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.

329

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 44d., Heaton 74d., Elswick 8 d., and Jesmond 11d., making an average of 73d. for the four.

from an amount much below, to an amount greatly exceeding, the average rate of the whole country. This test may justly be considered as decisive against the adoption of the union area of taxation.*

That there would not be wanting great inequalities between different unions, even at the very moment of adopting the new area of taxation, is apparent; for the now average poorrate of each union, if ascertained, will be found to be widely different even in different unions of the same county. In the Tewkesbury Union in Gloucestershire, the average of the year's rate is 103d. only in the pound, while that of the Dursley Union, in the same county, is 3s. 5d. In the North Riding of Yorkshire, the Darlington Union pays, on the average, 8d., and the Reeth Union 28. 6d. In Northumberland, the Haltwhistle Union 7d., and the Newcastle Union 28. 5d. Not only would inequalities like these be created, but, in short, all pauperised districts, containing unions such as are mentioned in a subjoined tablet, would obtain no relief whatever from such a change as that proposed.

The extent of inequality in amount of burden, which would at once be found in different unions, under the paltry reform of this "union settlement and union rating,” will receive further illustration, by a reference to a former chapter, in which the existing inequality of the burden of poor-rate, as borne by different unions and districts of the metropolis, is pointed out. Every such instance of present inequality in distribution of that burden, would, by any scheme of mere union settlement and union rating, be left wholly unredressed.

A list of unions, six in each of the six different counties

Sir John M'Neill adopts the same criterion: see Evidence before the Lords Committee on Parochial Assessments, 1850, p. 376., answer to question 2730. "Though I might largely increase the rate (of the parish that was to suffer by a change of rating), I would not be deterred by that, unless I was increasing it much above the average rate of the country."

† Appendix, p. 389.

See Chapter II., especially pp. 35. 38, 39, 40.

of Gloucester, Lincoln, Salop, Middlesex, North Riding of York, and Carnarvon, laid before a Select Committee of the Lords, on the 6th June, 1850, gives the following result as to the inequalities in the thirty-six unions there tabulated."

Now the inequality here shown to exist, in the incidence of the average poor-rate, as it falls on different unions, is just as great as the inequality ordinarily found to exist between the different parishes of a union.

In some instances, the present difference in amount of poorrate, levied for different parishes in the same union, is much less than is found in comparing the average poor-rates of different unions. In the Alnwick Union, In the Alnwick Union, of sixty-two parishes, there are only ten parishes in which the annual rate exceeds 18. in the pound, and of the ten, only one, Alnwick itself, in which it reaches 28. In the Bedford Union, of forty-four parishes, the amount of poor-rate in each parish, in 1847, was as follows:

The adoption of union settlement and rating would, no doubt, to some extent, diminish the number and extent of the instances of inequality in the incidence of the poor-rate; and, if it should appear that any very great improvement would be effected, in the condition of the indigent poor, by such a change in the law, its advantages, in that respect, might, in

See Mr. G. L. Hutchinson's evidence before the Select Committee of the Lords on the Laws relating to Parochial Assessments, 1850, p. 171.