Page:The Pamphleteer (Volume 8).djvu/15

Rh this at length had come, may be inferred from a statute passed in the first year of the reign of Edward VI. "It is enacted, that if any one shall be idle for the space of three days, he may be seized and set to work: if he attempt to escape, and shall be absent for the space of fourteen days, and then retaken, he shall be branded with the letter S, and become the slave of his employer." Miserable must have been the state of the country when such an inhuman remedy could be suggested. This statute remained in force for near four years; a dreadful monument of the misery of the times, and of the little consideration paid to the voice of humanity.

During the reign of Elizabeth, the state of the poor often occupied the attention of Parliament: in the 43d year of her reign was passed that statute on which the present system of poor laws is founded. It is highly important to attend to the terms of the enactment by which relief is granted. "For the necessary relief of lame, impotent, old, blind, and such other among them being poor and not able to work; and also of putting out such children to be apprentices."