AlI persons whatsoever, whether natural born subjects of England and Wales, Seetchinen, Irishmen, or foreigners, may gain a settlement in this country. A chargeable pauper is to be removed to the place where he last acquired a settlement. It is often very difficult to find out the place of such last settlement ; this is so more especially in cases of settlement by hiring and service and apprenticeship, where the residence, being unconnected with anything of a fixed nature, as a tenement or office in any particular parish, may be continually shifting, the settlement consequently shifting with it, until the last day of the service or apprenticeship. Paupers who have no settlement must be maintained by the parish in which they happen to be, as casual poor, unless they were born in Scotland or Ireland, or in the islands of ?Ian, Jersey, or Guernsey, iu which case they are to be taken under a pass warrant of two justices to their own country. When a pauper has become chargeable, and it is sought to remove him, he is taken before two justices, who inquire as to his place of settlement, and, if satisfied, upon his examination and such other evidence as may be laid before them, make an order for his removal thither. The parish to which he is removed may dispute its liability by appeal to the quarter-sessions, when the order of removal will be quashed, unless it appear that the pauper is settled in the appellant parish. ' The Poor-Law Amendment Act (4 & 5 Wm. IV., c. 76) has made no change in the law respecting the rateability of property or the mode of collecting the rate. The Act does not apply itself to the rate until collected ; it then takes up the rate for the purpose of securing a better distribution of it. To this end the administration of relief to the poor throughout England and Wales is subject to the control of three commissioners. Their powers, and the new agency established for the administration of relief under their direction, have hem already described. In parishes or unions where there are guardians, relief is to be given solely by such guardians or by their order, unless in cases of urgent distress. In these cases an overseer is bound to give temporary relief in articles of absolute necessity, but not iu money, and if he refuse, he may be required to do so by a magistrate's order, disobedience to which is visited by a penalty of 5/. In parishes which have no guardians, the management and relief of the poor is still left to overseers. With the exceptions above stated, the task of relieving the poor is wholly withdrawn from overseers, these officers, from ignorant or corrupt motives, having been generally found incompetent to the discharge of so important a duty. They are still however entrusted with the making and collection of the poor-rate, which they are to pay over to those who have the distribution of it. The general discretionary power which magis trates formerly exercised in ordering relief is also withdrawn. But a single magistrate may still order medical relief, when called for by sudden and dangerous illness; and two magistrates may order relief to adult persons, who from age or infirmity are unable to work, without requiring them to reside in the workhouse. Relief to able bodied persons cannot be given out of the workhouse, unless with the sanction of the commissioners. In substance, the wants of the poor are as amply as before the Act, but the manner of ad ruinIstering relief Is so regulated, by subjecting the applicants for it to the discipline of a workhouse and to other restraints, that the condition of a pauper, living upon the parish fund, is depressed, in point of comfort, below that of the labourer. Thus a ready test is applied to
distinguish reel and pretended destitution, and a powerful incentive to work is held out to all who can find employment.
The moans also of obtaining employment aro increased by enlarging the market for the poor nianat labour. This is the result of a relaxa tion in the law of settlement, and particularly of settlement by hiring and service. The old law had been found to obstruct the free circu lation of labour by confining the poor to their own parishes. The labourer himself, from attachment to old scenes and associates, was often unwilling to engage himself for a year in a strange parish, lest, by acquiring a settlement there, he should incur, at some future time, a permanent separation from home; the farmer, on the other hand, had an equally strong objection to hire a strange labourer on such terms as to burden his parish with a new settler.
By the Poor-Law Amenduicut Act, a settlement by hiring and service cannot now be acquired ; but the Act does not interfere materially with settlements previously acquired. Settlements by office and by apprenticeship in the sea service or to a fisherman can no longer be acquired. Settlement by renting a tenement is clogged with the additional qualificatiou that the occupier must have been assessed to the poor-rate, and paid the same for one year. Settlement by estate, like any other settlement, when once gained, used to endure till it was superseded by seine new settlement ; but now it is converted to a temporary settlemeut, and to be retained so long only as the pro prietor shall live within ten miles of the estate. Settlements by marriage and by payment of rates are untouched. Settlement by parentage and settlement by birth are both affected to this extent, that illegitimate children born after the passing of the Act arc to follow the settlement of the mother until the ago of sixteen, or until they acquire a settlement in their own right ; but they revert to their birth settlement after eixteen, unless they shall have acquired another in their own right. The effect of this change in the law is that an unmarried woman, whose pregnancy in itself made her chargeable, is no longer hunted from the parish in which she happened to be, in order that the parish may not, by the birth of the child therein, be permanently charged with its maintenance. The old law of settlement was full of legal difficulties and refinements, and the effect of the change iu the law has been to relieve parishes from much litigation.
As already mentioned, a great change also has been introduced in the general laws of bastardy. Formerly the putative father was liable for the support of a bastard, on the unsupported oath of the mother that he was the father of it. Before the birth of the child, he might be called upon to give security to provide for the child, and, if unable to give such security, might be committed to prison ; and, after its birth, an order of filiation might be made upon him by two justices out of sessions. By the new Act neither the mother nor the putative father of a bastard can be punished, as was formerly the case. Female incontinence is checked by making the mother liable to maintain her child in the first instance ; and, as already observed, she is left to seek her own remedy against the father of her child, without the intervention of the poor-law authorities.
Any person who marries a woman having children, whether legitimate or illegitimate, is made liable to maintain them until they attain the age of sixteen, or until the death of the mother.
(BL's 359; Nolan's Poor Laws; Gloria Poor-Law Statutes and Poor-Law Board Orders.)