Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/192

 182 PAUPERISM has control of the parochial or union boards, as in England. No relief is afforded by the Scotch law to able-bodied adults. The mode of assessment denned by 24 and 25 Victo- ria, c. 37, leaves it optional to each board to have one half the poor rate paid by owners of land and one half by occupiers, or by the latter and all other inhabitants. In 1854, 194 parishes still retained the old voluntary system, and 689 had adopted the new. In England, on the contrary, the poor rate is levied by the churchwardens and overseers on the occupiers of land, after such rate has been confirmed by the justices. This is a spe- cific sum in the pound according to the annual value of the land. Thereby the rate becomes a tax on the occupier, and not primarily on the owner. The law of settlement and removal also differs in Scotland from that which pre- vails in England. In the former a settlement can be acquired by a residence of five years. Children enjoy the settlement of their parents, and wives that of their husbands ; and in de- fault of these the birth settlement is always allowed. In England the law of settlement, based on the act of 1662, and subsequently modified, has given rise to much costly litiga- tion and occasioned great hardship to the poor. Its object is to determine the particular parish among the 600 in England and Wales bound to support a pauper, and to which such pauper can be removed in case of necessity. Edward V. was the first to add a law of removal to the old law of settlement, enjoining that the im- potent poor should be conveyed from constable to constable to their birthplace, or to the place in which they had dwelt for the last three years, there to be settled and maintained by charity. A settlement is at present acquired by birth, by parentage, by marriage, by residing as an indentured apprentice for 40 days in a parish, by renting a tenement for 40 and paying the poor rate on such rent for one year, and by acquiring in a parish an estate worth 30 and residing on the same for 40 days. A woman acquires by marriage the settlement of her husband, and should he have none she re- tains her maiden settlement. Till 1834 it was customary to remove the impotent poor to their place of settlement as determined by law. Subsequently, but before 1850, it was enacted that no person should be removed from a par- ish after a residence therein of five years. At present no pauper who has been allowed to reside for one year in a parish or union is re- movable therefrom. The chief difference in the law of settlement before and since 1834 is that formerly a settlement was acquired by the exercise in any parish of a public annual office, such as that of constable, sexton, sheriff, over- seer, &c., by hiring or service and a residence of 40 days in a parish in such quality, and by indenture as^a sea apprentice ; while the new law, by making the impotent pauper irremov- able from a parish in which he has been allowed to reside for one year, thereby grants him a settlement for all practical purposes, while it is very difficult for a healthy workman to ac- quire a good new settlement, or to lose his old settlement when it happens to be a bad one. The history of pauper legislation in France before the close of the 16th century does not differ materially from that of England for the same period. During the middle ages it required the united efforts of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities to repress or restrain mendicity. As in England, the principle act- ed upon was that each city, parish, or district should support its own paupers, and that they should be sent there for relief. The edict of King John II. in 1350 is the basis of all sub- sequent legislation in France tending to alle- viate distress or restrain mendicancy. The ware and disorders of the 16th century having given rise to a great increase of pauperism, various measures were adopted by the gov- ernment and the provincial and municipal au- thorities to meet the exigencies of the case. The first institution resembling our modern central poor boards was Vaumone generale es- tablished in Lyons in 1531. This served as a model for the organization of le grand lureau des pauvres in Paris in 1544, which continued in existence till May, 1791. This board was empowered by Francis I. to levy a poor rate on all property, lay and ecclesiastical ; and this poor rate, the first ever raised in France, was confirmed by Henry II. in 1551, and again by the famous edict of Moulins in 1566, which made it obligatory on all the communes of France to establish similar boards, and to assess all property holders for their support. Under Francis I. and his two immediate successors workshops had been established for the em- ployment of pauper mechanics, and several public works undertaken by the government to afford labor to other classes of the able- bodied poor. Nevertheless in 1610 Paris con- tained 30,000 beggars. Louis XIII., Aug. 27, 1612, decreed the erection in Paris of a num- ber of establishments, half hospitals, half work- shops, three of which were opened soon after- ward. This project was not fully executed till 1653, when the poor in Paris numbered upward of 40,000, and Louis XIV. established the vast organization known as the "general hospital" to check or remedy the alarming increase of pauperism. To the board of administration appointed by the king were subjected not only the poorhouses and hospitals opened by Louis XIII., but several new ones. The workshops were directed and handicrafts taught by 52 skilled workmen selected by the Parisian trades. In 1657 there were 5,000 persons in these in- stitutions, and 10,000 in 1662. In the latter year this system of relief and compulsory la- bor was extended to all cities and large towns in the kingdom. But pauperism had gone on increasing so fearfully in the last years of the reign of Louis XIV., that in 1719 the regency government decreed that all vagrants and able- bodied paupers should be sent to the colonies.