of the country." The project was received with disapproval, and even derision, and withdrawn. Anything more illusory, as relief to agricultural distress, could not have been imagined; yet, illusory as it was for all practical good, it involved, in principle, the whole of that disregard of prescriptive obligation, and of local government, which has been discussed and denounced in the earlier pages of this chapter.

The only ground on which it appears to have been suggested that the State ought to relieve parishes of part of the burden of maintaining their insane poor, was that no act of the parochial authorities could prevent persons so afflicted from becoming chargeable.† The same argument might be put forward in favour of the State's undertaking to pay most other heads of parochial outlay. It is not easy to see how the prudence of overseers can prevent any of the direct causes of pauperism; and it is impossible to draw any such distinction between one sort of disease and another as would justify the providing for the one by the State, and leaving the other a burden on the parish. +

The working classes generally are especially liable to bodily injuries, and men are frequently disabled from maintaining themselves and their families by such causes. Whether the disability be produced by accident, by insanity, or by any other form of disease, the burden of providing for it should manifestly fall on the same shoulders. A difference in the nature of disease cannot possibly be a ground for difference in the incidence of the burden of providing relief. §

* Hansard, Third Series, vol. cxiv. p. 734.

† Sir Charles Wood, ib. p. 734. "It is a reason for taking some portion of this charge, that no foresight, no sacrifice, no care, on the part of the ratepayers, can prevent the charge from being thrown on the parish."

Sir John M'Neill, on 2nd July, 1850, before the Lords' Committee on Parochial Assessments, says (Answer to Questions 2747, 2749.), "I do not know that the disability produced by that form of disease (lunacy) is not as reasonable a ground of charge as the disability produced by any other." "A person disabled, by whatever cause, whether by fever, lunacy, accident, age, or infirmity of any kind, becomes entitled to relief. I do not know on what ground of justice I can exclude a man disabled by lunacy from the right to parochial relief, any more than a man disabled from any other cause."

§ While predial slavery existed, and while, on many farms, all the labourers

!

diminution in the number of actual removals. Parish officers, by avoiding the costs of removal, not unfrequently save more than they expend in relieving those whom they might remove, but do not. "A great deal of expense, much bad feeling between parish and parish, and a great deal of hardship to the poor themselves, have been saved by this course."*

The numerous evils attendant on actual removal of the poor, when they thus prevent the carrying out the law, in effect compel the parishes of resident destitution to forego the only remedy given for enforcing relief by the parishes of settlement. If, therefore, there be anything of reason or justice in the principle of a law of settlement, it must be the duty of the legislature, at least to provide means by which the burden of providing for settled poor, wherever resident, may more effectually be thrown on those who, according to the law, ought to bear it. Such means would certainly be found in substituting an order for repayment of relief, in the place of the order of removal.

When the conveyance of the poor man to a distant place of settlement, under an order of removal, is effected, and is not followed by his speedy return, it sometimes happens, as we have seen, that a revival of trade makes his labour wanted in the very place in which, shortly before, during a depression of trade, he could not find employment. The power of removal, if exercised freely during temporary stagnation of trade, so disperses the hands employed, as to make it extremely difficult, if not impracticable, to regain them, when again wanted. Hence, some manufacturers, employing many hands, "find it imperative upon them to endeavour to find work for their people, even when trade is bad, and the sale of their manufactures is but slow." When manufacturers make such

* Mr. Marriott, clerk to the Southwell Union, Reports to the Poor Law Board 1850, p. 130.

† Reports to the Poor Law Board, 1850, p. 116. Mr. Hardisty, the head of a firm of extensive silk and crape manufacturers, employing more than 800 hands in the town of Shepton Mallet in Somersetshire, complains, that whilst himself and his partners are compelled to maintain their own people, during a slack time, the settlement laws throw the most unfair burden upon them as ratepayers; for, during the season when agricultural labourers have not em

sacrifices, to prevent the law of removal from being put in force, we may feel well assured of the extreme inconvenience, which is apt to result to all parties interested, from the compulsory removal of poor workmen to places of settlement.

Upon the whole, therefore, it may safely be concluded, that a change which should substitute the delivery of a mere order directing the payment of money, in the stead of an actual removal of the indigent poor from one parish to another, would, as far as it went, be a very decided improvement in the law; but its realisation would still leave unchecked the greater part of the social evil which the poor-law legislation of the last two centuries has created and fostered, and would leave, in undiminished energy, most of the demoralising influences to which that law still subjects the labouring population.

ployment, they fall upon the parish, and the landowners of neighbouring parishes, by pulling down cottages, compel Shepton Mallet to provide a large part of the relief needed by poor people, whose residence alone is in Shepton Mallet, but whose labour is employed in close parishes four or five miles distant.

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

of uniting such parishes for the joint support of the poor, can no longer be doubted."* It can certainly no longer be doubted, that a great change in the law is needed, and it may be conceded that a union of such parishes, for both settlement and rating, would be a sufficient remedy, in many cases, for the single evil of this inequality of burden. But, to make such union an effectual remedy, of even this single evil, it must include union rating, which shall deal with the union as if it were one parish, and shall levy the funds needed for relieving the poor, upon real property throughout the union, in proportion to the value of such property, without regard to the parish in which it is situate.†

Inequality of burden, as now complained of, would, by the adoption of this proposal, be completely removed, so far as the relative contribution of different parts of each separate union is concerned; but it may well be doubted, whether such a remedy would not be, in many respects, worse than the existing disease. Its adoption seems, in the first place, necessarily to involve greater interference with existing rights than is requisite for the reasonable adjustment of existing burdens. In some unions the effect would be to increase the rate, on some of the parishes, to an amount many times greater than that which such parishes had previously paid ; it would, in many unions, raise the rate on parishes which have heretofore maintained their poor at an expense of less than half the average of the burden throughout England, to double the amount of that average. It seems to me that a sufficient ground for rejecting such a proposal is found in the fact that, in many of the districts which it would subject to an entirely new burden, the rates would be thus increased,

* Report on the County of Northumberland, by W. H. T. Hawley, p. 190. † A modification of this principle has been proposed; and will be adverted to, in the next chapter.

This would occur wherever a few parishes lightly burdened are in union with many parishes, the burdens in which are heavy, as in the Newcastle-uponTyne Union, which pays an average rate of 2s. 5d. in the pound, and contains in the whole eleven parishes, of which Fenham now pays 4 d., Heaton 7 d., Elswick 8 d., and Jesmond 11d., making an average of 7åd. for the four.