tlemen to inquire into at their court leets, which are held twice a year." Of bakers and brewers for breaking of assizes; of forestallers and regraters; against tradesmen of all sorts for selling with under-weights, or at excessive prices, or things unwholesome, or things made in deceit; of housebreakers, common thieves, or their receivers; haunters of taverns or ale-houses; those that go in good clothes and fare well, and none know whereof they live; those that be night walkers; takers-in of loose inmates; offences of victuallers, artificers, workmen, and labourers." A farther regulation directs that the correction houses in all counties may be made adjoining to the common prisons, and the jailer to be made governor of them, so that he may employ to work prisoners committed for small causes, and so they may learn honesty by labour, and live not idly and miserably long in prison, whereby they are made worse when they come out than they were when they went in; and, where many houses of correction are in one county, one of them to be at least near the jail." Another order, "which more than darkly hints a melancholy tale," prohibits all persons from harbouring rogues in their barns or out-housings; and authorizes constables to demand from wandering persons going about with women and children, where they were married, and where their children were christened ; "for these people live like savages, neither marry, nor bury, nor christen, which licentious liberty makes so many delight to be rogues and wanderers." A great increase of beggars had been occasioned by the disbanding of the army from poor, ill-fated Ireland the preceding year; the consequence was, these soldiers, and many others along with them, flocked over the country in swarms, to England; to remedy which evil, a proclamation* was issued, commanding them to return to Ireland, and ordering them to be conveyed from constable to constable, to either Bristol, Minehead, Chester, Liverpool, Milford, or Workington. If they should be found begging in England afterward, they were to be punished as rogues and vagabonds. "Perish that man who hears the piteous tale In 1662, under pretence of providing for the better relief of the poor, an act was passed which reduced the labouring population to be the actual fixtures of the soil of each particular place in which chance had then thrown them. This was the * Rymer Fœdera. act of 13 and 14 Charles II., c. 12, commonly called the Act of Settlement. The preamble of the act testifies the fact of pauperism continuing to make head against all attempts at restraining it. For remedy of these evils, it was now "enacted that it should be lawful for any two justices of the peace, upon complaint made by the church wardens or overseer of the poor, within forty days after the arrival of a new comer in the parish, to remove him by force to the parish where he was last legally settled, unless he could give security against becoming burdensome where he was living, to the satisfaction of the two justices." This was no remedy. This did not go to the heart of the subject, viz., what was the cause of the increase? no one of the lawmakers or schemers (and there were hundreds of them) ever had head or heart enough to face that. The real cause was two very important subjects, and both pulling one way, in favour of the rich and against the poor, viz., the increase in the taxation, and the increase in bills of enclosure to enclose the waste lands and commons, from which the poor derived much benefit. The real thought always uppermost was, "He that is rich, why, let him richer grow: If poor, what harm if we increase his wo!" All the good of this act of settlement was, to make large harvests for the lawyers, in debating about these respective parishes where the poor man had been previously settled. But this was not all; for, while it circumscribed the liberty of the English poor man, the native poor, it left the stranger from Scotland and Ireland unmolested. They might come and settle down, or move about, and there was no power to molest them, it being well known he could not claim relief if he wanted any. But, then, every one of their children could, in any parish wherever it was born-exhibiting a curious example of "liberty with impunity plucking justice by the nose. An extract from a work "Concerning the Relief and Employment of the Poor," from Sir Josiah Childs' "New Discourses of Trade," published 1668, a few years after this act of settlement, will exhibit the effect of this portion of England's laws, which, in the mass, are said to be "the gathered wisdom of a thousand years." His description of the poor is wretched in the extreme. In illustration of the combined cruelty and inefficacy of " the shifting off, sending, or whipping back the poor wanderers to the place of their birth or last place of abode," which was then going on in all parts of the kingdom, is as follows: idle person, poor, work, or that nobody will employ in the country, comes up to that will not tlemen to inquire into at their court leets, which are held twice a year." Of bakers and brewers for breaking of assizes; of forestallers and regraters; against tradesmen of all sorts for selling with under-weights, or at excessive prices, or things unwholesome, or things made in deceit; of housebreakers, common thieves, or their receivers; haunters of taverns or ale-houses; those that go in good clothes and fare well, and none know whereof they live; those that be night walkers; takers-in of loose inmates; offences of victuallers, artificers, workmen, and labourers." A farther regulation directs that the correction houses in all counties may be made adjoining to the common prisons, and the jailer to be made governor of them, so that he may employ to work prisoners committed for small causes, and so they may learn honesty by labour, and live not idly and miserably long in prison, whereby they are made worse when they come out than they were when they went in; and, where many houses of correction are in one county, one of them to be at least near the jail." Another order, "which more than darkly hints a melancholy tale," prohibits all persons from harbouring rogues in their barns or out-housings; and authorizes constables to demand from wandering persons going about with women and children, where they were