and windows (25); 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 residence of forty days. 8. Being hired for a year, when unmarried and childless, and serving a year in the same service (26); and, 9. Being bound an apprentice, give the servant and apprentice a settlement without notice, in that place wherein they serve the last forty days. This is meant to encourage application to trades, and going out to reputable services. 10. Lastly, the having an estate of one's own, and residing thereon forty days, however small the value may be, in case it be acquired by act of law or of a third person, as by descent, gift, devise, &c. is a sufficient settlement: but if a man acquire it by his own act, as by purchase, (in it's popular sense, in consideration of money paid,) then unless the consideration advanced bona fide be 30l. it is no settlement for any longer z Stat. 21 Geo. II. c. 10. 18 Geo. III. c. 26. a Stat. 3 & 4 W. & M. c. 11. Stat. 3 & 4 W. & M. c. 11. 8 & 9 W. III. c. 30. 31 Geo. II. c.11. < Salk. 524, (25) To these exceptions must be added the assessed taxes by virtue of the 43 G.3. c.161. s. 59. This head of settlement was considered to be virtually destroyed by the operation of the 35 G.3. c.101., which prevented the acquisition of a settlement by the payment of rates, and levies in respect of a tenement of less value than 10l. per annum; because a settlement being gained by the occupation of a tenement of that value for 40 days, a condition more easily, and in a vast majority of cases more speedily, performed, as well as more simply proved, than the payment of rates; it never became necessary in fact to claim a settlement in respect of such payment. But as the 59 G. 3. c. 50. has made a year's renting and occupation necessary to the gaining a settlement, whatever the value be, this head has been revived in cases where the value exceeds 10l. annually, and the poor's rates have been paid, but the occupation has fallen short of a year. R. v. St. Pancras, 2 B. & C. 122. (26) It would be vain to attempt any analysis of the numberless cases which have been decided on minute distinctions as to this head of settlement; but I will only observe, that by a childless person in the text is to 'be understood a person who has no unemancipated children, that is, none who having acquired no substantive settlement for themselves, may become chargeable to the parish by taking derivatively their father's settlement; and that the service may continue legally the same, though there be various hirings and different masters, if any part be under a hiring for a year, if all the parts be uninterruptedly connected, and if the new masters be the legal representatives of the old one. time than the person shall inhabit thereon. He is in no case removable from his own property: but he shall not by any trifling or fraudulent purchase of his own acquire a permanent and lasting settlement. ALL persons not so settled may be removed to their own parishes on complaint of the overseers by two justices of the peace, if they shall adjudge them likely to become chargeable to the parish into which they have intruded: unless they are in a way of getting a legal settlement, as by having hired a house of 10l. per annum, or living in an annual service; for [365] then they are not removable. And in all other cases, if the parish to which they belong will grant them a certificate acknowledging them to be their parishioners, they cannot be removed merely because likely to become chargeable, but only when they become actually chargeable'. But such certificated person can gain no settlement by any of the means above mentioned, unless by renting a tenement of 10l. per annum, or by serving an annual office in the parish, being legally placed therein: neither can an apprentice or servant to such certificated person gain a settlement by such their service . (27) d Stat. 9 Geo. I. c.7. e Salk. 472. f Stat. 8 & 9 W. III. c. 30. (27) A certificate has been defined to be " a most solemn acknowledgment by the parish which gives it, that the parties, who are the subject of it, are their legally settled inhabitants." The effect of it is to make those, who reside under it irremoveable, until actually chargeable, and also in-capable of conferring a settlement in the certificated parish, or acquiring one except by renting a tenement of 10l. a year, or executing an annual office therein. It took its rise and was several times modified by statutes passed at a time when a man was removeable, if only likely to be chargeable to the parish in which he was resident; but when the 35 G.3. c.101. took away from magistrates the power of removing any one till he was actually chargeable, the great necessity for certificates died away, and the practice of granting them has become less and less frequent. This provision of the legislature however was necessarily accompanied with some others, without which it would have worked great injustice; in the first place, the settlement by mere residence with express notice was absolutely taken away; for as the object of that notice was to warn the parish officers and enable them to remove in time where there was a likelihood of chargeability, and the power to remove under such circumstances was now taken THESE are the general heads of the laws relating