CHAP. XVII. PROPOSED REMEDY BY UNION SETTLEMENT AND UNION RATING. Estuat infelix angusto limite. — JUVENAL. THAT the substitution of the union, in the place of the parish, as the district of a pauper's settlement, would remove some existing inequalities in the incidence of the poor-rate, and would slightly palliate other evils of pauperism, may perhaps be conceded. But the review of former legislation shows, that the principle of district or union settlement, has been once tried in this country, during a long period, and rejected. The simple provision of the statute of Elizabeth, which, on that rejection, was substituted for the union or district settlement, was found capable of convenient administration, and, during a period of about sixty years, the evils of pauperism in England appear mainly to have arisen from neglect to carry out that simple provision. It must be admitted that, in our own day, the project of union settlement is likely to find favour with reluctant bit-by-bit reformers, men who never act on any principle except that of temporary expediency, and whose greatest triumph it would be to patch up or palliate for the moment, any evil, however great, and to leave to other hands the application of a real remedy, whenever inevitable necessity for such remedy might arise. It seems, also, that an idea has of late prevailed, that union settlement will prove a panacea for every evil of the poor law, and especially that it will remove the inequality in incidence of the poor-rate, which has long been complained of as existing in different districts, even of the same union. It is undoubtedly such inequality which has mainly caused the cry for union settlement, and union rating. This inequality "is so apparent," says a poor law inspector, "and its injustice is so generally felt and inveighed against," that "the propriety The present Dean of Hereford*, after justly observing that this opinion, sanctioned by such authority and experience, is entitled to the highest attention, himself avows, that the opinion " is one to which every inquiring mind must come, that has witnessed the low and degrading habits to which such practices lead." Such are some of the physical and moral evils afflicting the daily life of the agricultural labourer, throughout England, and which are mainly owing to the law of settlement and removal of the poor. *Ibid. p. 169. CHAP. XV. ON THE NECESSITY OF A TOTAL REPEAL OF THE LAW OF Cuncta prius tentata: sed immedicabile vulnus Ovid. MANY of the evils under which the whole country has long suffered, and which arise mainly from the law of settlement and removal of the poor, have presented themselves for consideration in the course of the previous pages. But the most striking, and most extensively injurious, of all the evil influences of that law remain to be pointed out; and will be found in the necessary effect of such a law on the distribution and wages of labour throughout the country. If a farmer, acquainted only with the neighbourhood of manufacturing regions of the North, occupying a farm in Nottinghamshire, or North Lincolnshire, or the West Riding of Yorkshire, were suddenly made acquainted with the condition of an agricultural labourer in Devon, or Somerset, or Hants, or any of our ten selected counties of pure agriculture and unmitigated operation of the law of settlement, he would hardly be able to credit, still less to understand, what he would find. The week's wage of the labourer which, in the one part of the country, is 11s., or 12s., or 13s., becomes, in the other, only 78., or 88., or 98. The work done is the same in both districts; and if the necessities of existence had anything to do with the matter, the necessities of the man who receives the lower sum are the greater.* The effect of the law of settlement and removal affords the only explanation of this remarkable state of things. The natural and necessary tendency of such a law to produce * For instance, the price of fuel is much higher in the Eastern, Southern, and Western districts, than in the Northern. such results, has been sufficiently pointed out, and explained, by most impartial and competent witnesses, and to their reports reference will shortly be made. * But grievous as is the hardship thus produced throughout these purely agricultural counties, on the whole mass of the labouring population, still greater social evils than even this extreme of poverty, are due to the law of settlement. The practice of hiring labourers by the year, once enforced by law as a binding obligation on all employers of labour in husbandry, has generally ceased; and the labourer is employed from day to day, or at the most from week to week, as he is wanted by the farmer. Hence it follows that, in the winter season, many men are thrown out of work, and at once become a charge on the parish. The selection of labourers for employment during the winter, is very generally made in parishes, at all events in the pauperised agricultural district, with a mere view of keeping down the poor-rate, and in total disregard of the character and skill of the candidates for work. A single man of unblemished reputation, an excellent workman, is certainly the first to be thrown out of employment (especially if he should have saved as much as will maintain him for two or three months): and the ill-conducted drunken spendthrift, who has a wife and family, as certainly will have employment given him, in order to save the parish from a heavy weekly charge for so many mouths in the union-house. On the inquiry of 1833, it appeared, that a large part of the social evil of the pauperism of England was caused by the law of settlement and removal alone; and was not necessarily incident to the administration of relief under the humane provisions of the statute of Elizabeth. It need not, therefore, excite any surprise that the very same evils as were then brought to light, should be found in existence at the present day. Such evils are essentially inherent in the law of settle * Adam Smith observed (Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p. 193.), “The very unequal price of labour which we frequently find in England, in places at no great distance from one another, is probably owing to the obstruction which the law of settlements gives to a poor man who would carry his industry from one parish to another without a certificate " some measure, compensate for its utter inefficiency, as a reform in the incidence of the rate. But no substantial improvement in the labourer's condition could justly be looked forward to from any such trifling change in the law. By the substitution of union for parochial settlement, the narrow circle, within which labour has been so long restricted, would, undoubtedly, be somewhat enlarged, and a slight palliative of the injurious effects upon industry of the law of settlement would, therefore, be obtained; but the expectation of any great amount of benefit, from so slight a modification of the law, would certainly prove wholly illusory. It would seem that an opinion, in favour of union settlement, prevailed much more generally a few years ago, than it does now; that recent discussion has done much to change that opinion; and that a conviction of the utter insufficiency of such a change in the law to remove the ills justly complained of, as resulting from the present law of settlement, and in any way materially to improve the condition of the labourer, has gradually spread, and is now very generally adopted. It is true there is a notion, so prevalent that it may be termed popular, according to which this change in the law would almost put an end to removals. The removals would be comparatively few, say the advocates of the plan, for the only interchange of paupers would be between unions instead of between parishes. So removals would diminish to one twenty-third of their present number, there being, on the average, twenty-three parishes in each union. Unfortunately, the internecine warfare of parishes, and its necessary and continual sacrifice of paupers and ratepayers, would not thus cease: the mere diminution in the number of citadels of the belligerents could not materially diminish either the number of the forces engaged, or the frequency of their conflicts. There is a palpable fallacy in thus contrasting the small number of 620 unions with 15,000 parishes, as if, in future, there would only be 620 orders of removal, for every 15,000 which are now obtained. This fallacy was exposed, in |