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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

which a poor man linds in obtaining a settlement, or even inbeing allowed to exercise his industry in any parish but that towhich he belongs. It is the labour of artificers and manu-facturers only of which the free circulation is obstructed bycorporation laws. The difficulty of obtaining settlements ob-structs even that of common labour. It may be worth whileto give some account of the rise, progress, and present state ofthis disorder, the greatest perhaps of any in the police ofEngland.

When by the destruction of monasteries the poor had beendeprived of the charity of those religious houses, after someother inelfectual attempts for their relief, it was enacted by the43d of Elizabeth, c.2. that every parish should be bound toprovide for its own poor ; and that overseers of the poor shouldbe annually appointed, who, with the churchwardens, shouldraise, by a parish rate, competent sums for this purpose.

By this statute the necessity of providing for their ownpoor was indispensably imposed upon every parish. Whowere to be considered as the poor of each parish, became,therefore, a question of some importance. This question,after some variation, was at last determined by the 13th and14th of Charles II . when it was enacted, that forty days’ un-disturbed residence should gain any person a settlement inany parish ; but that within that time it should be lawful fortwo justices of the peace, upon complaint made by the church-wardens or overseers of the poor, to remove any new inhabi-tant to the parish where he was last legally settled ,■ unlesshe either rented a tenement of ten pounds a year, or couldgive such security for the discharge of the parish, where hewas then living, as those justices should judge sufficient.

Some frauds, it is said, were committed in consequence ofthis statute; parish officers sometimes bribing their own poorto go clandestinely to another parish, and by keeping them-selves concealed for forty days to gain a settlement there, tothe discharge of that to which they properly belonged. Itwas enacted, therefore, by the 1st of James II. that the fortydays’ undisturbed residence of any person necessary to gain asettlement, should be accounted only from the time of hisdelivering notice in writing, of the place of his abode and thenumber of his family, to one of the churchwardens or over-seers of the parish where he came to dwell.

But parish officers it seems, were not always more honestwith regard to their own, than they had been with regard to