Book I, Chapter X, 7

This statute placed every parish under an absolute obligation to provide for its own poor. The question of who counted as the poor of a particular parish thus became important. After some changes, the 13th and 14th of Charles II. finally settled it, enacting that forty days of undisturbed residence would give any person a settlement in any parish. Within those forty days, however, two justices of the peace could, on a complaint by the churchwardens or overseers of the poor, remove a new inhabitant to the parish where he was last legally settled, unless he rented a dwelling at ten pounds a year or provided such security against burdening the parish where he now lived as the justices deemed sufficient.

This statute is said to have prompted some frauds: parish officers sometimes bribed their own poor to slip into another parish and hide there for forty days, thereby gaining a settlement and relieving their original parish of responsibility. The 1st of James II. therefore enacted that the forty days of undisturbed residence required to gain a settlement would be counted only from the time a person gave a churchwarden or overseer of the new parish written notice of his address and the size of his family.

It seems, however, that parish officers were not always more honest toward their own parish than toward others. Sometimes they connived at such intrusions by receiving the notice but taking no appropriate action. Since everyone in a parish was presumed to have an interest in preventing such newcomers from burdening it, the 3rd of William III. further enacted that the forty days of residence would be counted only from the publication of the written notice in church on Sunday, immediately after divine service.

“After all,” says Doctor Burn, “this kind of settlement, by continuing forty days after publication of notice in writing, is very seldom obtained; and the design of the acts is not so much for gaining of settlements, as for the avoiding of them by persons coming into a parish clandestinely, for the giving of notice is only putting a force upon the parish to remove. But if a person’s situation is such, that it is doubtful whether he is actually removable or not, he shall, by giving of notice, compel the parish either to allow him a settlement uncontested, by suffering him to continue forty days, or by removing him to try the right.”

This statute therefore made it almost impossible for a poor man to gain a new settlement by the old means of forty days’ residence. But so that it should not appear to prevent ordinary people from one parish altogether from securely establishing themselves in another, it provided four other ways to gain settlement without giving or publishing notice. The first was being assessed for and paying parish rates; the second, being elected to an annual parish office and serving for a year; the third, serving an apprenticeship in the parish; and the fourth, being hired there for a year and remaining in the same service throughout it. No one can gain a settlement by either of the first two ways without a public act of the entire parish. Its members know the consequences too well to adopt a newcomer who has only his labor for support, whether by assessing him for parish rates or electing him to a parish office.

A married man can hardly gain settlement by either of the last two ways. Apprentices are scarcely ever married, and the law expressly provides that no married servant gains a settlement by being hired for a year. The chief effect of introducing settlement by service has been largely to end the old practice of hiring for a year. That practice was once so customary in England that even today, where no particular term is agreed upon, the law presumes every servant to be hired for a year. But masters are not always willing to give their servants settlement by hiring them in this way; nor are servants always willing to accept, for each new settlement extinguishes all earlier ones. They might thereby lose their original settlement in the place of their birth, where their parents and relatives live.

Clearly no independent workman, whether laborer or artisan, is likely to gain a new settlement through apprenticeship or service. If such a person took his industry to a new parish, he could be removed at the whim of any churchwarden or overseer, however healthy and industrious he was, unless he rented a dwelling for ten pounds a year—impossible for someone who lives solely by his labor—or gave such security against burdening the parish as two justices of the peace thought sufficient.

The security required is indeed entirely at their discretion; but they can hardly demand less than thirty pounds. For the law provides that even the purchase of a freehold worth less than thirty pounds does not give a person settlement, being insufficient security against burdening the parish. Yet scarcely anyone who lives by labor can provide such security, and considerably more is often demanded.

