The problem was that in the Poor Law Report it was the voice of the "repressive" Chadwick that dominated. The "benevolent" Chadwick was scarcely heard at all, the ameliorative measures being consigned to that part of his evidence that was never published (Finer 69-70). A glimpse of his "Social Police" approach can be seen in his evidence before a House of Commons select committee on drunkenness in 1834.

[...] I would submit, as an opinion, that more would be done by educating by the substitution of innocent for gross and noxious modes of excitement; by fascilitating cheap and harmless modes of amusement, than by legislative restrictions, akthough the proof of absence of self-control constiitutes a case for legislative interference, and restricted measures might be resorted to concurrently with other measures to influence the habits.

That the balance between repression and amelioration implied in this passage is absent from the Poor Law Report might be explained in part by the haste with which the report had to be promulgated. But if haste is the explanation, a choice had nontheless to be made, and that choice clearly had been to give priority to repression. In that sense, the public's perception of Chadwick was perhaps not so wide of the mark as he insisted it was. At any rate, whether it was justified or not, he was well on his way to becoming the most visible symbol of the New Poor Law's alleged inhimanities.