504 History of the English Landed Interest. 



Then, too, by this same method every one assessed for the 

 poor-rate was compelled to become an employer of work- 

 people, and many were forced by straitened circumstances to 

 discharge competent labourers in order to give employment to 

 inefficient pauj)ers. Dr. Cunningham cites an instance where 

 there resided at Eastbourne both a pauper, in receipt of 16s. a 

 week in wages, and an independent workman earning 12s. — a 

 condition of affairs which led more than one woman to com- 

 plain of the conduct of her husband in refusing to better his 

 condition by becoming a pauper.^ 



But though the principle of bestowing as charity what was 

 labour's due was mischievous and unjust, it put an end to 

 actual want. It converted a starving labourer into a fairly 

 nourished pauper ; and to be beggared is preferable to dying 

 of want. 



The legislation of the last decade in the eighteenth century 

 was not, however, wholly pernicious, for the statute of 35 

 George III. c. 101, by repealing so much of that of 13 & 14 

 C. II. c. 12, which authorised justices to order the removal of 

 persons hkely to become chargeable to parishes, and by pro- 

 viding that no poor persons should be banished from any 

 parish until they had become actually chargeable, abolished 

 the more tyrannous incidents of the practice of settlement. 

 The peasant was, at any rate, no longer so much like a villein- 

 regardant, although he was not as yet a free agent as regards 

 his wages. His further emancipation was brought about in 

 1813 and 1814,^ by the abolition of the wages assessments of 

 quarter sessions, and in 1825, by the removal of the prohibi- 

 tions against the combinations of workmen for raising the 

 rate of wages.^ 



All this was the result of pressure brought to bear on public 

 opinion by such men as Bentham, Romilly and Hume. As 

 soon as it became recognised that the restrictions to which we 

 have alluded were serving no good end, the employers of 



^ The Groicth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times, 

 p. 663. 

 2 53 Geo. III. c. 40 ; 54 Geo. III. c. 96. 

 M «& 5 Geo. IV. c. 95 and 97. 



