circumstances render the accuracy of the statement doubtful or suspicious, he, the purchaser, should require the estate to be discharged of the legacies.

We confess we do not exactly comprehend the force of the objection that the purchasers "dealt with the son, not as the trustee of the widow and daughters, but as the owner of the estate;" for the son with regard to purchasers was owner, if debts were unpaid, though personally liable in equity to the claims of the creditors and daughters. But if the purchaser knew or might have known that all the debts were paid, then the son could not alone make a good title without showing that the legacies were also paid. In fact, the only substantial objection to the title of the purchasers was, that they knew the debts were paid. As to the widow the son could not be deemed a trustee, and of course the estate could not be sold discharged from her annuity without her concurrence, whether the debts were paid or not, unless a purchaser could have shown that his purchase-money was specifically applied in payment of debts.'

Under the title of "a few cursory observations," Sir Edward gives his reasons at considerable length for opposing the bill lately introduced into Parliament for establishing a general registry of deeds; but as the bill has been since thrown out, there is no immediate necessity for recurring to them. W.

ART. VII. THE POOR LAW AMENDMENT BILL.

THE Poor Law Amendment Bill has escaped the House of Commons less impaired perhaps, on the whole, in its efficiency, than was to be expected; though many alterations of more than doubtful expediency have been introduced. On one point even a salutary change, so far as it goes, appears to have been effected.

We have always differed from the view which the Commissioners, in their Report, appear to have taken of the Set

tlement Law. In proposing to reduce all the heads of settlement to one, they seem to have thought the mischievous operation of the law ascribable in some measure to the number and variety of the modes in which a settlement may be acquired; in other words, to the degree of facility with which a person may be enabled to change his place of settlement. In doing so they appear to us to have acted on a principle directly opposite to the true one; if accumulations of redundant labour in particular spots, and the consequent inequality of parochial burthens be, as the Commissioners themselves admit, the principal evils entailed upon the country by the law of parochial settlement. To provide for the gradual dispersion of such accumulations would appear to be the leading object of any change in the law; whereas, if the most obvious probabilities be not the most fallacious, nothing will so surely arise from abolishing the acquisitive settlements, as the perpetuation or increase of those inequalities of parochial population, which are already too monstrous to be borne. Notwithstanding the state of pauperism prevailing in the south of England, there is no one entire county of which it can be proclaimed that the whole population contained in it is redundant; and yet multitudes of parishes are to be found, in which more than half the labouring population are unemployed during certain seasons of the year and supported in idleness on the rates. No doubt a large number of parishes are at present deriving great benefit from the existence of these inequalities, by which they obtain a ready supply of labour at the periods when they want it, without the burthen of providing for the labourers when employment is slack. This advantage the small and lightly burthened parishes have been enabled to secure to themselves, at the expense of the overburthened, by the law of settlement in its present state; by any simplification of the law of settlement, it appears to us, they will be enabled to perpetuate and increase these inequalities still further to their own advantage; such advantage, nevertheless, can only last until the parishes sacrificed are ruined utterly by so unfair a distribution of the burthen; their more prosperous neighbours will then suffer in their turn, like the parishes which are now paying rates in aid of the parish of Cholesbury in Buckinghamshire.

That these morbid congestions of redundant labour are in fact owing in great measure to the law of parochial settlement, there can be small doubt. Little more than thirty years after the law of settlement and removal established by the 13 & 14 Car. II., we find the 8 & 9 Will. III., c. 30, commencing with these words:

"Forasmuch as many poor persons chargeable to the parish, township, or place where they live, merely for want of work, would in any other place where sufficient employment is to be had, maintain themselves and families, without being burthensome to any parish, township, or place, but not being able to give such security as will or may be expected and required upon their coming to settle themselves in any other place, they are, for the most part, confined to live in their own parishes, townships, or places, and not permitted to inhabit elsewhere, though their labour is wanted in many other places where the increase of manufactures would employ more hands.'

We contend, then, that the Commissioners have taken a wrong view of this part of the subject, and have acted on principles directly opposed to the right ones in recommending a change to a stricter law of settlement, instead of relaxing that which is already so strict as to give certain parishes the advantages over others which have been mentioned above. In the same proportion we give credit to the House of Commons for departing from the recommendation of the Commissioners, and restoring all the old heads of settlement with the exception of two. Thus little can be said to have been done relative to the law of settlement; whereas, surely some substantial good might have been effected, either by erecting larger districts for parochial purposes, or by relaxing the law of settlement, so as to make it easier to acquire a new settlement than it is now under the strict caution and vigilance exercised by the rate-payers of the respective parishes.

