re designed for: a
fate, that has generally attended most of our statute laws, where they
have not the foundation of the common law to build on. When the
shires, the hundreds, and the tithings, were kept in the same
admirable order that they were disposed in by the great Alfred, there
were no persons idle, consequently none but the impotent that needed
relief: and the statute of 43 Eliz. seems entirely founded on the same
principle. But when this excellent scheme was neglected and departed
from, we cannot but observe with concern, what miserable shifts and
lame expedients have from time to time been adopted, in order to patch
up the flaws occasioned by this neglect. There is not a more necessary
or more certain maxim in the frame and constitution of society, than
that every individual must contribute his share, in order to the
well-being of the community: and surely they must be very deficient in
sound policy, who suffer one half of a parish to continue idle,
dissolute, and unemployed; and then form visionary schemes, and at
length are amazed to find, that the industry of the other half is not
able to maintain the whole.

CHAPTER THE TENTH.

OF THE PEOPLE, WHETHER ALIENS, DENIZENS, OR NATIVES.

HAVING, in the eight preceding chapters, treated of persons as they
stand in the public relations of _magistrates_, I now proceed to
consider such persons as fall under the denomination of the _people_.
And herein all the inferior and subordinate magistrates, treated of in
the last chapter, are included.

THE first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and
natural-born subjects. Natural-born subjects are such as are born
within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the
ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king;
and aliens, such as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or
_ligamen_, which binds the subject to the king, in return for that
protection which the king affords the subject. The thing itself, or
substantial part of it, is founded in reason and the nature of
government; the name and the form are derived to us from our Gothic
ancestors. Under the feodal system, every owner of lands held them in
subjection to some superior or lord, from whom or whose ancestors the
tenant or vasal had received them: and there was a mutual trust or
confidence subsisting between the lord and vasal, that the lord should
protect the vasal in the enjoyment of the territor