To restore some measure of the free movement of labor almost wholly abolished by these statutes, certificates were devised. The 8th and 9th of William III. enacted that any person bringing a certificate from the parish of his last legal settlement, signed by its churchwardens and overseers of the poor and approved by two justices of the peace, must be received by every other parish. He could not be removed merely because he was likely to become a charge, but only if he actually did; and in that event the parish issuing the certificate would have to pay both for his maintenance and his removal. To give the parish receiving such a certificated person the fullest security, the same statute further enacted that he could acquire no settlement there by any means except renting a dwelling for ten pounds a year or serving on his own account in an annual parish office for one whole year. He could not do so, consequently, by notice, service, apprenticeship, or payment of parish rates. The 12th of Queen Anne, stat. 1, c.18, further enacted that neither the servants nor apprentices of such a certificated person could gain settlement in the parish where he lived under the certificate.

How far this device restored the free movement of labor almost entirely lost under the previous statutes can be gathered from this very perceptive observation by Doctor Burn. “It is obvious,” he says, “that there are divers good reasons for requiring certificates with persons coming to settle in any place; namely, that persons residing under them can gain no settlement, neither by apprenticeship, nor by service, nor by giving notice, nor by paying parish rates; that they can settle neither apprentices nor servants; that if they become chargeable, it is certainly known where to remove them, and the parish shall be paid for the removal, and for their maintenance in the mean time; and that, if they fall sick, and cannot be removed, the parish which gave the certificate must maintain them; none of all which can be without a certificate. Which reasons will hold proportionably for parishes not granting certificates in ordinary cases; for it is far more than an equal chance, but that they will have the certificated persons again, and in a worse condition.” The lesson of this observation seems to be that a parish where a poor man arrives should always demand a certificate, while the parish he intends to leave should very seldom grant one. “There is somewhat of hardship in this matter of certificates,” says the same highly intelligent author in his History of the Poor Laws, “by putting it in the power of a parish officer to imprison a man as it were for life, however inconvenient it may be for him to continue at that place where he has had the misfortune to acquire what is called a settlement, or whatever advantage he may propose himself by living elsewhere.”

A certificate offers no testimony to good behavior: it certifies only that the person belongs to the parish to which he actually belongs. Yet parish officers have complete discretion to grant or refuse it. Doctor Burn says that a mandamus was once sought to compel churchwardens and overseers to sign a certificate; the Court of King’s Bench dismissed the motion as a very strange attempt.

The sharp differences in the price of labor often found between places quite close together in England are probably due to the law of settlements, which obstructs a poor man wishing to carry his industry from one parish to another without a certificate. A single man who is healthy and industrious might sometimes be allowed to stay without one. But in most parishes a man with a wife and family who tried this would certainly be removed; and if the single man later married, he would generally be removed too. Thus a shortage of hands in one parish cannot always be relieved by a surplus in another, as constantly happens in Scotland and, I believe, in every other country where settlement presents no difficulty. In those countries wages may rise somewhat near a great town or wherever demand for labor is unusually high, and gradually decline with distance until they return to the country’s ordinary rate. But we never find the abrupt, inexplicable differences in wages between neighboring places that we sometimes find in England, where it is often harder for a poor man to cross a parish’s artificial boundary than an arm of the sea or a ridge of high mountains—natural boundaries that sometimes sharply separate different rates of wages in other countries.

To remove someone guilty of no offense from the parish where he chooses to live is an obvious violation of natural liberty and justice. Yet the ordinary people of England, jealous as they are of their liberty but, like ordinary people in most countries, never properly understanding what it consists of, have endured this oppression without remedy for more than a century. Reflective men have sometimes complained of the law of settlements as a public grievance, but it has never aroused a general popular outcry like the outcry against general warrants—undoubtedly an abusive practice, but not one likely to inflict general oppression. I venture to say that scarcely any poor man of forty in England has not, at some point in his life, felt cruelly oppressed by this ill-designed law of settlements.

I shall close this long chapter by observing that although wages used to be fixed first by general laws covering the entire kingdom and later by particular orders of justices of the peace in each county, both practices have now fallen entirely out of use. “By the experience of above four hundred years,” says Doctor Burn, “it seems time to lay aside all endeavors to bring under strict regulations, what in its own nature seems incapable of minute limitation; for if all persons in the same kind of work were to receive equal wages, there would be no emulation, and no room left for industry or ingenuity.”

