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any parish are all reducible to this one, of forty days residence therein: but this forty days residence (which is construed to be lodging or lying there) must not be by fraud, or stealth, or in any clandestine manner; but made notorious, by one or other of the following concomitant circumstances. The next method therefore of gaining a settlement, is, 4. By forty days residence, and notice. For if a stranger comes into a parish, and delivers notice in writing of his place of abode, and num ber of his family, to one of the overseers, (which must be read in the church and registered,) and resides there unmolested for forty days after such notice, he is legally settled thereby w. For the law presumes that such a one at the time of notice is not likely to become chargeable, else he would not venture to give it; or that in such case, the parish would take care to remove him (27). But there are also other circumstances equivalent to such notice: therefore, 5. Renting for a year (28) a tenement of the yearly value of ten pounds, and

w Stat. 13 and 14 Car. IL. c. 12. 1 Jac. II. e. 17. 3 and 4 W. and Mar. c. 11.

but it seems fully determined that they cannot be separated or removed from the husband (Bur. S. C. 813. 1 Stra. 544.) The consequence is, that the whole family must be supported as casual poor in the parish where they may happen to want relief. In the removal of a wife or a widow, it is sufficient in the first instance to prove her maiden settlement. Cald. 39. 236.

(27) By the 35 Geo. III. c. 101. it is enacted that no person in future shall gain a settlement by such a notice.

(28) It is not necessary that the renting should be for a year; if a tenement of the yearly value of 107. be taken for two months or 40 days only, it will be sufficient to give a settlement. (Bur. S. C. 474.) Nor is it necessary there should be any housé upon the premises, even a renting of the after-grass or pasturage will be sufficient. (4 T. R. 348.) A person gains a settlement by residing in the parish in which part of the premises lies, but not by residing elsewhere. (2 T. R. 48.) It need not be one entire tenement; for if he takes one tenement in one parish, and another in a different parish, if together they are of the value of 107. a year, he will gain a settlement by residing in either parish; the value only is material; it will be sufficient to give a settlement, if the enjoyment of the tenement is gratuitous, or if no rent is to be paid for it.. 1 T. R. 458.

residing forty days in the parish, gains a settlement without notice, upon the principle of having substance enough to gain credit for such a house. 6. Being charged to and paying the public taxes and levies of the parish (29); (excepting those for scavengers, highways, and the duties on houses and windows) and, 7. Executing, when legally appointed, any public parochial office for a whole year in the parish, as @hurch-warden, &c. are both of them equivalent to notice, and gain a settlementa, if coupled with a residence of forty days. 8. Being hired for a year, when unmarried and childless (30), and serving a year in the same service; and 9. Being bound an apprentice, give the servant and apprentice

x Stat. 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 12.

y Stat: 9 Geo. I. c. 7. sec. 6.

z Stat. 21 Geo. II. c. 10, 18 Geo. III. c. 26. a Stat. 3 and 4 W. and M. c. 11.

(29) By the 35 Geo. III. c. 101. the payment of taxes for a tenement of less yearly value than 107. will not give a settlement; so that this species of settlement is in effect abolished.

(30) A widower or widow with children emancipated is considered as childless, for such children cannot follow the settlement gained by their parent's service. 3 Burn. 445. If an unmarried man is hired for a year, but, before he enters upon the service, or during the service, marries, he may gain a settlement. 3 T. R. 382. But this will not extend to the continuance in the service a second year; for he was married when this new contract was expressly or impliedly entered into. Cald. 54. Hiring for any time certainly less than a year will not be sufficient; but from Whitsuntide to Whitsuntide is considered a year, though it will frequently happen to be a period less than 365 days. To gain a settlement as a servant there must be a hiring for a year, and a continued service for a year; but it is not necessary that the service should be subsequent to the hiring; for if there is a continued service for eleven months or any other part of a year, by any number or modes of hirings, or with any difference of wages, and afterwards a hiring for a year and a service to complete the year, a settlement is gained. Cald. 179. There seemed to be great reason to think that the service subsequent to the hiring for a year should at least be 40 days; but it is now decided that that is not necessary. (5 T. R. 98.) The settlement of a servant and an apprentice is where they last reside 40 days in their master's employ; and where they do not reside 40 days successively at one

a settlement without notice, in that place wherein they serve the last forty days. This is meant to encourage application to trades, and going out to reputable services. 10. Lastly, the having an estate of one's own, and residing thereon forty days, however small the value may be, in case it be acquired by act of law or of a third person, as by descent, gift, devise, &c. is a sufficient settlement: but if a man acquire it by his own act, as by purchase, (in its popular sense, in consideration of money paid,) then unless the consideration advanced, bona fide, be 307, it is no settlement for any longer time than the person shall inhabit thereond. He is in no case removable from his own property; but he shall not, by any trifling or fraudulent purchase of his own, acquire a permanent and lasting settlement.

ALL persons, not so settled, may be removed to their own parishes, on complaint of the overseers, by two justices of the peace, if they shall adjudge them likely to become chargeable to the parish into which they have intruded: unless they are in a way of getting a legal settlement, as by having hired a house of 101. per annum, or liv- [365] ing in an annual service; for then they are not removable. And in all other cases, if the parish to which they belong will grant them a certificate, acknowledging them to be their parishioners, they cannot be removed merely because likely to become chargeable, but only when they become actually chargeable f. But such certificated person can gain no settlement by any of the means above-mentioned (31);

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place, but alternately in two or more parishes, and more than 40 days upon the whole in each in the course of a year, the settlement is in that parish in which they sleep the last night. Doug. 633.

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unless by renting a tenement of 10l. per annum, or by serving an annual office in the parish, being legally placed therein: neither can an apprentice or servant to such certificated person gain a settlement by such their services.

THESE are the general heads of the laws relating to the poor, which, by the resolutions of the courts of justice thereon within a century past, are branched into a great variety (32). And yet, notwithstanding the pains that have been taken about them, they still remain very imperfect, and inadequate to the purposes they are 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 in which they were disposed 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 at length are amazed to find, that the industry of the other half is not able to maintain the whole.

g Stat. 12 Ann. c. 18.

(32) For a full and complete knowledge of this extensive subject, recourse must be had to Burn's Justice, and Mr. Const's valuable edition of Bott, and the reporters there referred to.

CHAPTER THE TENTH..

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

HAVING, in the eight preceding chapters, treated of per

sons 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 vassal had received them: and there was a mutual trust or confidence subsisting between the lord and vassal, that the lord should protect the vassal in the enjoyment of the territory he had granted him, and, on the other hand, that the vassal should be faithful to the [367] lord and defend him against all his enemies. This obligation on the part of the vassal was called his fidelitas or fealty; and an oath of fealty was required, by the feodal law, to be taken by all tenants to their landlord, which is couched in almost the same terms as our ancient oath of allegiance: except that in the usual oath of fealty there was frequently a saving or exception of the faith due to a superior lord by name,

a 2 Feud. 5, 6, 7.

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