Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/377

 Ch. 9. two great objects of this tatute eem to have been, 1. To relieve the impotent poor, and them only. 2. To find employment for uch as are able to work: and this principally by providing tocks to be worked up at home, which perhaps might be more beneficial than accumulating all the poor in one common work-houe; a practice which tends to detroy all dometic connexions (the only felicity of the honet and indutrious labourer) and to put the ober and diligent upon a level, in point of their earnings, with thoe who are diolute and idle. Whereas, if none were to be relieved but thoe who are incapable to get their livings, and that in proportion to their incapacity; if no children were to be removed from their parents, but uch as are brought up in rags and idlenes; and if every poor man and his family were employed whenever they requested it, and were allowed the whole profits of their labour; — a pirit of chearful indutry would oon diffue itelf through every cottage; work would become eay and habitual, when abolutely neceary to their daily ubitence; and the mot indigent peaant would go through his tak without a murmur, if aured that he and his children (when incapable of work through infancy, age, or infirmity) would then, and then only, be intitled to upport from his opulent neighbours.

appears to have been the plan of the tatute of queen Elizabeth; in which the only defect was confining the management of the poor to mall, parochial, ditricts; which are frequently incapable of furnihing proper work, or providing an able director. However, the laborious poor were then at liberty to eek employment wherever it was to be had; none being obliged to reide in the places of their ettlement, but uch as were unable or unwilling to work; and thoe places of ettlement being only uch where they were born, or had made their abode, originally for three years, and afterwards (in the cae of vagabonds) for one year only. Rh