THE REMOVAL OF PERSONAL DISABILITIES 755 labourers were almost as closely astricted as the mediaeval AD as villeins to the places of their birth for permanent engage- ments.. This restriction, the injustice of which had been denounced by Tucker’, was first set aside in the case of members of Friendly Societies by Mr Rose’s Act? and ac- cording to a subsequent measure, no person was liable to removal until he had actually become chargeable®. The Act of 18344, by abolishing settlement by service, did away with the motive for preventing the incursion of new comers; and the legislation of 1865, which constituted one year’s continuous residence a title to irremovability, and abolished removal from one parish to another within the same union, has gone a long way to reduce the mischief of the system to a minimum? The restrictions on the emigration of artisans were of a and by different character; these had been originally introduced Wpertng with a view to protecting our own industries, and preventing ne oon the disclosing of trade secrets to foreigners®. The hardship in any way that might be construed into a yearly hiring, the employer, for the temporary advantage of the service which he could obtain nearly as well in another way, should subject himself and all his parish to a permanent charge, operated immediately to put an end throughout England and Wales to all permanent and annual hirings. Previously, the Statutes of labourers and the habits of the country made the yearly service the common rule in all such transactions; but from the time when the Acts of William's reign gave the settlement by a year's hiring and OY a year's service, it became necessary to make a break in the engagement and employment, or to make the contract but a part of the year. The interval of non-employment thus caused, being almost universally at one time—Michaelmas, —became a time of idleness and corruption, especially to the younger people. “The practice of keeping in the same house, whether of the gentry, the farmers, the tradesmen, or the artisans, of young lads and maids as part of the family, which had been universal before, was now as universally abandoned ; an irretrievable national loss, by which a valuable moral education and an economical and industrial training of the very poorest and most numerous class of the people was sacrificed for ever. * The servants thus thrown out, the young people thus cut off from permanent, comfortable and improving employment, were made an incumbrance of the over- peopled cottages, of their families, idlers on the road side or common, and with tearful rapidity the tenants of the parish houses, and the dependents on parochial relief. The more mature in age became the frequenters of the ale.shops, the complaint of the growth of which accompanied the progress of able-bodied pauperism and of poaching, and other rural crimes from this time forwards.” Sir G. Coode, Report on the Law of Settlement, in Reports, 1851. xxvL 272, printed pag. 78. t Manifold causes of the Increase of the Poor (1760), p. 6. Also by A. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 58, 191. 2 33 Geo. IIL. c. 54. 8 35 Geo. III. c. 101. *4and 5 W. IV. c. 64. 8 Mackay, op. cit. mI. 364. 8 See above, p. 587. 4R__9