according to the wise regulations of that salutary statute, should go
hand in hand with the other, is now most shamefully neglected.
However, for these joint purposes, they are empowered to make and levy
rates upon the several inhabitants of the parish, by the same act of
parliament; which has been farther explained and enforced by several
subsequent statutes.

THE two great objects of this statute seem to have been, 1. To relieve
the impotent poor, and them only. 2. To find employment for such as
are able to work: and this principally by providing stocks to be
worked up at home, which perhaps might be more beneficial than
accumulating all the poor in one common work-house; a practice which
tends to destroy all domestic connexions (the only felicity of the
honest and industrious labourer) and to put the sober and diligent
upon a level, in point of their earnings, with those who are dissolute
and idle. Whereas, if none were to be relieved but those who are
incapable to get their livings, and that in proportion to their
incapacity; if no children were to be removed from their parents, but
such as are brought up in rags and idleness; and if every poor man and
his family were employed whenever they requested it, and were allowed
the whole profits of their labour;--a spirit of chearful industry
would soon diffuse itself through every cottage; work would become
easy and habitual, when absolutely necessary to their daily
subsistence; and the most indigent peasant would go through his task
without a murmur, if assured that he and his children (when incapable
of work through infancy, age, or infirmity) would then, and then only,
be intitled to support from his opulent neighbours.

THIS appears to have been the plan of the statute of queen Elizabeth;
in which the only defect was confining the management of the poor to
small, parochial, districts; which are frequently incapable of
furnishing proper work, or providing an able director. However, the
laborious poor were then at liberty to seek employment wherever it was
to be had; none being obliged to reside in the places of their
settlement, but such as were unable or unwilling to work; and those
places of settlement being only such where they were born, or had made
their abode, originally for three years[m], and afterwards (in the
case of vagabonds) for one year only[n].

[Footnote m: Stat. 19 Hen. VII. c. 12. 1 Edw. VI. c. 3. 3 Edw. VI. c.
16. 14 Eliz. c. 5.]

[Footnote n: