Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/494

Rh 474 POOR LAWS proceedings now, however, operates as a preventive to neglect of duty. If, by reason of the neglect of overseers to collect rates or to pay the guardians of the poor, any relief directed by the guardians to be given to any poor person is delayed or withheld, or if overseers disobey a justice s order to give temporary relief, or if any officer wilfully neglects or disobeys the orders of the central board, penalties are incurred. The control of the central board is, except in very rare cases, found effective to secure the due administration of the law. The recognition of the right to relief as a legal claim allows and indeed necessitates the imposition of restraints, apart from provisions connected with the law of settlement and removal, more fully noticed hereafter. Persons, how ever poor, wandering abroad to beg or gather alms, or placing themselves in any public place for that purpose, become subject to the vagrancy laws. Private relief, pecuniary or otherwise, may be asked for and obtained so long as it does not involve any false pretence or dishonest or prohibited means of gaining a livelihood. Any person able by work or other means to maintain himself or his family, who, by wilful refusal or neglect to do so, becomes chargeable for any part of his family, commits an offence. Poverty or idleness short of this, and apart from the case of liability in respect of children under elementary and industrial school Acts, is not an offence against the law. Obliga- There are circumstances, however, where relative lia- tion to bilities make it a duty for persons to avail themselves of &quot;f e wf e *ke P u kli c provision for relief. The culpable neglect of provision. a P erson to provide another under his control and in his legal custody, who is actually helpless, as an infant or lunatic, with the means of life constitutes a crime, and by the express provision of a poor-law Act any parent wilfully neglecting to provide adequate food, clothing, medical aid, or lodgings for his child, being in his custody under the age of fourteen, whereby the health of such child is or is likely to be seriously injured, may be summarily convicted (31 & 32 Viet. c. 122), in analogy to the law making it an indictable misdemeanour for a master or mistress who is legally liable to provide any apprentice or servant with necessary food, clothing, or lodging, wilfully and without lawful excuse to refuse or neglect so to provide (24 & 25 Viet. c. 100). Something more than the mere abstention from seeking parochial relief without any intentional neglect is necessary to lay a criminal as distinguished from a moral responsibility on destitute persons. Privatere- Although under the vagrancy laws public begging is an icfnotan offence, the giver of such unlawful charity is not subject to legal restraint. In early times attempts were made to impose such restraints. An Act of 1349 (23 Edw. III. c. 7) provided that none on pain of imprisonment should under colour of piety or alms give anything to a beggar who v/as able to labour, and nearly two centuries later an Act (22 Hen. VIII. c. 12) already noticed, relating to poor compelled to live by alms, and the punishment of vagabonds and beggars, provided that any person giving any harbour, money, or lodgings to any strong beggar who violated the statute should make such fine to the king as the justices in sessions should appoint ; and as late as the .commencement of the 17th century givers to beggars were subject to a penalty (1 Jas. I. c. 7). These Acts, however, eventually disappeared from the statute book. Lr Burn advocated, as has been seen, the infliction of a penalty for relieving a common beggar; but, although aiders and abettors in the commission of even petty offences are now punishable, it is not attempted to apply the law to bestowers of charity, whether in the streets and highways or elsewhere. It is in vain to impose the doctrines of political economy in restraint of natural instincts. Such doctrines are scattered as chaff before the wind when opposed by the teachings of the nursery rhymes of &quot; The Beggar s Petition,&quot; or to the fascinating description where the beggar figures as &quot; a well-remembered guest,&quot; or to the sympathy enlisted by Charles Lamb s essay &quot; A Complaint of the decay of Beggars in the Metropolis.&quot; Although in most cases the relief given to the poor is practically a gift, and does not constitute an available debt, the plan of giving relief by way of advance as a loan was introduced early in the present century, and the Poor- Law Amendment Act (1834) enacted that any relief, or the cost thereof, which shall be given to or on account of any poor person above the age of twenty -one or to his wife or any part of his family under the age of sixteen, and which the said commissioners shall by any rule, order, or regulation declare or direct to be given or considered as given by way of loan, and whether any receipt for such relief, or engagement to pay the same, or the cost price thereof, or any part thereof, shall have been given or not by that person to or on account of whom the same shall have been so given, shall be considered, and the same is hereby declared to be, a loan to such poor person (4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 76, 58). By the same Act power was given to enforce payment by means of a summons before justices to attach wages. A subsequent statute gives power to the guardians to recover loans to paupers in the county court (11 & 12 Viet, c. 110). By order of the central board, guardians may, in the cases within the provision of the Poor-Law Amendment Act above set out, give relief by way of loan, but no relief contrary to the regulations can be given in this way. The restriction was necessary, as formerly some guardians granted outdoor relief by way of loan contrary to the recent principles of administration of relief. The criminal liability of parents and others in loco parentis to provide sustenance has been considered. The purely civil liability for necessaries under implied con tracts is of course outside the scope of this article, but there is an express liability created by the poor laws. The liability of the father and grandfather and the mother and grandmother and the children of poor persons under the statute of Elizabeth has been set out in an earlier part of this article. The statute extends only to natural relations. The liability is enforced by orders of magis trates after chargeability, who adjudicate as to the amount after hearing the facts and taking into consideration the ability of the relative. The relief of actual destitution should always precede investigation as to the liability of other persons than the parish to contribute to it. Indeed actual chargeability to the union is in general a condition I precedent to an order upon the relative. la treating of the persons entitled to relief it may be mentioned that, in accordance with the general law, a wife is to be treated as one with her husband who is compel- lable to maintain her ; and, as on the one hand the wife is entitled under ordinary circumstances to relief equally with the husband, the latter is the person to apply for and to receive relief. With respect to children, they form part of the father s family until they become &quot; emancipated.&quot; During the minority of a child there can be no emancipation, unless he marries and so becomes himself the head of a family, or contracts some other relation so as wholly and per manently to exclude the parental control. By the amendment of the poor laws in 1834 all relief given to or on account of the wife, or children under sixteen, not being blind or deaf and dumb, is considered as given to the husband or father as the case may be ; arid any relief given to children under that age of a Relief ^y way

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