The Labour Question. 303 



and in cases wliere one parisli was too small, the representatives 

 of two or more parochial divisions might unite, and purchase 

 or hire a poor house for the wants of their combined poverty. 

 In George II. 's reign ' the relief of poor prisoners in the Mar- 

 shalsea, houses of correction, etc., hitherto raised by separate 

 collection, was put on the general county rate. 



Towards the end of the last century the provisions for pauper 

 relief had reached gigantic proportions. Young describes it 

 "as so prodigious a tax that it might fairly be pronounced to 

 be the most oppressive grievance under which the subject in 

 England groans." It seems to have been universally unpopu- 

 lar, both on account of defects in its machinery and disappoint- 

 ment at its results, " The law is vague, doubtful, and per- 

 plexed," says Young ; " the assessment is unequally and in 

 general ignorantly laid, and all appeals from it are, in other 

 words, nothing but plunging into that dreadful abyss, the ." ^ 



The increased powers allowed by recent laws to the overseers 

 had no doubt been abused ; and Young points out that, where 

 parishes consisted partly of lands and partly of houses, the in- 

 terests of the landholders and householders had become divided.^ 

 The latter, by means of a majority of votes, secured their own 

 churchwardens, and the justices (both county as well as borough) 

 took the recommendation of these ofldcers in their nomination 

 of overseers. The result was that " mean, unsubstantial fel- 

 lows " obtained appointments originally intended for the well- 

 to-do householder, who vented their spleen on all the respect- 

 able landholders of the community by laying the burden of the 

 poor rate on real property. As we have shown in an earlier 

 portion of this history, and as Young at this period expressed 

 it, the law originally intended " that personal estates, in or out 

 of trade, or annual incomes should be rated." " A gentleman," 

 says Young, " possessed of a landed estate must in consequence 

 pay several parochial taxes, for he is rated for the house or 

 houses he lives in in town and country, and his tenants are 



1 12 Geo. II. c. 29. 



2 Farmer^s Letters, ch. viii. A Young. 



' Young quotes from A Short View of the Frauds, Abuses, and Im- 

 positions of Parish Officers, Fonnereau, p. 9, 1744. 



