I'm not 100% sure I'm understanding the reading correctly. So correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the what I took it to mean: basically, they're going to help the people who are unable to work and the people who want to but can't find work, but the people who outright refuse to work on are thier one. Did I get that right?
Anyway, assuming I've got it right, I completely aggree with this. The people who don't want to work not only take money away from the people who really need help, but they also make the general public more distrustful of everyone who asks for help (including those who need it).
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You read it correctly, Sarah. While it may seem like it makes sense in principal, the difficulty comes in determining "able-bodied". Who decides this? By what criteria? Does it mean any sort of work at all, even if the money earned isn't enough to support one's family? What if the work is distant from one's home? And so on.
In England, they never specified this. Judging from other evidence, it is likely "the community" made the determination, which in practice meant a committee of village elders, maybe the local sheriff, or someone else local. This obviously would leave the door open to local grudges and favoritism.
To put it more succinctly: law is rarely the difficulty; application of the law is the difficulty.
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