We find the following observations on this subject in the Report of one of the assistant Commissioners:

"The expense occasioned by the Settlement Law is certainly the least part of its mischief; for more substantial objections we need only look to the impediments caused by it to the free circulation of labour, the parochial jealousies and frauds which it occasions and the power put into the hands of the pauper, of selecting the victims

of his own destitution, a power often turned to his personal account, and sometimes at the expense of a perjury. With regard to the first of these evils, it is altogether to the parochial assessments and the settlement law, that we owe those partial accumulations of superabundant labour, which oppress some portions of the land to the advantage of others: the terms upon which relief is given constraining the presence of the individual on a particular spot, and that spot of all others, the one where, supposing him ablebodied, he is unable to maintain himself by his labour. The worst exhibition of this evil is found in manufacturing districts; where the speculations of an individual frequently become, in failing, the ruin of a whole parish.

"In order to procure a dispersion of this superabundance where it already exists, and to provide labour a natural current in future, two modes of proceeding, as regards a change of the settlement law, seem to present themselves for choice; either to multiply greatly the facilities of acquiring a settlement, or to do away with settlement altogether."

"The principal evil is the stoppage of the free circulation of labour, and its consequent accumulation in particular places, an evil which is daily increasing with the general increase of pauperism. Parishes comparatively little burthened with poor are enabled, by vigilantly taking advantage of the present settlement law, to fortify themselves against the admission of any new parishioners, and to avail themselves of that abundance of labour which their neighbours are supporting at seasons when they want it. To such parishes the Poor Laws are an advantage, enhancing the value and rent of the land. This power of exclusion is beginning every where to be exercised with the greatest vigilance and jealousy; in most parishes the man who makes a settlement is looked upon as a public offender. The late alterations in the law of settlement by renting a tenement have greatly increased this power of exclusion; and it is quite obvious that any diminution of the number of settlements, or of the facility of acquiring them, must increase it still more. Suppose, for instance, that, with the view of diminishing litigation and fraud, birth-settlement alone were left. A man and his wife settled by birth in parish A. come to reside in parish B.; the parishioners of B. are interested to discourage this in every possi ble way, because the children born in B. will be settled there; therefore they will conspire not to employ this man, or give him custom, as the case may be, and thus drive him for necessity back to A. If he comes to B. unmarried, the persecution will begin when he does marry, or at least so soon as his wife shows symp

toms of pregnancy. He may come to work in B. if he pleases, but it is on condition of his residing in A. and fixing his children on that parish, and thus the accumulation goes on worse than ever. This is not practised now, because birth-settlement is seldom resorted to, being usually intercepted by a derivative or acquired settlement; but hirings for a year are avoided, apprentices refused, cottages pulled down; and were birth the only settlement, the births of legitimate' children would be as zealously forestalled as those of bastards are at present.

"The plain state of the case is this, that so long as any settlement whatever is retained, the greater the facility given to its acquisition, the greater chance will the labourer have of finding himself located where his presence will be least a burthen; therefore the proposals of reducing the value of the tenement, and shortening the term of the hiring and service, deserve consideration. Suppose the latter were reduced even to a single day, and that any bonâ fide renting of any tenement were made sufficient, what would be the effect? Would it be to prevent the farmer employing at any time any labour but that of his own parishioners? On the contrary, I believe that the utter impossibility of excluding the foreign labour at certain periods of the year, would ensure a more equitable distribution of it and of the parochial burthens." "To abolish settlement altogether is only carrying the same principle a step further; instead of making a man entitled to relief where he did his last day's work, he would become entitled where he was last found. In other words, he would become entitled to relief wherever he chose to ask for it, to which, under the present institutions of parochial management and assessment, there would be serious objection. It will be said, a man would have nothing to do for his support but to go from parish officer to parish officer and exact money as the condition of taking himself away, and thus pauperism would become more powerful and triumphant than ever in the shape of vagabondism. Again, arbitrary accumulations might still be expected to take place, no longer indeed by the constraint of circumstances, but wholly at the will and caprice of the paupers or vagabonds themselves. The evil apprehended is, in fact, thus recited as existing in the preamble to the Act 13 & 14 Car. 2, c. 12, the origin of our present Settlement Law: • Whereas by reason of some defects in the law, poor people are not restrained from going from one parish to another, and therefore do endeavour to settle themselves in those parishes where there is the best stock, the l largest commons or wastes to build cottages, and the most woods for them to burn and destroy; and when they have con