POOR LAWS, SCOTLAND. The foundation of the Old Poor Law of Scotland was the Act of Parliament 1579, c. 74, which in so many respects resembled the celebrated English atatute of the 14th of Elizabeth, passed a few year. earlier, as to have been considered a mere adaptation from it. The Scotch Act, however, fell short of the English in the one important particular of not providing for the care of the able-bodied. By this old Act, a settlement was acquired by birth, and once so established could not be changed unless by a seven years' indus trial residence in another pariah. By the Act of 1G72, e. 18, this period was shortened to three years. The method of administering the law, which arose partly out of the terms of the old Acts, partly out of custom, and partly from the directions given to these sanctions by the judgments of the courts, was as follows :—In the rural parishes, the " kirk seasions," or lowest ecclesiastical judicatories, consisting of the pariah clergyman and certain elders, shared the management with the " herders," or rated landed proprietors; but It became oustomary for the latter body to interest themselves solely in the votiug and levying of the rate, leaving its distribution and the management of the poor to the former. In those inunicipal corporations holding rank as royal burghs, the assessment and management lay with the corporate autlne rities. The funds for the relief of the poor were of two kinds : the collections at church doors, along with certain fees and eleemosynary bequeath, constituted the one department ; and rates assessed on the parish, or a substitute voluntarily paid instead of an assessment, the other. Of the rums collected at the church doors, may a half went to the regular relief of those legelly entitled to relief ; the other became a fund for general charitable purposes st the command of the kirk session. In many cases there was no assessment, and the regular practice came to be, that If the miscellaneous sources Were insufficient for the relief of the poor, the heritors and session in a country pariah, or the magistrates in a town parish, might levy a rate. It became a common practice for the parties chiefly interested to agree to a "volun tary assessment," for the purpose of postponing the imposition of a fixed legal rate. When an assessment was imposed, it became a rule that cue half of it should be levied on the proprietors of laud, in respect of their land ; the other on householders, in respect of their " means and substance," or their income,, ao far as not derived from land. The adjustment of the rating was the ground of much dispute,
and different parishes followed very distinct methods in practice.
For a considerable period the Scottish system was very favourably received by political economists, who saw the country in a compara tively sound moral condition, with a parsimonious poor law, while the lavish system of England seemed to promote profligacy and idleness. But from the time when these doctrines were first promulgated to the completion of the great change of the English poor law, a vast internal alteration had taken place in the social economy of Scotland. The comparative low rate of wages, attracting manufacturing capital from England, had caused a more than average migration of the rural labourers to the manufacturing districts, and a peculiarly rapid increase of the city population. It was found that with these complicated materials, the simple parochial system adapted to a state of society where each man watched over the interests and the conduct of his neighbour, was iueapable of grappling. It was found that even for poor country districts the system was unsuitable, because, though still far behind the English syatem in profusion, the administrators were compelled by the voice of public opinion to become more liberal in their dispensations, while the managers of the country parishes not subject to the same influence kept down the allowances, and thus gave the poor an inducement to endeavour to obtain a settlement by three years industrial residence in the cities. Dr. Chalmers was the great champion of the old system. With the assistance of some enthu siastic followers, he organised the administratiou of a parish in the poorer parts of Glasgow, as a demonstration of the efficiency of which the system was capable. It was a very pleasing picture, but the public soon felt that the success with which one energetic individual and his enthusiastic followers might voluntarily perform the duties generally exacted by legal compulsion, was no sufficient ground for believing that the rest of the community can be at all times and in all places depended upon for the perfornmauce of onerous public services without the coercion of law.