The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-04 00:00:00

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16,345 LO N D ON, SATURDAY V JANUARY 4, 1845, ENING

PRICIZ sd.

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TUE' :crpti is pavit..4,,i v 4,:), vonivnvo at FIVE O'CLOCK, iR Tin ror the EARLY TRAINS and TOWN DELIVERY; a SECOND EDITION (Evening Sun) is Published in Time for the AFTERNOON TRAINS
ar, 4, a Tinito EptrioN ed SEVEN O'CAOCK, for POST -anrscarinii PARLIAMENTARY and all other NEWS is LONDON up to that k/our.

N00,z,, and Nig*, thereby insuring a TOWN and COUNTRY CIRCULATION, at ONE CRARGE.

Liverpool—J. E., J., and R. Barnett, gunmakers, Mi-
nories (so far as regards R. Barnett)—J. C. C. Walton
and R. C. Webber, printers, Greenwich—J. and W.
Baker, stone merchants, Wickersley, Yorkshire—C., J.,
and J. Sykes, cardmakers, Almondbury, Yorkshire—W.
Notman and W. Young, grocers, Bishopsgate-street
Without—T. Alien and E. Champtaloup, merchants,
Lawrence-lane, Cheapside—A. Wilson, sen., A.
Wilson, jun., and W. Jones, dealers in boots and
shoes, Crawford-street, Bryanstone-square—H. Evers-
field and J. Mabbott, printer:, Gravesend—J. Churchill
and T. Spencer, alkali manufacturers, Eccleston, Lan-
cashire—H. Grazebrook, H. Grazebrook, jun., and E.
Senior, iron merchants, Liverpool—G. Jaulerry, H. Mil
dred, and J. V. De Goyeneche, Broad-street, City—T.
Forsyth and M. L. Pritchard, sharebrokers, Liverpool—
11. Woodhouse and C. Ewart, sharebrokers, Manchester
—J. Lees, T. Lister, and W. Lees, ironmongers, Man-
chester—A. Rogers and G. Thorpe, merchants, Riches-
court. Lime-street, City—G. Jameson and T. Wilson,
linendrapers, Newcastle-upon-Tyne—J. and .J. Blannin,
shipwrights, Bristol-- J. Biddulph, jun., G. J. Webb,
W. Williams, R. Nevill, jun., and C N. Broom, timber
merchants, Lianelly, Carmarthenahire—W. Glitch, and
L. Fox, surgeon,.., Broughton, Southampton—J. Smith,
R. Ouston, and J. Cochran, merchants, Neal
and J. C. Gant, attorneys, Austin-friars, City—J. Hodg-
son and T. Taylor, printers, Liverpool—S. 0. Percival,
J. Parton. and R. Mackenzie, brokers, Liverpool—A.
Steele and W. Hobbs, cotton spinners—C. Bainbridge
and R. Waddington, ironmongers, Lincoln—A. Zipfel,
M. Ganter, M. Waldvogel, and J. Trit%chler, clock-
makers, Oldham (so far as regards J. Tritschler)—C.
Hoar and G. D. Leary—C. Milner and A. Boyne, to-
bacconists, Cannon-street, City—G. Atkins and J. Hill,
grocers, Thrapston, Northamptonshire—J. Turner, W.
Thomson, and J. Spivey, woollen cloth merchants, Had-
derafield—R H. Blacker and H. Bambrick, booksellers,
St. James's-street, Westminster—H. Chorley and G.
Bulmer, surgeons, Leeds—T. Castle, F. Luck, H. W.
Castle, J. Jones, and J. Wortley, Love-lane, City (so far
as regards T. Castle)—G. Jones and W. W. Williams,
joiners, Liverpool—B. P. and J. Nunes, merchants, Bra-
bant-court, City—H. Flint and W. Shaw, brewers,
Kingston-upon-Thames—T. Evans and G. Cox, ship
builders, Northam, Devonshire—C. Smith and H. White-
legge, trailers iu white muslin, Manchester—T. Sotham
and W. Wing, auctioneers, Wootton, Oxfordshire—
R. W. Jackson and J. Bury, jun., attorneys, Stockton-
upon-Tees—S. Lloyd, E. Brodribb, and J. Stewart, tea
brokers, Liverpool (so far as regards J. Stewart)—W.
Lanfear, jun., and S. Locke, hearth-rug manufacturers,
Lent-street, Southwark—S. and S. B. Bucknill, surgeons,
Rugby, Warwickshire—A. E. Heath and H. Coupland,
chemists, Liverpool—S. Jones and W. Corlet, tailors,
Liverpool—W. Ridgway and F. Morley, china manu-
facturers, Stoke- upon-Trent--J. and J. Wright, millers,
Churchill, Cheshire—C. Busbey and D. Basset, meal-
men, Uxbridge—H. and W. Anderson, New Orleans—
F. and H. Ileadly, farmers, Cherryhinton, Cambridge-
shire—G. and J. White and T. Goulden, sen., cabinet
makers, Canterbury—J. Blackburne and C. Bell, tailors,
Liverpool—W. and J. Naylor and W., J., and G. F.
Sykes, coal masters, Birstal, Yorkshire.
SCOTCH SEQUESTRATIONS. _

