parish, by the fame act of parliament; which has been farther explained and enforced by several subsequent statutes. THE two great objects of this ftatute feem to have been, 1. To relieve the impotent poor, and them only. 2. To find employment for such as are able to work: and this principally by providing stocks of raw materials to be worked up at their feparate homes, inftead of accumulating all the poor in one common work-house; a practice which puts the fober and diligent upon a level (in point of their earnings) with those who are diffolute and idle, depreffes the laudable emu lation of domestic industry and neatness, and destroys all endearing family connexions, the only felicity of the indigent. Whereas, if none were relieved but those who are incapable to get their livings, and that in proportion to their incapacity; if no children were removed from their parents, but fuch as are brought up in rags and idleness; and if every poor man and his family were regularly furnished with employment, and allowed the whole profits of their labour;—a spirit of bufy cheerfulness would foon diffuse itself through every cottage; work would become eafy and habitual, when abfolutely neceffary for daily fubfiftence; and the peafant would go through his task without a murmur, if affured that he and his children (when incapable of work through infancy, age, or infirmity) would then, and then only, be entitled to support from his opulent neighbours. THIS appears to have been the plan of the ftatute of queen Elizabeth; in which the only defect was confining the management of the poor to fmall, parochical, diftricts; which are frequently incapable of furnishing proper work, or providing an able director. However, the laborious poor were then at liberty to feek employment wherever it was to be had none being obliged to refide in the places of their fettlement, but fuch as were unable or unwilling to work; and those places of fettlement being only fuch where they were born, or had made their abode, originally for three years, and afterwards (in the case of vagabonds) for one year only P. P Stat. 39 Eliz. c. 4. • Stat. 19 Hen. VII. c.12. 1 Edw.VI. c. 3. 3 Edw. VI. c. 16. 14 Eliz. c. 5. AFTER fuch a houfe. 6. Being charged to and paying the public taxes and levies of the parish; (excepting those for scavengers, highways, and the duties on houses and windows 2) and, 7. Executing, when legally appointed, any public parochial office for a whole year in the parish, as church-warden, &c. are both of them equivalent to notice, and gain a settlement, if coupled with a refidence of forty days. 8. Being hired for a year, when unmarried and childless, and ferving a year in the fame service; and 9. Being bound an apprentice, give the fervant, and apprentice a fettlement without notice, in that place wherein they ferve the last forty days. This is meant to encourage application to trades, and going out to reputable fervices. 10. Lastly, the having an estate of one's own, and refiding thereon forty days, however fmall the value may be, in cafe it be acquired by act of law or of a third perfon, as by defcent, gift, devife, &c. is a fufficient fettlement but if a man acquire it by his own act, as by purchase, (in it's popular fenfe, in confideration of money paid) then unless the confideration advanced, bona fide, be 30%. it is no fettlement for any longer time, than the perfon fhall inhabit thereon". He is in no cafe removable from his own property; but he fhall not, by any trifling or fraudu lent purchase of his own, acquire a permanent and lasting fettlement. ALL perfons, not fo fettled, may be removed to their own parishes, on complaint of the overfeers, by two juftices of the peace, if they fhall adjudge them likely to become chargeable to the parish, into which they have intruded: unless they are in a way of getting a legal fettlement, as by having hired a houfe of 10l. per annum, or living in an annual service; for then they are not removable. And in all other cafes, if the parish to which they belong will grant them a certificate, acknowleging them to be their parishioners, they cannot be removed merely because likely to become y Stat. 9 Geo. I. c. 7. §. 6. 2 Stat. 21 Geo. II. c. 10. 18 Geo. III. c. 26. a Stat. 3 & 4 W. and M. c. 11. 9 W. III. c. 10. 