The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-04 00:00:00

play. This is on the whole a great improvement ;
but out of it has grown a system of mono-
poly among the few men who unite some ac-
quaintance with official forms to the smallest ,
pos-
sible amount a talent as speakers. Now this, as far
1 as it goes, is perhaps rather convenient than other-
wise, but the thing becomes ridiculous when we
are t )1d that, of more than four hundred Members of
the House, not more than half•a-dozen are compe-
tent to support a Minister. The next session, if we
are not mistaken, will tell a different story ; or
rather a week will not pass, before it shall be seen
that Sir Robert Peel eau rally an efficient body of
debaters.

THE LAW OF SETTLEMENT.

M the request of several of our readers, we repub-
lish the follow 4, which appeared in Ths Sun about P
month ago :
TO THE SOCIETY OF CLERKS OF THE
UNIONS OF THE NORTHERN DISTRIC
OF ENGLAND.
In complying with your request Oar` I should furnish
in detail toe plan of national poor-law relief suggested
by me at our meetings during the past year, in order
that its bearings might be considered with reference t
the suggested Bill, as introduced into the House of Com-
mons at the close of the last session by Sir James Gra-
ham, intituled " A Bill to consolidate and amend the
Laws relating to Parochial Settlement, and to the Re-
moval of the Poor;" I am fully aware of the great re-
sponsi',)ility and difficulties attendant on the course of
any one attempting an alteration of existing laws, or
opposing sealed opinions and fixed prejudices. I will
premise that it has now become a ma7-..isa of our consti-
tution that no poot person in England shall exist in
want for a longer period than his requirements shell
become known to the proper authorities for the relief of

