Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/482

Rh 462 P -P of Government culturable land of 1,924,630 acres, 1,775,583 were ; cultivated during 1882-83. Of these 181,395 acres were fallow , land and occupied waste, leaving 1,594,188 acres under actual cultivation, of which 28,035 were twice cropped. The chief | products are cereals (chiefly jowari and bajri) and pulse, and the yielded 111,740, stamps 18,790, and excise 31,160. &quot; History. The district passed from the last Hindu dynasty which reigned at Deogiri to the Mohammedans between 1294 and 1312, and under the Bahmani kings the Ghat country wa.s thoroughly subdued. On the disruption of the Bahmani kingdom after the revolt of the governors of the provinces, the district fell to the share of the Ahmednagar kings and from them it passed to the Moguls, when the Nizamshahi dynasty finally came to an end in 1637. The country north of the Bhima, including Junnar, was annexed to the Mogul territory, and that south of it was made over to Bijapur. The power of the latter was, however, declining, and gave an opportunity to the Mahratta chiefs to unite and assert themselves, and ended in their establishing a Mahratta kingdom at Satara. Intrigues at the palace led to the supremacy of the peshwas and the removal of the capital to Poona, where many stirring ^Cines in Mahratta history have been enacted. Holkar defeated the peshwa under its walls, and his flight to Bassein led to the treaty by which he put himself under British protection ; he was reinstated iii 1802, but, unable to maintain friendly relations, he attacked tlie British at Kirkee in 1817, and his kingdom passed from him. POONA, the chief town of the above district, is situated in 18 31 N. lat. and 73 55 E. long., in a treeless plain about 2000 feet above the sea and overlooked by the Uhats, which rise 1000 feet above the plain. Its area is about 4 square miles, with a population in 1881 of 99,622 males 50,814, females 48,808. The town stands on the right bank of the Muta river, and is about 80 miles south-east of Bombay. Until the year 1817, when it was taken by the British, the city was the residence of the peshwas of the Mahrattas. POOR LAWS. Without embarking on an inquiry as to the causes of pauperism or the primary right of any persons to have their wants, however pressing, met by the state, it is sufficient to say that in Great Britain &quot; there is no man so indigent or wretched but he may demand a supply sufficient for all the necessaries of life from the more opulent part of the community, by means of the several statutes enacted for the relief of the poor &quot; (Blackstone). Moreover, apart from statute, by the common law of England the poor were sustainable &quot; by parsons, rectors of the church, and the parishioners, so that none of them die for default of sustenance &quot; (Mirror}. The great importance of the subject of relief of the poor is evinced, apart from other considerations, by the number | of persons immediately affected, either as recipients of relief or as ratepayers, and by the sums expended in that relief. The number of paupers of all classes now in receipt of relief in England and Wales approaches 800,000, equi valent to a thirty-fourth part of the entire population, and relieved at a yearly cost of considerably more than 8,000,000, representing a charge of between six and seven shillings per head of the estimated population. Of existing legislation a statute of the beginning of the 17th century (43 Eliz. c. 2, 1601) is the earliest, under which, by parochial taxation, parish officers are directed to provide a stock of materials for &quot; setting the poor on work &quot; (that is to say, persons &quot; married or unmarried having no means to maintain them [and that] use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by &quot;), and further for setting to work their children ; &quot; and also competent sums of money for and towards the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, and such others among them being poor and not able to work.&quot; The same statute enacts &quot; that the father and grandfather and the mother and grandmother and the children of every poor old, blind, lame, and impotent person, or other poor person not able to work, being of a sufficient ability, shall at their own charges relieve and maintain every such poor person.&quot; Although the statute of Elizabeth is spoken of as the Early principal foundation of existing legislation relating to the le gila poor, it is an error to say that the relief of the poor ori- tl0 &quot; ginated at that period. The common law of England has been already cited, and traces of poor laws, however far removed from a system, are found in all civilized states. An approximation to the principle may be discerned in the legislation of England at a very early period ; and before the Norman Conquest laws of Athelstane, establishing a responsibility over households and landowners, although in tended for good order and calculated to prevent the growth of vagabondage and violence, had also the effect of estab lishing reciprocal relations between the landless man and the landowner, between property and poverty, between the householder and the houseless, casting upon one the duty of supervising the conduct and providing for the wants of the other, in some respects similar to the poor law of the present day. &quot; The results of this legislation were like wise, it may be presumed, not very dissimilar, for the improvident and the indolent would endeavour, with the smallest amount of labour, to obtain the largest amount of assistance from the householder who was liable for their support and responsible for their conduct, whilst the householder would as certainly endeavour to obtain the largest amount of labour in return for the cost and re sponsibility to which he was subject.&quot; Again, so long as serfdom and villenage prevailed, whether to be traced to the Norman Conquest or not, there could be no call for any special provision for the destitute. &quot; The persons who might, if free agents and in a destitute state, have been properly relieved out of a common stock, would as serfs or villeins have a claim on their masters, to whom they belonged, and who were bound to provide for them &quot; (Nicholls). As those old ties became more relaxed the change to freedom was accompanied by some evils, and led to a great increase of vagrancy ; and from a period commencing before the close of the 14th century there was a stream of legislation on the subject. An Act of 12 Richard II., after providing for labour to persons able to work (see LABOUR AND LABOUR LAWS, vol. xiv. p. 167), enacts &quot; that beggars impotent to serve shall abide in the cities and towns where they may be dwelling at the time of the proclamation of this statute, and, if the people of the cities and towns will not, or may not, suffice to find them, that these, the said beggars, shall draw them to other towns within the hundred, rape, or wapentake, or to the towns where they were born, within forty days after the proclama tion made, and there shall continually abide during their lives.&quot; This is the first enactment in which the impotent poor are directly named as a separate class, and on that account it has been mistakenly regarded as the origin of the English poor laws; but it makes no provision for their relief, and the chief characteristic of the statute is the fact of its having openly recognized the distinction between &quot; beggars able to labour&quot; and &quot; beggars impotent to serve.&quot; Passing over intermediate legislation, by an Act passed in 1530, &quot; directing how aged, poor, and impotent persons compelled to live by alms, shall be ordered, and how vagabonds and beggars shall be punished,&quot; justices of the peace were re quired to give licences under their seals to such poor, aged, and impotent persons to beg within a certain precinct as they should think to have most need ; &quot;and if any do beg out of his precinct he shall be set in the stocks two days and nights ; and if any beg without such licence he shall be whipped, or else be set in the stocks three days and three nights, with bread and water only. And persons being whole and mighty in body, and able to labour, who shall beg, or be vagrants and not able to account how they get