Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/378

 362 the retoration a very different plan was adopted, which has rendered the employment of the poor more difficult, by authorizing the ubdiviion of parihes; has greatly increaed their number, by confining them all to their respective ditricts; has given birth to the intricacy of our poor-laws, by multiplying and rendering more eay the methods of gaining ettlements; and, in conequence, has created an infinity of expenive law-uits between contending neighbourhoods, concerning thoe ettlements and removals. By the tatute 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 12. a legal ettlement was declared to be gained by birth, or by inhabitancy, apprenticehip, or ervice, for forty days; within which period all intruders were made removeable from any parih by two jutices of the peace, unles they ettled in a tenement of the annual value of 10𝑙. The frauds, naturally conequent upon this proviion, which gave a ettlement by o hort a reidence, produced the tatute 1 Jac. II. c. 17. which directed notice in writing to be delivered to the parih officers, before a ettlement could be gained by uch reidence. Subequent proviions allowed other circumtances of notoriety to be equivalent to uch notice given; and thoe circumtances have from time to time been altered, enlarged, or retrained, whenever the experience of new inconveniences, ariing daily from new regulations, uggeted the neceity of a remedy. And the doctrine of certificates was invented, by way of counterpoie, to retrain a man and his family from acquiring a new ettlement by any length of reidence whatever, unles in two particular excepted caes; which makes parihes very cautious of giving uch certificates, and of coure confines the poor at home, where frequently no adequate employment can be had.

law of ettlements may be therefore now reduced to the following general heads; or, a ettlement in a parih may be acquired, 1. By birth; for, wherever a child is firt known to be, that is always prima facie the place of ettlement, until ome other can be hewn. This is alo always the place of ettlement Rh