THE LAW OF SETTLEMENT.

TO THE SOCIETY OF CLERKS OF THE
UNIONS OF THE NORTHERN DISTRIC 1'
OF ENGLAND.
In complying with your request that I should furnish
in detail the plan of national poor-law relief suggested
by me at our meetings dining the past year, in order
that its bearings might be considered with reference to
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-
sponsibility and difficulties attendant on the course of
any one attempting an alteration of existing laws, or
opposing settled opinions and fixed prejudices. I will
premise that it has now become a maxim of our consti-
tution that no poor person in England shall exist in
want for a longer period than his requirements shall
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, a hich I at first
contemplated (and which liiws have made this maxim),
is renclered unnecessary by the able report which since
your reqnest 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 well 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.
Under the laws so ably traced by the Leicester re-
port, the borough of Stockport has grown up from a
small vine, 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, each 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
Bulkeley, and Cheadle Moseley.
Stockport township has the largest amount of poor,
and from its local position and from giving the name to
the district, it has also the disadvantage of paying for
all casual paupers ; 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 1:1 our ancestors to carry these
lams 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 the poor,
whether in parishes or townships, much misery has been
and still is caused. Boards of guardians will act on
different principles : some pauperise whole districts ;
others depopulate them. Landowners cause the surplus
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 out
of their locality; and struggles in each district aro 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
mazos 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 gain that which it would cause another township
to lose; and this without any sufficient reason, without
compensation 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 Parliament. Not one appeal in ten at
the present day is decided on the merits. But few set-
tlements are disputed on 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 to Ise a disgrace to our Legislature, and to the
parties 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, Is 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 owe of its
own officers, there would be no premium for technical
objections—justice would be done ; but much business
would be abolished, and criminals would not escape, nor
parishes be mulcted, as they do and are at present.
What, then, is the real remedy, the humane and
Christian-like remedy, for 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 poor
man may reside really and truly his home—to prevent
removal officers by law separating him from the place
where his happiest days have been spent—to make the
relieving officer the real messenger of charity—to relieve
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 be able to give a remedy ;
and surely for the purposes of this letter we may take it
for granted. that the Legislature is more or less answer-
able for the continuance of distress. It will be grunted
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, accompanies! 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 influence. 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
influence which the attorneys have in this country. The
barrister-at-law, a ho only receives a fee after the case
is fairly launched in court, would have no appeal busi-
ness. ✓And let any one attend the Yorkidiire sessions for
one appeal-day, and see the entry of se; dement appeals
at Pontefract, and then ask if the barristers, as a class,
can be sufficiently patriotic to abandon settlement liti-
gation? 1 do not mean to say all the before•nientioned 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 their class-interests. But in classes
class-interests will predominate; and it may fairly be
inferred that all those classes will oppose a general and
comprehensive view of the subject.
There are several ways of objecting to an alteration.
I will endeavour to deal with those which I can anti-
cipate.
let. It will be said, how can you make it a national
charge, and at the same time have a local distribution
of the relief ?
2d. At present, the comparative expense to some
townships is light, and why should they lose the present
advantage ?
The first objection, which is in reality the only one,

Alexander Stevens, stationer, Edinburgh, Jan. 8 and
Feb. 1, at three, at Dowell's Rooms, Edinburgh.
James Edgar and Thomas Fraser, tailors, Glasgow,
Jan. 8 and 29, at twelve, at Wilkies' chambers, Glasgow.
William Galloway, manufacturer, Paisley, Jan. 10 and
31, at one, at Martin and Ilodge's chambers, Paisley.
J. Campbell, merchant, Balfron, Jan. 9 and 28, at
eleven, at Stewart's Inn, Balfron.