Particular acts of parliament still sometimes try, however, to regulate wages in particular trades and places. Thus the 8th of George III. forbids, under heavy penalties, all master tailors in London and within five miles of it to pay, and their workers to accept, more than two shillings and sevenpence halfpenny a day, except during a general mourning. Whenever the legislature tries to regulate disputes between masters and workers, it always takes its counsel from the masters. A regulation favoring workers is therefore always just and equitable; one favoring masters is sometimes otherwise. Thus the law requiring masters in several trades to pay workers in money rather than goods is entirely just and equitable. It imposes no real hardship on the masters. It merely requires them to pay in money the value they claimed to pay in goods but did not always actually pay. This law favors workers; the 8th of George III. favors masters. When masters join together to reduce their workers’ wages, they commonly enter a private bond or agreement, under penalty, to pay no more than a fixed wage. If workers formed an opposite combination of the same kind, agreeing under penalty not to accept a fixed wage, the law would punish them very severely. If it acted impartially, it would treat the masters the same way. But the 8th of George III. gives legal force to the very rule that masters sometimes try to establish through such combinations. The workers’ complaint that it puts the most able and industrious on the same footing as ordinary workers seems perfectly justified.

In former times, too, it was customary to try to regulate the profits of merchants and other dealers by fixing the prices of provisions and other goods. The assize of bread is, as far as I know, the only survival of this old practice. Where an exclusive corporation exists, it may perhaps be appropriate to regulate the price of life’s first necessity; but where none exists, competition will regulate it far better than any assize. The method of fixing the assize of bread established by the 31st of George II. could not be implemented in Scotland because of a defect in the law: enforcement depended on the office of clerk of the market, which did not exist there. The defect was not remedied until the third of George III. The absence of an assize caused no perceptible inconvenience, and establishing one in the few places where this has been done has yielded no perceptible benefit. In most Scottish towns, however, bakers have a corporation claiming exclusive privileges, although those privileges are not very strictly protected. As already observed, the relative rates of wages and profit across different employments of labor and stock seem little affected by whether society is rich or poor, advancing, stationary, or declining. Such changes in public welfare, though they affect the general rates of both wages and profit, must eventually affect all employments alike. The proportion between those rates must therefore remain the same, and cannot readily be altered by such changes, at least for any considerable time.

This statute made every parish responsible for supporting its own poor. That made it important to decide who counted as belonging to each parish. After the rule changed several times, the 13th and 14th of Charles II. finally settled the question. It said that forty days of uninterrupted residence gave anyone a legal settlement in a parish. But during those forty days, two justices of the peace could, after a complaint from the churchwardens or overseers of the poor, send a newcomer back to the parish where he last had a legal settlement. He could stay if he rented a place for ten pounds a-year or gave whatever security the justices considered enough to protect the parish where he now lived from having to support him.

People say this statute led to fraud. Parish officers sometimes bribed poor residents to sneak into another parish and hide there for forty days. The residents would then gain a settlement in the new parish, freeing their original parish from responsibility for them. So the 1st of James II. required that the forty-day period of uninterrupted residence begin only when a person gave a churchwarden or overseer of his new parish written notice of his address and the number of people in his family.

But parish officers were apparently no more honest in looking after their own parish than they had been toward other parishes. Sometimes they knowingly let newcomers settle, accepting their notices without taking the proper steps afterward. Since everyone in the parish was assumed to want to keep these newcomers from becoming a financial burden, the 3rd of William III. went further. It said the forty-day period would begin only when the written notice was read out in church on Sunday, immediately after the service.

“Even so,” says Doctor Burn, “a person very rarely gains a settlement by remaining for forty days after the written notice is published. The point of the acts is not so much to allow settlements as to prevent people from secretly entering a parish and acquiring them. Giving notice simply forces the parish to remove the newcomer. But if it is unclear whether a person can legally be removed, he can give notice and force the parish to choose: either let him stay forty days and gain an uncontested settlement, or remove him and put his legal right to the test.”

