thousand of them having special reference to the poor law. It is not possible therefore even to summarize the mass of subordinate legislation. A third source of authority is the local board of guardians, which, within the discretion allowed to it by statutes and orders, can so variously administer the law that it is difficult to understand how procedure so fundamentally different can be based on one and the same law. ”

“ Strand Union, he was elected to a similar office in the Westminster Union. His career here was not one of incessant and unavailing remonstrance. The Poor Law Board, subsequently the Local Government Board, began to awake to a sense of its duties, and to see, though reluctantly and haltingly, that Boards of Guardians sometimes need supervision. But soon his troubles recommenced. The inferior officials were harsh, violent, and dishonest, and they were abetted by a majority of the Guardians. ”

“ But in some cases an efficient board may not be obtainable by election, and this is most likely to occur at the commencement, when individuals will be ill instructed as to their duties, and when the public will perhaps have formed erroneous notions of what is intended to be done. To meet such a contingency, it seems essential that large general powers should be vested in some central authority, to control and direct the proceedings of the boards of guardians, and even to supersede their functions altogether, whenever such supersession shall be necessary. ”

“ The commissioners and assistant-commissioners may attend the meetings, and take part in the discussions of the boards of guardians, but are not entitled to vote. The guardians are to assemble at such times as the commissioners direct, and no guardian, whether ex-officio or elected, has power to act, except as a member, and at a meeting of the board, for constituting which the presence of three members is necessary. No defect in the election or qualification of a guardian, is to make void the proceedings of any board in which he may have taken a part. ”

“ Until 1864 the central authority was an extremely weak body, as continuous efforts were made throughout the country by Boards of Guardians and others to wipe the Poor Law Board out of existence altogether, and had it not have happened that the investigations and deliberations of the Select Committee on Poor Relief, presided over by the Right Hon. ”

“ Leaving out of view the benefits that have resulted to the people by the mere fact of the existence of the Board, which has prevented many abuses that would have been committed save for its presence in the State, it has been at work, and useful. ”

“ The Congress have been pleased to give me more business than I am qualified for, and more than, I fear, I can go through, with safety to my health. They have established a board of war and ordnance and made me President of it, an honor to which I never aspired, a trust to which I feel myself vastly unequal. But I am determined to do as well as I can, and make industry supply, in some degree, the place of abilities and experience. The Board sits every morning and every evening. ”

“ People have absurdly connected the duties and board of commissioners, and suppose we should have had no additional duties if there had been no board to have the charge of collecting them. With all the aid you can give to the officers of the crown they will have enough to do to maintain the authority of government and to carry the laws into execution. ”

“ Although under the ultimate supervision of Congress, it has a board of managers which exercises a general control over its affairs, and has a corps of other officers of its own, who are in immediate charge of its activities. ”

“ The remedies proposed in my bill are the following: in order to do away with the practice of appointing officers on recommendations so untrustworthy, and not unfrequently so completely worthless, the bill provides for a civil-service board, whose business it will be to examine the qualifications of candidates for office, with a single eye to their fitness for the performance of official duty and the discharge of public trust; and from the number of those whose fitness has been properly ascertained the appointments shall be made. ”

“ The executive power of the departments shall reside in the governors in subordination to the supreme executive of the nation. The departmental board shall be the council of the governor; they shall be charged with determining and promoting whatever conduces to the welfare and prosperity of the departments, and shall have the economic, municipal, electoral and legislative powers the special law for their organization shall provide, being in the matter of the exercise of the latter class subordinate and responsible to the general congress of the nation. ”

“ Neither does the Board itself serve as an agent of Congress in any case.
The majority never makes up its mind whether its claim is that the Board exercises legislative or executive authority. The Court of Appeals, however, had no doubts, concluding that the Board's authority was "quintessentially executive." ”

“ I believe that the twenty-four gentlemen who constitute the Board of Directors would act just about as well as any other twenty-four persons elected by the same process, acting under the same influences, and surrounded by the same difficulties—having to act with another and independent body— the Board of Control. ”

“ By virtue of the authority vested in me by section 1753 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, and as President of the United States, the Executive Order of January 17, 1873, as amended, prohibiting, with certain exceptions, Federal officers and employees from holding State, Territorial, and municipal offices, is hereby further amended so as to permit any person holding a State, Territorial, or municipal office to accept appointment and serve as a member of an Alien Enemy Hearing Board. ”

“ ART. III Enforcement of Rules by the Board of Governors. The Board of Governors shall have full power to expel or suspend any member whose conduct shall be pronounced, by a two-third vote of the members present at a meeting, to have endangered the welfare, interests or character of the Club. ”

“ I have bitterly regretted that the law under which the force is administered is so bad that it has been impossible to make of this splendid body of men all that could be made if the Board had a responsible head, with complete power, and absolute singleness of purpose to do right. ”

