and if a further
allowance was not made _they should turn them out of doors_ and throw
them on the parish altogether.' The Overseers resisted; the butcher
appealed to the Magistrates, who recommended him to make the best
arrangement he could as the parish was obliged to support the children"!

The law and its administration, on behalf of the parish, actually put a
valuable premium on bastardy.

The Parish Beadle was tempted to bribe the young woman to lay an
information against someone in another parish, "a compulsory marriage"
was brought about and the woman and bastard, and all future liability,
were sometimes got rid of at one stroke! A Parish Beadle, in addition
to looking after little Oliver Twists, often had these delicate
negotiations to manage, and whether Mr. Bumble was able to ingratiate
himself with 'Mrs. Corney' or not, he often did a good stroke of
business for his parish in the matrimonial market, when, as I have
mentioned in an earlier chapter, a labourer could not even go into
another parish to work without a certificate from the parish he
belonged to. In the report of the Commission, to which I have
referred, occurs this significant little item:--

"A Beadle in a small district assured me he had alone effected fifty
marriages of this description in the course of a few years."

The labour market was the parish, and this was completely disorganised
and demoralised. The old law of settlement made it practically
impossible for labour to find the best market. Even if a young man had
an offer of a situation in another part of the country at double wages
he would often refuse to go lest he should "lose his parish," or it
might be that the parish where he was asked to go was considered a
"bad" parish compared with his own. Each parish {164} was thus
considered as a sort of freehold, with a family cupboard bound to
provide for nil its children.

It was almost impossible for any individual farmer to stand out and
follow an independent course, for if he paid his men full wages he
would also, as a ratepayer, be paying part of the wages for the other
farmers in the parish. In some cases the masters combined with the men
and gave false certificates as to the amount of their wages in order to
get more "make up" from their parish.

The farmer preferred to employ men with large families to keep them off
the parish, but single young men, finding they were not wanted,
contracted early and improvident marriag