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TI1E NATURE AND CAUSES OF

feet of introducing settlement by service, has been to put outin a great measure the old fashion of hiring for a year, whichbefore had been so customary in England, that even at thisday, if no particular term is agreed upon, the law intendsthat every servant is hired for a year. But masters are notalways willing to give their servants a settlement by hiringthem in this manner; and servants are not always willing tobe so hired, because, as every last settlement discharges allthe foregoing, they might thereby lose their original settle-ment in the places of their nativity, the habitation of theirparents and relations.

No independent workman, it is evident, whether laboureror artificer, is likely to gain any new settlement, either byapprenticeship or by service. When such a person, therefore,carried his industry to a new parish, he was liable to be re-moved, how healthy and industrious soever, at the caprice ofany churchwarden or overseer, unless he either rented a tene-ment of ten pounds a year, a thing impossible for one who hasnothing but his labour to live by; or could give such secu-rity for the discharge of the parish as two justices of thepeaceshould judge sufficient. What security they shall require,indeed, is left altogether to their discretion; but they can-not well require less than thirty pounds, it having beenenacted, that the purchase even of a freehold estate of lessthan thirty pounds value, shall not gain any person a settle-ment, as not being sufficient for the discharge of the parish.But this is a security which scarce any man who lives bylabour can give; and mucli greater security is frequentlydemanded.

In order to restore in some measure that free circulationof labour which those different statutes had almost entirelytaken away, the invention of certificates was fallen upon. Bythe 8th and 9th of William III . it was enacted that if any per-son should bring a certificate from the parish where he waslast legally settled, subscribed by the churchwardens andoverseers of the poor, and allowed by two justices of thepeace, that every other parish should be obliged to receivehim; that he should not be removeable merely upon accountof liis being likely to become chargeable, but only upon hisbecoming actually chargeable, and that then the parish whichgranted the certificate should be obliged to pay the expenseboth ot his maintenance and ot his removal. And in order togive the most perfect security to the parish where such cer-