married, and where their children were christened; "for these people live like savages, neither marry, nor bury, nor christen, which licentious liberty makes so many delight to be rogues and wanderers." A great increase of beggars had been occasioned by the disbanding of the army from poor, ill-fated Ireland the preceding year; the consequence was, these soldiers, and many others along with them, flocked over the country in swarms, to England; to remedy which evil, a proclamation* was issued, commanding them to return to Ireland, and ordering them to be conveyed from constable to constable, to either Bristol, Minehead, Chester, Liverpool, Milford, or Workington. If they should be found begging in England afterward, they were to be punished as rogues and vagabonds. "Perish that man who hears the piteous tale In 1662, under pretence of providing for the better relief of the poor, an act was passed which reduced the labouring population to be the actual fixtures of the soil of each particular place in which chance had then thrown them. This was the * Rymer Fœdera. act of 13 and 14 Charles II., c. 12, commonly called the Act of Settlement. The preamble of the act testifies the fact of pauperism continuing to make head against all attempts at restraining it. For remedy of these evils, it was now "enacted that it should be lawful for any two justices of the peace, upon complaint made by the church wardens or overseer of the poor, within forty days after the arrival of a new comer in the parish, to remove him by force to the parish where he was last legally settled, unless he could give security against becoming burdensome where he was living, to the satisfaction of the two justices." This was no remedy. This did not go to the heart of the subject, viz., what was the cause of the increase? no one of the lawmakers or schemers (and there were hundreds of them) ever had head or heart enough to face that. The real cause was two very important subjects, and both pulling one way, in favour of the rich and against the poor, viz., the increase in the taxation, and the increase in bills of enclosure to enclose the waste lands and commons, from which the poor derived much benefit. The real thought always uppermost was, "He that is rich, why, let him richer grow: If poor, what harm if we increase his wo!" All the good of this act of settlement was, to make large harvests for the lawyers, in debating about these respective parishes where the poor man had been previously settled. But this was not all; for, while it circumscribed the liberty of the English poor man, the native poor, it left the stranger from Scotland and Ireland unmolested. They might come and settle down, or move about, and there was no power to molest them, it being well known he could not claim relief if he wanted any. But, then, every one of their children could, in any parish wherever it was born-exhibiting a curious example of "liberty with impunity plucking justice by the nose." An extract from a work "Concerning the Relief and Employment of the Poor," from Sir Josiah Childs' "New Discourses of Trade," published 1668, a few years after this act of settlement, will exhibit the effect of this portion of England's laws, which, in the mass, are said to be "the gathered wisdom of a thousand years." His description of the poor is wretched in the extreme. In illustration of the combined cruelty and inefficacy of " the shifting off, sending, or whipping back the poor wanderers to the place of their birth or last place of abode," which was then going on in all parts of the kingdom, is as follows: "A poor, idle person, that will not work, or that nobody will employ in the country, comes up to London to set up the trade of begging; such a person probably begs up and down the streets seven years-it may be sevenand-twenty-before anybody asketh why she doth so; and, if at length she hath the ill hap in some parish to meet with a more vigilant beadle than one in twenty of them are, all he does is, to lead her the length of five or six houses, into another parish, and then concludes he hath done the part of a most diligent officer. But suppose he should go farther, to the end of his line-which is the line of the law, and the perfect execution of his office-which is, to take the poor creature before a magistrate, and he would order the delinquent to be whipped and sent from parish to parish, to the place of her or his last abode, (which not one justice of twenty would do through pity or other cause ;) even this is a great charge upon the nation, and yet the business of the country itself left wholly undone; for no sooner doth the delinquent arrive at the assigned parish, but, for fear of shame or idleness, or want of some one's commiseration there in employing her, she presently deserts it, and wanders back upon another route, hoping for better fortune; while the parish to which she is sent, knowing her a lazy person, and perhaps a worse qualified one, is as willing to be rid of her as she is to be gone from that place.' The first information I can find regarding the amount of the poor rates, is a statement in a pamphlet published 1673, entitled The Grand Concern of England explained in several proposals offered to the consideration of parliament," &c. This author estimates the sum then expended on the relief of the poor at nearly £840,000 per year. Another writer estimates the poor rate at upward of £700,000.* But Davenant, in his Essay upon "Ways and Means," published 1695, "collected with great labour and expense, by Mr. Arthur Moore, a very knowing person," presents an estimate from each county toward the end of Charles II.'s reign, and makes the whole for England and Wales to be £665,362. From an entry in the parish-book of St. Olave's, London, there was paid £4 3s. for relief of poor Irish and English children to be transported to America, 1642. About twenty years past I read the following curious paragraph in a London newspaper: "A man was brought before a magistrate for neglecting his wife. He married a woman of St. Ann's parish, Soho; the wedding portion was £3: it was the third time he had served the parish in this manner. It appears to have become a custom for the London parishes, when they got an old woman likely to live some years, to marry * England's "Improvement by Sea and Land," &c., 1677. |