This statute made it nearly impossible for a poor man to gain a new settlement by the old method of living in a parish for forty days. But to avoid appearing to prevent ordinary people from one parish from ever making a secure home in another, it established four more ways to gain a settlement without giving or publishing notice. First, a person could be assessed for parish taxes and pay them. Second, he could be elected to an annual parish office and serve for a year. Third, he could serve an apprenticeship in the parish. Fourth, he could be hired there for a year's service and remain in the same job for that whole year. No one can gain a settlement by either of the first two methods without an official action by the parish as a whole. Its members understand the consequences too well to accept a newcomer who has only his labor to live on by taxing him for parish relief or electing him to a parish office.

A married man can hardly gain a settlement by either of the last two methods. Apprentices are almost never married, and the law expressly says that a married servant cannot gain a settlement by being hired for a year. Allowing settlements through service has largely ended the old custom of hiring servants for a year. That custom used to be so common in England that even today, if an agreement specifies no period, the law assumes a servant was hired for a year. But employers do not always want to give servants a settlement by hiring them this way. Servants do not always want to accept such a contract either. Each new settlement cancels every earlier one, so they might lose their original settlement in their birthplace, where their parents and relatives live.

Clearly, an independent worker, whether an ordinary laborer or a craftsperson, is unlikely to gain a new settlement through apprenticeship or service. When such a worker took his skills to a new parish, any churchwarden or overseer could choose to have him removed, however healthy and hardworking he was. To avoid this, he had to rent a place for ten pounds a-year, impossible for someone living solely on his labor, or provide security that two justices of the peace considered enough to keep the parish from having to support him.

The justices have complete discretion over what security to require. But they can hardly require less than thirty pounds. The law says that even buying freehold property worth less than thirty pounds does not grant a settlement, because it does not sufficiently protect the parish. Hardly anyone living by labor can provide that much security, and the amount demanded is often much greater.

To restore some of the free movement of labor that these statutes had almost entirely removed, lawmakers devised certificates. The 8th and 9th of William III. said that another parish had to accept anyone who brought a certificate from his last parish of legal settlement. The certificate had to be signed by its churchwardens and overseers of the poor and approved by two justices of the peace. The receiving parish could not remove him simply because he was likely to need assistance, but only if he actually did need it. The parish that issued the certificate would then have to pay both for his support and for his removal. To give the receiving parish complete protection, the same statute said that a person with a certificate could gain a settlement there only by renting a place for ten pounds a-year or serving on his own account in an annual parish office for a full year. He could not gain one by notice, service, apprenticeship, or payment of parish taxes. The 12th of Queen Anne, stat. 1, c.18, also said that neither the servants nor the apprentices of a person with a certificate could gain a settlement in the parish where he lived under it.

Doctor Burn makes an insightful observation that shows how far certificates restored the free movement of labor taken away by the earlier laws. “Clearly,” he says, “there are several good reasons for requiring people moving into a place to bring certificates. Those who live under certificates cannot gain a settlement by apprenticeship, service, notice, or paying parish taxes. They cannot give their apprentices or servants a settlement. If they become a burden, the parish knows where to send them, and it will be paid both for removing them and for supporting them until then. If they fall ill and cannot be moved, the parish that issued the certificate must support them. None of these protections applies without a certificate. The same reasons also give parishes good reason not to issue certificates in ordinary cases: it is much more likely than not that those people will return, and in worse condition.” The lesson of this observation seems to be that a parish should always require a certificate from a poor man moving in, while a parish he wants to leave should hardly ever issue one. The same well-informed author says in his History of the Poor Laws: “There is real hardship in the certificate system. It effectively lets a parish officer keep a man imprisoned for life in the place where he had the misfortune to acquire a so-called settlement, however inconvenient it is for him to stay there and whatever advantages he might hope to gain by living elsewhere.”

A certificate says nothing about a person's good behavior. It only confirms that he belongs to the parish to which he actually belongs. Even so, parish officers are entirely free to issue one or refuse. Doctor Burn says that someone once asked a court for a mandamus, an order forcing churchwardens and overseers to sign a certificate. The Court of King's Bench rejected the request as a very strange proposal.