to the poor, which, by the resolutions of the courts of justice thereon within a century past, 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 designed for: a fate that has generally attended most of our statute laws, where they have not the foundation of the common law to build on. When the shires, the hundreds, and the tithings, were kept in the same admirable order in which they were disposed by the great Alfred, there were no persons idle, consequently none but the impotent that needed relief: and the statute of 43 Eliz. seems entirely founded on the same principle. But when this excellent scheme was neglected and departed from, we cannot but observe with concern what miserable shifts and lame expedients have from time to time been adopted, in order to patch up the flaws occasioned by this neglect. There is not a more necessary or more certain maxim in the frame and constitution of society, than that every individual must con away, the notice was become useless to them, and therefore was not allowed to be operative for the individual. 2d. Unmarried women with child, and persons convicted of felony, or under the vagrant laws, were declared to be as such actually chargeable. As the child would be settled where born, it was necessary to give a power to remove the mother before the birth, who might else have been purposely kept from becoming actually ⚫ chargeable in the parish in order to settle the child there. The same statute contained a humane provision to prevent removals of Taupers being made at improper times, which was often done in order to free the parish from the maintenance to which it was liable, till the execution of the order. It therefore empowers the magistrates who make the order (and by the 49 G.3. c.124. the same power is given to any other two magistrates) to suspend the execution of it so long as by reason of sickness or any infirmity the pauper is unable or unfit to travel; when the order is so suspended with respect to the pauper himself, its execution is also by the 49 G.3. c.124. to be postponed as to every other person named in it, and actually of the household or family when the order was made. During such suspension the pauper can gain no settlement by any act of his own in the parish in which he remains, and he remains there at the costs of the parish to which he belongs. And with respect to the children of unmarried women, who shall be born while their mothers are residing in a parish under a suspended order, the statute declares their settlement to be in the parishes of their mothers, and not in the places of their births. tribute his share in order to the well-being of the community : and surely they must be very deficient in sound policy, who suffer one half of a parish to continue idle, dissolute, and unemployed; and at length are amazed to find, that the industry of the other half is not able to maintain the whole. (28) (28) Perhaps the censure in the text upon the poor laws is too severe and indiscriminate, as the statement of the police of the country in the time of Alfred is undoubtedly too highly coloured. Public opinion, which of late years set strongly against the whole system, has more recently suffered a considerable change; and many of its ablest opponents seem disposed to think that something in the nature of our poor laws is at least a necessary evil, while others are willing to concede that well administered and slightly modified they may be made a substantial benefit. I forbear to enter on so difficult and important a subject in a note, as the policy of a poor law system; but it is undoubtedly to be regretted that the system of settlement in England is more encumbered with subtle distinctions and conflicting decisions than any other head in the law. The best accounts of them may be found in Mr. Nolan's Treatise on the Poor Laws, and Burn's Justice, title Poor. CHAPTER THE TENTH. OF THE PEOPLE, WHETHER ALIENS, HAVING, in the eight preceding chapters, treated of persons as they stand in the public relations of magistrates, I now proceed to consider such persons as fall under the denomination of the people. And herein all the inferior and subordinate magistrates, treated of in the last chapter, are included. THE first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and natural-born subjects. Natural-born subjects are such 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, such as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or ligamen, which binds the subject to the king, in return for that protection which the king affords the subject. The thing itself, or substantial part of it, is founded in reason and the nature of government; the name and the form are derived to us from our Gothic ancestors. Under the feodal system, every owner of lands held them in subjection to some superior or lord, from whom or whose ancestors the tenant or vasal had received them; and there was a mutual trust or confidence subsisting between the lord and vasal, that the lord should protect the vasal in the enjoyment of the territory he had granted him, and, on the other hand, that the vasal should be faithful to the lord, and defend him against all his enemies. This obligation on the of part the vasal 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 almost the same terms as |