being obliged to send a team for every draught, and for every 50%. a year, which they keep or occupy; and all other persons to work or find a labourer. The work must be completed before harvest; as well for providing a good road for carrying in the corn, as also because all hands are then supposed to be employed in harvest work. And every cartway must be made eight feet wide at the least'; and may be increased by the quarter sessions to the breadth of four and twenty feet. 3. The surveyors may lay out their own money in purchasing materials for repairs, where there is not sufficient within the parish, and shall be reimbursed by a rate, to be allowed at a special sessions. 4. In case the personal labour of the parish be not sufficient, the surveyors, with the consent of the quarter sessions, may levy a rate (not exceeding 6 d. in the pound) on the parish, in aid of the personal duty; for the due application of which they are to account upon oath. As for turnpikes, which are now universally introduced in aid of such rates, and the law relating to them, these depend entirely on the particular powers granted in the several road acts, and therefore have nothing to do with this compendium of general law.

VI. I PROCEED therefore, lastly, to confider the overseers of the poor; their original, appointment, and duty.

THE poor of England, till the time of Henry VIII, subsisted entirely upon private benevolence, and the charity of welldisposed christians. For, though it appears by the mirrourk, that by the common law the poor were to be "sustained by parsons, rectors " of the church, and the parishioners; so that none of them dye " for default of sustenance;" and though by the statutes 12 Ric. II. c.7. and 19 Hen.VII. c.12. the poor are directed to be sustained in the cities or towns wherein they were born, or such wherein they had dwelt for three years (which feem to be the first rudiments of parish settlements) yet till the statute 27 Hen. VIII. c.26. I find no compulsory method chalked out for this purpose: but the poor feem to have been left to fuch relief as the humanity of their neighbours would afford them. The monafteries were, in particular, their principal resource; and, among other bad effects which attended the monaftic institutions, it was not perhaps one of the leaft (though frequently esteemed quite otherwife) that they supported and fed a very numerous and very idle poor, whose sustenance depended upon what was daily distributed in alms at the gates of the religious houses. But, upon the total dissolution of these, the inconvenience of thus encouraging the poor in habits of indolence and beggary was quickly felt throughout the kingdom: and abundance of statutes were made in the reign of king Henry the eighth, for providing for the poor and impotent; which, the preambles to some of them recite, had of late years strangely increased. These poor were principally of two forts: fick and impotent, and therefore unable to work; idle and sturdy, and therefore able, but not willing, to exercise any honest employment. To provide in some measure for both of these, in and about the metropolis, his fon Edward the fixth founded three royal hospitals; Christ's, and St. Thomas's, for the relief of the impotent through infancy or fickness; and Bridewell for the punishment and employment of the vigorous and idle. But these were far from being fufficient for the care of the poor throughout the kingdom at large; and therefore, after many other fruitless experiments, by statute 43 Eliz. c. 2. overseers of the poor were appointed in every parish.

By virtue of the statute last mentioned, these overseers are to be nominated yearly in Easter-week, or within one month after, by two justices dwelling near the parish. They must be substantial householders, and so expressed to be in the appointment of the justices'.

THEIR office and duty, according to the same statute, are principally these: first, to raise competent fums for the necessary 1 2 Lord Raym. 1394.

relief of the poor, impotent, old, blind, and such other, being poor and not able to work: and, secondly, to provide work for fuch as are able, and cannot otherwise get employment: but this latter part of their duty, which, according to the wise regulations of that falutary statute, should go hand in hand with the other, is now most shamefully neglected. However, for these joint purposes, they are empowered to make and levy rates upon the several inhabitants of the parish, by the same act of parliament; which has been farther explained and enforced by several subsequent statutes.

THE two great objects of this statute seem 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 to be worked up at home, which perhaps might be more beneficial than accumulating all the poor in one common work-house; a practice which tends to destroy all domestic connexions (the only felicity of the honest and industrious labourer) and to put the sober and diligent upon a level, in point of their earnings, with those who are diffolute and idle. Whereas, if none were to be relieved but those 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 fuch as are brought up in rags and idleness; and if every poor man and his family were employed whenever they requested it, and were allowed the whole profits of their labour; --- a spirit of chearful industry would foon diffuse itself through every cottage; work would become easy and habitual, when absolutely necessary to their daily subsistence; and the most indigent peasant would go through his task without a murmur, if assured that he and his children (when incapable of work through infancy, age, or infirmity) would then, and then only, be intitled to support from his opulent neighbours.

THIS appears to have been the plan of the statute of queen Elizabeth; in which the only defect was confining the management of the poor to small, parochial, districts; which are frequently quently incapable of furnishing proper work, or providing an able director. However, the laborious poor were then at liberty to seek employment wherever it was to be had; none being obliged to reside in the places of their settlement, but such as were unable or unwilling to work; and those places of settlement being only such where they were born, or had made their abode, originally for three years", and afterwards (in the case of vagabonds) for one year only ".

AFTER the restoration, a very different plan was adopted, which has rendered the employment of the poor more difficult, by authorizing the fubdivision of parishes; has greatly increased their number, by confining them all to their respective districts; has given birth to the intricacy of our poor-laws, by multiplying and rendering more easy the methods of gaining settlements ; and, in consequence, has created an infinity of expensive lawsuits between contending neighbourhoods, concerning those settlements and removals. By the statute 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 12. a legal settlement was declared to be gained by birth, inhabitancy, apprenticeship, or service for forty days; within which period all intruders were made removeable from any parish by two juftices of the peace, unless they settled in a tenement of the annual value of iol. The frauds, naturally confequent upon this provision, which gave a settlement by so short a refidence, produced the statute 1 Jac. II. c.17. which directed notice in writing to be delivered to the parish officers, before a settlement could be gained by such refidence. Subsequent provifions allowed other circumstances of notoriety to be equivalent to such notice given; and those circumstances have from time to time been altered, enlarged, or restrained, whenever the experience of new inconveniences, arifing daily from new regulations, suggested the neceffity of a remedy. And the doctrine of certificates was invented, by way of counterpoise, to restrain a man and his family from acquiring a new settlement by any length of residence whatever, unless in two particular excepted cafes; which makes parishes very

cautious of giving such certificates, and of course confines the poor at home, where frequently no adequate employment can be had.

THE law of settlements may be therefore now reduced to the following general heads; or, a settlement in a parish may be acquired, 1. By birth; which is always prima facie the place of settlement, until some other can be shewn. This is also always the place of fettlement of a bastard child; for a bastard, having in the eye of the law no father, cannot be referred to his settlement, as other children may. But, in legitimate children, though the place of birth be prima facie the settlement, yet it is not conclusively fo; for there are, 2. Settlements by parentage, being the fettlement of one's father or mother: all children being really settled in the parish where their parents are settled, until they get a new settlement for themselves. A new settlement may be acquired several ways; as, 3. By marriage. For a woman, marrying a man that is settled in another parish, changes her own: the law not permitting the separation of husband and wife'. But if the man be a foreigner, and has no settlement, her's is suspended during his life, if he be able to maintain her; but after his death she may return again to her old fettlements. The other methods of acquiring settlements in any parish are all reducible to this one, of forty days refidence therein: but this forty days refidence (which is construed to be lodging or lying there) must not be by fraud, or stealth, or in any clandestine manner; but accompanied with one or other of the following concomitant circumstances. The next method therefore of gaining a fettlement, is, 4. By forty days refidence, and notice. For if a stranger comes into a parish, and delivers notice in writing of his place of abode, and number of his family, to one of the overseers (which must be read in the church and registered.) and refides there unmolested for forty days after such notice, he is legally settled thereby. For the law presumes that such a onz