the poor.
To trace down the laws of settlement and relief from
Henry the Eighth to the present time, which I at first
contemplated (and which laws have made this maxim),
is rendered unnecessary by the able report which since
your request I have had placed in my hands from a
Committee appointed by the town council of the borough
of Leicester. It were a work of supererogation again to
travel over ground so weil occupied by that report; and
I proceed to the statement of facts connected with our
union of Stockport, and to. the plan suggested, which
has been so favourably received by a body of gentlemen
connected as you are with a population of several mil-
lions, and with the principal manufacturing districts of
the north of England.
Linder the laws so ably traced by the Leicester re-
port, the borough of Stockport has grown up from a
small ville, and become a populous manufacturing dis -
trict, containing 60,000 inhabitants.
For the purposes of the poor-laws it is divided into
five districts or townships, eaeli maintaining its own
poor—namely, Stockport, Heaton Norris, Brinnington,
Cheadle Bulkeley, and Cheadle Moseley. Stockport
being the township originally located, has become built
up, and the population has extended into the adjacent
townships of Heaton Norris, Brinnington, Cheadle
Belkeley, and Chr Moseley,
Stockport township has the largest amount of poor,
and Ceom its local po- it:on and from giving the name to
the district, it has also the disadvantage of paying for
all casual paupc:s ; its neighbouring townships receive
all the advantages of the trade of Stockport, without any
of the disadvantages.
The poor-laws have been intended as a national ar-
rangement, and have become part of our constitution ;
but the method devised by our ancestors to carry these
laws into operation, was through the medium of arbi-
trary local divisions called parishes. These parishes
have in many cases been sub-divided into smaller arbi-
trary divisions called townships ; and by the Poor-law
Amendment Act these parishes and townships have been
united into larger districts called unions ; but in these
unions the relief of the poor of each township is kept
strictly separate, and each township is exclusively
charged with the expenditure caused by the relief of its
own particular paupers.
By thus localising the charges of maintaining Vie poor
whether in parishes or townships, much asisery has bee-
and still is caused. Boards of guardians will act e
different principles : some pauperise whole districts
others depopulate them. Landowners cause the Ruch-
population to migrate. Manufacturers, in time of com-
mercial distress, send back again this originally agri-
cultural surplus population. Local authorities, as it
were, shoulder the miserable wretch requiring relief ouz
of their locality; and struggles in each district are con-
tinually carried on through the medium of assistant
overseers, relieving officers, removal officers, magistrates
clerks, attorneys, and barristers-at-law, in reference to
pauper settlements; which struggles entail an enormous
expense on the parishioners; and all this to prevent the
necessity of a few shillings being given in time of need
to a pauper by one set of local authorities called over-
seers, which according to law declared through all the
mazes of legal technicality, ought to be given by the
• overseers of another locality. And as the relief in dis-
puted cases is generally given unwillingly (it may be
said as a general rule, with great parsimony), miserable
is the wretch who awaits the decision of a parish law-
suit. to ascertain by what parish his necessary relief
must be given.
What is the real remedy? Is it by destroying all
settlements but that of birth? or by changing the birth-
settlement by a settlement to be acquired from time to
time by a five years' residence in any other parish? This
would merely continue the evils of the present system;
nay, if possible, it would aggravate them. It would
cause the landowner to pull down every cottage on his
estate not absolutely required for his own labourer. It
would be a premium for cruelty. It would confer
different settlements by the mere result of the accident
of birth, on different members of the same family—(a
family of eight children might each have a different
birth-settlement); and lastly, by this legislative altera-
tion of existing settlements, in would cause one town-
ship to grin that which it would cause another township
to lose; and this without any sufficient reason, without
eompeasation in any way.
The present law of settlement is well ascertained.
There are no difficulties now, save those as to the facts,
and those which arise from technicalities. Remove the
technical objections as soon as possible. This may be
done; but the facts, in case of dispute, will always have
to be settled by evidence, and this therefore you cannot
settle by Act of Parliathent. Not one appeal in ten at
the present day is decided on the merits. But few set-
tlements are disputed en a difference of opinion as to
what the merits are; technical objections, and those
only, are the questions decided by the courts. And I
hold it t 2 be a disgrace to our Legislature, and to the
parCes who expound the Acts of the Legislature, that
every advantage is given in our courts of law to tech-
nical objections. The rule of the courts of law is not,
Is the prisoner guilty ? or, Is the pauper really settled ?
but, Ic the commitment technically worded, or the
examinations a perfect specimen of special pleading ?
If after hearing a long, learned, and elaborate address
from counsel, proving that according to law certain
words omitted ought to have been inserted in commit-
ment or order of removal, the Court of Queen's Bench
or quarter sessions, agreeing in opinion with the advo-
cate, were to send the commitment or order back to the
magistrate for correction, or correct it by one of its
own officers, there would be no premium for technical
objections—jnstice would be done ; but much business
would be abolished, and criminals would not escape, nor
parishes be mulcted, as they do and aro at present.
What, then, is the real remedy, the humane and
Christian-like remedy, fur the evils of the present sys-
tem ? It is to make the relief of the poor purely na
tional—to make every part of England where a pc
man may reside really and truly his home—to preve.
removal officers by law separating him from the pia
where his happiest days have been spent—to make t,
relieving officer the real messenger of charity—to relied
distress when and as soon as it arises—and to banish for
ever those insane struggles and legal fights to decide
from which local purse the necessary relief must be
abstracted.
And how is this to be done ? By abolishing the
poor's-rate altogether, and placing the relief of the poor
upon the Consolidated Fund. The army and navy are
kept out of this fund, and why should not the poor ?
The poor are caused by distress, agricultural and com-
merciaL In times of distress the Legislature is always
appealed to, and professes to he able to give a remedy ;
and surely for the purposes o: this letter wo may take it
for granted, that the Legislature is more or less answer-
able for the continuance of distress. It All be granted
that no individual township can in itself have any power
to cause, avert, or prevent national distress. Stockport
cannot cause or prevent distress as regards Heaton-
Norris, nor the converse. No one township, therefore,
ought to be detrimented by local distress. The law of
settlement was caused by a desire to prevent hordes of
beggars from rambling across the country, and maraud-
ing without warrant. The destruction of it in the pre-
sent day would prevent them from rambling in the same
way with warrant, accompanied by official parties, at
immense expense to the parishes concerned.
To such a comprehensive plan as a general abolish-
ment of the poors'-rate, and with it the law of settle-
ment, I know there will be a horde of objectors. The
parish officer's occupation, who ferrets out settlements,
would be gone, and he is generally the clever man in
each union. His hostility would be roused against any
such plan. The removal officer, who journeys with
paupers from Land's End to Scotland, would be dis-
pensed with; would his evidence be in favour of such a
plan ? The magistrate's clerk, who receives now very
large fees for the examinations and removal orders,
would find his fees diminished; and he is a person of no
slight influenoe. The attorney-at-law, who conducts
the appeals and sessions business incident thereon, would
be minus his bill ; and I am not one to underrate the
inflaence which the attorneys have in this country. The
barrister-at-law, who only receives a fee after the case
is fairly launched in court, would have no appeal busi-
ness. And let any one attend the Yorkshire sessions for
ono appeal-day, and see the entry of settlement appeals
at Pontefract, and then ask if the barristers, as a class,
can be sufficiently patriotic to abandon settlement liti-
gation? I do not mean to say all the before-mentioned in-
dividuals will oppose a comprehensive measure beneficial
to their country. There are individuals at all times
ready to come out from their class, and advocate views
detrimental to
wltoitlheiprrecdloasmsininateter
and it may
ts. Butinfaicrllasy b
sees
el
inferred that all those classes will oppose a general and
cor,iriterl,:earty
ways
subject.ofo b .
viewseveral °s: eetlg to an alteration.
I will endeavour to deal with toss which I can anti-
cipate.
Ist. It will be said, how can you make it a national
charge, and at the same time have local • al
a distribution
of the relief ?
2d. At present, the comparative expense to some
townships light, and why should they lose the present
advantage ?
• ' • •
The full A 0404 which a&a reality the only ow