Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/489

Rh POOR L A W S 469 Ir ;ula it of jx. -la oiers. EM and su ested re idles. other labourers on the like work, in the parishes or places where they then are,&quot; and also all persons begging alms (17 Geo. II. c. 5). The laws relating to idle and disorderly persons, rogues and vagabonds, incorrigible rogues, and other vagrants in England were again consolidated and amended in 1822 (3 Geo. IV. c. 40), but the Act being temporary and requiring amendment, was superseded two years later by the present Act, 5 Geo. IV. c. 83, commonly spoken of as the Vagrant Act, which with some additions and amend ments includes the law relating to mendicity and some provisions concerning persons deserting or neglecting to support their families. Mendicity in the popular sense is now considered as appertaining to police rather than to poor laws. It must suffice here to note the change from former inhuman laws denoted by the fact that corporal punishment is confined by the Vagrant Act to the permis sive infliction of whipping on male persons imprisoned as incorrigible rogues. The misdoings of the &quot; vagrant train, &quot; so often paraded by statute and so severely treated in former times, seem to have been trifling compared with the iniquities of some of those engaged in the administration of poor-law relief. In 17G9 it was found necessary to prevent churchwardens and overseers from wilfully and knowingly making payments to or for the use of the poor in base and counterfeit money (9 Geo. III. c. 37). For this heinous offence a penalty limited to twenty shillings was imposed. The curious may compare this mild punishment with that inflicted on a wanderer from his home; for as recently as 1816 it was thought right to declare that it should not be lawful for any governor, guardian, or master of any house of industry or workhouse on any pretence to chain or confine by chains or manacles any poor person of sane mind, a provision significant of what passed within the walls by its prohibition as well as by the limitation. Such were the most salient features of the legislation respecting the relief of the poor previous to the reform of parliament itself in 1832. It had long been seen that there was something wrong which legislation had failed to set right. Sir Matthew Hale framed a scheme which was written soon after the middle of the 17th century, although not printed until after his death. The chief feature of his plan was &quot; that the justices of the peace at the quarter sessions do set out and distribute the parishes in their several counties into several divisions, in each of which there may be a workhouse for the common use of the respective divisions wherein they are respectively placed, to wit, one, two, three, four, five, or six parishes to a workhouse according to the greatness or smallness and accommodation of the several parishes, &quot; and that providing &quot; a stock &quot; for work in and out of the workhouses should be made compulsory. His views are thus stated : &quot; At tliis day, it seems to me that the English nation is more deficient in their prudent provision for the poor than any other Christian state In some other countries a beggar is a a rare sight. Those that are unable to maintain themselves by age or impotency are relieved. And those that are able to supply their wants by their labour are furnished with employments suit able to their condition. And by this means there is not only a good and orderly education and a decent face of the public, but the more populous the state or country is the richer and the more wealthy it is. But with us in England, for want of a duo regula tion of things, the more populous we are the poorer we arc ; so that wherein the strength and wealth of a kingdom consists renders us the weaker and the poorer ; and, which is yet worse poor families which daily multiply in the kingdom, for want of a due order for their employment in an honest course of life, whereby they may gain subsistence for them and their children, do unavoidably bring up their children either in a trade of begging or stealing, or such other idle course, which a^ain they propagate over to their children ; and so there is a successive multiplication of hurtful or at least unprofitable people, neither capable of discipline nor beneficial employment.&quot; He further remarks that the continuance of the evils he depicted &quot; must in time prodigiously increase and overgrow the whole face of the kingdom, and eat out the heart of it.&quot; In lamenting the want of an industrious education he observes that &quot; a man that has been bred up in the trade of begging will never, unless compelled, fall to industry ; and, on the other side, it is a wonderful necessity indeed that shall bring one bred up in civility or industry to beg.&quot; Almost all subsequent schemes looked up to Hale as their model ; but all either were not accepted or did not succeed, although in some of the legislation of the 18th century imperfect attempts seem to have been made in this direction. Among other schemes Sir Josiah Child, in the reign of Charles II., who speaks of the poor in England having always been &quot;in a most sad and wretched condition,&quot; proposed to abolish all settlements and receive every poor person that applied to incorporated societies or &quot;fathers of the poor.&quot; John Gary, writing about 1700, having for the burden of his tract, and the cure of existing evils, to &quot; provide work for those who are willing, and force them to work that are able,&quot; makes some pithy remarks. &quot; He that walks the streets of London, and observes the fatigues used by the beggars to make themselves seem objects of charity, must conclude that they take more pains than an honest man doth at his trade, and yet seem not to get bread to eat. Beggary is now become an art or mystery, to which children are brought up from their cradles. Anything that may move compassion is made a live lihood, a sore leg or arm, or for want thereof a pretended one. The tricks and devices I have observed to be used by those people have often made me think that those parts, if better employed, might be made useful to the nation.&quot; &quot; Licences for alehouses were at first granted for good ends, not to draw men aside from their labour by games and sports, but to support and refresh them under it ; whereas alehouses are now encouraged to promote the income of excise, not considering withal that the labour of each man, if well employed, whilst he sits in an alehouse, would be worth much more to the nation than the excise he pays.&quot; &quot; Our laws to set the poor at work are short and defective, tending rather to maintain them so than to give them to a better way of living. Tis true, those laws design well ; but, consisting only in generals, and not reducing things to practicable methods, they fall short of answer ing their ends, and thereby render the poor more bold when they know the parish officers are bound either to provide them work or to give them maintenance. &quot; In 1735 Mr Hay, a member of the House of Commons, introduced a bill, which, however, was not passed, appoint ing guardians of a district, chosen by divers occupiers out of a list of persons qualified by estate in land, with power to purchase land, and build and furnish workhouses, and provide stock to set the poor to work, to be paid for by rate, &quot; every person to be deemed to be legally settled where he continued a year without being chargeable, and if he gained no such settlement then at the place of his birth, and if not born in the kingdom then where he should happen to want relief,&quot; parochial settlement to be abolished, and a county settlement substituted. In 1753 bills were introduced into parliament by the earl of Hillsborough and Sir Richard Lloyd, but neither was passed. Lord Hillsborough proposed to repeal all existing Acts, re-enacting much, but getting rid of the notion of settlements and removals, and establishing a county board as governors of the poor with officers to carry out their bye-laws, and hospitals for the impotent and the aged and their children, and for no other kind of poor. In the same year Fielding printed A Proposal for making an effectual Provision for the Poor, for amending their Morals, and for rendering them useful Members of the Society. His plan embraced county houses of correction, and places of work, maintenance, and punishment, includ ing a &quot;fasting room.&quot; It may be regarded as supple mentary to schemes of the same period. Although all that fell from this author is worthy of attention, his plan cannot