31 Geo. II. c. 11. c Salk. 524. chargeable, chargeable, but only when they become actually chargeable. But fuch certificated perfon can gain no fettlement by any of the means above-mentioned; unlefs by renting a tenement of 10l. per annum, or by ferving an annual office in the parish, being legally placed therein: neither can an apprentice or fervant to fuch certificated perfon gain a fettlement by fuch their fervice . THESE are the general heads of the laws relating to the poor, which, by the refolutions of the courts of juftice thereon within a century paft, are branched into a great variety. And yet, notwithstanding the pains that have been taken about them, they still remain very imperfect, and inadequate to the purposes they are defigned for: a fate, that has generally attended most of our ftatute laws, where they have not the foundation of the common law to build on. When the fhires, the hundreds, and the tithings, were kept in the fame admirable order in which they were difpofed by the great Alfred, there were no perfons idle, confequently none but the impotent that needed relief: and the ftatute of 43 Eliz. feems entirely founded on the fame principle. But when this excellent fcheme was neglected and departed from, we cannot but obferve with concern, what miferable fhifts and lame expedients have from time to time been adopted, in order to patch up the flaws occafioned by this neglect. There is not a more neceffary or more certain maxim in the frame and conftitution of fociety, than that every individual must contribute his fhare, in order to the well-being of the community: and furely they must be very deficient in found policy, who fuffer one half of a parish to continue idle, diffolute, and unemployed; and at length are amazed to find, that the industry of the other half is not able to maintain the whole. f Stat. 8 & 9 W. III. c. 30. 2 Stat. 12 Ann. c. 18. VOL. I. A a CHAPTER THE TENTH. OF THE PEOPLE, WHETHER ALIENS, DENIZENS, OR NATIVES. H AVING, in the eight preceding chapters, treated of perfons as they stand in the public relations of magiftrates, I now proceed to confider fuch perfons as fall under the denomination of the people. And herein all the inferior and fubordinate magiftrates, treated of in the laft chapter, are included. THE first and moft obvious divifion of the people is into aliens and natural-born fubjects. Natural-born fubjects are fuch as are born within the dominions of the crown of England; that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king: and aliens, fuch as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or ligamen, which binds the fubject to the king, in return for that protection which the king affords the fubject. The thing itself, or fubftantial part of it, is founded in reafon and the nature of government; the name and the form are derived to us from our Gothic ancestors. Under the feodal fyftem, every owner of lands held them in fubjection to fome fuperior or lord, from whom or whofe ancestors the tenant or vafal had received them: and there was a mutual truft or confidence fubfifting between the lord and vafal, that the lord fhould protect the vasal in the enjoyment of the territory he had granted him, and, on the other hand, that the vafal fhould be faithful to the lord and defend him against all his enemies. This obligation on the part of the vafal was called his fidelitas or fealty; and an oath of fealty was required, by the feodal law, to be taken by all tenants to their landlord, which is couched in almoft the the fame terms as our antient oath of allegiance a: except that in the usual oath of fealty there was frequently a saving or exception of the faith due to a fuperior lord by name, under whom the landlord himself was perhaps only a tenant or vafal. But when the acknowlegement was made to the abfolute fuperior himself, who was vafal to no man, it was no longer called the oath of fealty, but the oath of allegiance; and therein the tenant swore to bear faith to his fovereign lord, in oppofition to all men, without any faving or exception: "contra omnes homines fidelitatem fecit." Land held by this exalted fpecies of fealty was called feudum ligium, a liege fee; the vasals homines ligii, or liege men; and the sovereign their dominus ligius, or liege lord. And when fovereign princes did homage to each other, for lands held under their respective fovereignties, a distinction was always made between fimple homage, which was only an acknowlegement of tenure; and liege homage, which included the fealty before-mentioned, and the fervices confequent upon it. Thus when our Edward III, in 1329, did homage to Philip VI of France, for his ducal dominions on that continent, it was warmly difputed of what species the homage was to be, whether liege or fimple homage. But with us in England, it becoming a fettled principle of tenure, that all lands in the kingdom are holden of the king as their fovereign and lord paramount, no oath but that of fealty could ever be taken to inferior lords, and the oath of allegiance was neceffarily confined to the perfon of the king alone. By an eafy analogy the term of allegiance was foon brought to fignify all other engagements, which are due from fubjects to their prince, as well as thofe duties which were fimply and merely territorial. And the oath of allegiance, as administered for upwards of fix hundred years, contained a promife "to be "true and faithful to the king and his heirs, and truth and "faith to bear of life and limb and terrene honour, and "not to know or hear of any ill or damage intended him, a 2 Feud. 5, 6, 7. 2 Feud. 99. C 7 Rep. Calvin's cafe. 7. d2 Carte.401. Mod. Un.Hift.xxiii.420. Mirror. c. 3. §. 35. Fleta. 3. 16. Britton. c. 29. 7 Rep. Calvin's cafe. 6.' " without A a 2 |