The Economy of Local Rates 183
such a way as to reduce the surplus eventually going
to the owners. Wherever this surplus is at present
largest in proportion to the number of inhabitants, the
locality could benefit its inhabitants most, and for the
moment, therefore, offer the greatest attractions to
immigrants.! The final effect of a competition of this
kind could only be to deplete the districts in which
there is little surplus and to overcrowd those in which
there is at present a large surplus, until that surplus
was taxed away, being used up in the futile task of
paying people to be where they should not be.
On the other hand, the attempt of each locality to
secure that the property inseparably attached to it
shall be as valuable as possible, fits in perfectly with
the general economic system of to-day, in which the
ultimate control of production is vested in the posses-
sors of purchasing power, whether their power is
derived from property, from labour, or from any
other source. The desire of almost every owner of
property to make the most of his property induces
him to take his part along with workers of all kinds
This was scen to be the cffect of the unstandardised system of
poor relief in the 17th century, and parliament endeavoured to meet
the difficulty by restricting the freedom of migration. The Act 14
Car. II, c. 12, recites that, “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 largest commons or wastes to build
cottages, and the most woods for them to burn and destroy, and when
they have consumed it then to another parish, and at last become
rogues and vagabonds, to the great discouragement of parishes to
provide stocks, where it is liable to be devoured by strangers.” It
was, therefore, enacted that immigrants into a parish likely to
become chargeable should be removable to their place of settlement
an complaint of the churchwarden or overseers
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