The sharp differences in wages that we often find between nearby places in England probably result from settlement laws. They prevent a poor man from moving his labor from one parish to another without a certificate. A single, healthy, hardworking man can sometimes stay without one because the parish lets him. But in most parishes a man with a wife and family attempting that would certainly be removed. If a single man married later, he would generally be removed too. So a shortage of workers in one parish cannot always be relieved by an excess in another. This happens routinely in Scotland and, I believe, every other country where legal settlement is not difficult. In those countries, wages can rise a little near a big town or another place with unusually high demand for labor, then gradually fall with distance until they reach the country's ordinary rate. But we never find the sudden, inexplicable wage differences between neighboring places that sometimes occur in England. There, it is often harder for a poor man to cross the artificial boundary of a parish than to cross an arm of the sea or a range of high mountains, natural barriers that sometimes separate very different wage rates in other countries.

Removing a man who has done nothing wrong from the parish where he chooses to live plainly violates natural liberty and justice. Yet the ordinary people of England, though very protective of their liberty, have endured this oppression without a remedy for over a century. Like ordinary people in most other countries, they do not properly understand what liberty means. Thoughtful people have sometimes complained that settlement law harms the public. But it has never caused widespread public outrage like the outrage against general warrants. General warrants are certainly an abusive practice, but they are unlikely to oppress people on a broad scale. I would venture to say that hardly any poor man in England aged forty has gone through life without suffering cruel oppression from this badly designed settlement law.

I will close this long chapter by noting that authorities used to set wage rates, first through general laws applying across the kingdom and then through specific orders from justices of the peace in each county. Both practices have now completely fallen out of use. “After more than four hundred years of experience,” says Doctor Burn, “it seems time to stop trying to regulate in precise detail something that by its nature cannot be precisely limited. If everyone doing the same kind of work received equal wages, there would be no competition to excel and no reward for hard work or skill.”

Even so, particular acts of parliament still sometimes try to regulate wages in specific trades and places. For example, the 8th of George III. imposes heavy penalties on master tailors in London and within five miles of it for paying, and on their workers for accepting, more than two shillings and sevenpence halfpenny a-day, except during a period of general mourning. Whenever legislators try to regulate relations between employers and workers, the employers always advise them. So when a regulation favors workers, it is always just and fair, but this is not always true when it favors employers. For example, the law requiring employers in several trades to pay workers in money rather than goods is entirely just and fair. It causes employers no real hardship. It simply requires them to pay in money the value they claimed to pay in goods, but did not always actually pay. That law favors workers; the 8th of George III. favors employers. When employers join together to cut workers' wages, they commonly make a private agreement not to pay more than a set rate, with a penalty for breaking the agreement. If workers made the opposite kind of agreement not to accept a particular wage, again with a penalty, the law would punish them very severely. If it were impartial, it would treat employers the same way. But the 8th of George III. makes law the very rule employers sometimes try to establish through such agreements. Workers' complaint that it treats the most able and hardworking exactly like ordinary workers seems completely justified.

In earlier times, people also tried to regulate the profits of merchants and other sellers by fixing the prices of food and other goods. As far as I know, official regulation of bread prices is the only remaining example. If a corporation has exclusive trading privileges, it may be appropriate to set the price of this basic necessity. But if there is no such corporation, competition will set the price much better than any official rule. Scotland could not apply the method for setting bread prices established by the 31st of George II. because of a flaw in the law: enforcement depended on the office of clerk of the market, which Scotland did not have. The flaw was not corrected until the third of George III. The absence of official bread-price regulation caused no noticeable harm; introducing it in the few places where this has happened has brought no noticeable benefit. Most Scottish towns, however, have a bakers' corporation claiming exclusive privileges, though those privileges are not very strictly protected. As already noted, the relative rates of wages and profit in different uses of labor and stock do not seem greatly affected by whether society is rich or poor, growing, stationary, or declining. Such changes in public well-being affect general wage and profit rates, but must eventually affect all occupations equally. Their proportions therefore remain the same and cannot readily be changed for any significant length of time by such changes.