“ It is for this reason that, in times of disaster or alarm, communities feel the need of a Board of Government consisting of senior men. Often they have fetched back from the country |D| an old man who neither asked nor wished it, and have compelled him to put his hand to the helm and steer the ship of State into safety, while they thrust aside generals and popular leaders, despite all their ability to shout, to talk without taking breath, and also, no doubt, to make ‘sturdy stand and doughty fight’ against the enemy. ”

“ The Commission shall, upon the nomination of the head of each Department, bureau, or office, designate and select a suitable number of persons, not less than three, in said Department, bureau, or office to be members of a board of promotion. In the Departments, bureaus, or offices in Washington and in all other offices the members of any board of promotion shall not all be adherents of one political party when persons of other political parties are available and competent to serve upon said board. ”

“ In most we must attribute the blame to the cumbrous and inefficient machinery of the Military Board, in whose province lies the supervision of the magazines; but the Board, composed of many members, becomes a screen for individual responsibility, and this must always be the case until each member is vested with the sole control of the details of his own department, subject only to a discussion in the Board of the general question, that each may have the benefit of his colleagues’ opinions, and be made aware of what is going on in other departments, that all may work in concert. ”

“ The draft organization, besides these 13,500 local board members, included over 1,000 district board members, medical, legal and industrial advisers, clerks, Government appeal agents, and others amounting, all told, to a compact, nation-wide body of over 190,000.
The democratic ideals of America have never had a more searching trial or a more triumphant vindication than was afforded by the swift and efficient making of this Army of Freedom. ”

“ The duties of the board may be so divided that under its supervision the directorship of various activities may be assigned to one or more commissioners. Any commissioner may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. A vacancy in the board shall not impair the right of the remaining members of the board to exercise all its powers. The board shall have an official seal, which shall be judicially noticed. ”

“ Without loyalty, cooperation and friendly, helpful support in her work no officer can successfully perform her duty or worthily serve the best interests of the association. I earnestly appeal to the members of this body to give the incoming Board of Officers the loyalty and helpful support which will greatly lighten their arduous task of serving our cause and bringing it to final victory. ”

“ Boards of Guardians may make their relief, not only a means of meeting destitution, but a means of educating the independence of the strong and of comforting the sorrows of the weak. We can imagine these boards, the councils of the town, endowed with greater powers; but with those they already possess they could change the social conditions and remove abuses for which Englishmen make no defence. ”

“ Congress, even those in subordinate stations, as is the practice of every day, and as is indispensable to the prosecution of public business, they might, at less expense of dignity, pursue the same mode with a part of that body itself.
The distinction taken by the Council, in their message to the Assembly, respecting the responsibility of such executive officers, as not applicable to a committee, if it amounts to any thing, proves only this: That such officers ought, in prudence, to take greater precautions for their own justification than a committee of Congress need to do. ”

“ The Board had an insight into character, and a faculty for choosing men for the administration. Believing its own reputation, as well as the public good, to depend on this choice, it pursued the object with circumspection and single-mindedness.{54} Though India is essentially the land of administrators, yet no governing body in any province has ever possessed at one time so many subordinates with talents applicable to so many branches, as the Board had for several years. ”

“ Every governor, in addition to the privilege of recommending in and out-patients as a subscriber, has the right to attend at all, or any weekly, quarterly or special boards, and to speak and vote on all questions, and to vote on all elections which shall come before such board ”

“ That a strong and competent board, with an independent status, should be established to examine into all applications from industries for State assistance, to advise his Majesty's Government upon such applications, and, where a case is made out, to frame proposals as to the precise nature and extent of the assistance to be given. ”

“ And it shall be the duty of the commissioner, when it can be done consistently with public interest, to appoint, as assistant commissioners, agents, and clerks, such men as have proved their loyalty by faithful service in the armies of the Union during the rebellion. And all persons appointed to service under this act, and the act to which this is an amendment, shall be so far deemed in the military service of the United States as to be under the military jurisdiction and entitled to the military protection of the Government while in discharge of the duties of their office. ”

“ But while the Cabinet as a body must 'say the same thing,' its members must also be heads of departments, for the competent administration of which they are responsible. One man must have charge of the Customs, another of Finance, another of Justice, and so on.
This system of heads of departments, each responsible for his own branch, but all uniting in a common responsibility for the common policy, and holding office at the will of a majority in the House of Commons, is known as Responsible Government. ”

“ In a word, we have no supreme executive ministry, like the great “Ministry of the Crown” over sea, in whose hands is the general management of legislation; and we have, consequently, no great prizes of leadership such as are calculated to stimulate men of strong talents to great and conspicuous public services. The Committee system is, as I have already pointed out, the very opposite of this. It makes all the prizes of leadership small, and nowhere gathers power into a few hands. ”