A.D. 1689 
—1776. 
wing to 
the uctua- 
tions of 
trade, 
there was 
a reaction 
rgainst 
stringent 
wo 
‘ration in 
1789, 
PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
instead of Thieves, etc., is owing to the different Effects 
which Necessity produces in different People, according to 
their Turn of Mind, Time of Life, etc., and not to another 
Cause’.” The peasant with his own holding was rooted to 
the soil, the labourer who worked for wages was dependent 
apon trade. “The Real Strength” of a country, he says, 
“doth not consist in the Number of Men who live there, 
but in those who Defend it; and the Source of that 
astonishing Disparity between the One and the Other in 
England, is Removing multitudes of people from our natural 
and fixed Basis, Land, to the Artificial and Fluctuating 
Basis, Trade.” His insight was abundantly justified, in 
the evil days of the Industrial Revolution, and he gave 
axpression to a feeling which many people shared, and which 
sventually found expression in parliamentary enactments. 
The turn of the tide was marked by the passing of 
silbert’s Act in 1782 At the Restoration the parishes of 
Zngland had been armed with powers for defending them- 
selves against the poor*; on the eve of the Industrial Revo- 
lution, facilities were given for granting relief lavishly. The 
new Act Was an experimental measure, and did not apply to 
the whole country, but only to those parishes which decided 
bo adopt it, and to unite with others. In these new Incorpora- 
sions the practice of contracting for the labour of the poor was 
brought under strict supervision; able-bodied men were not 
set to tasks in the house, but were encouraged to take such 
employment as they could get in the district, and might have 
their wages supplemented by parochial allowances. The work- 
house test practically ceased to operate, since the houses in 
‘he Gilbert Unions were employed for the reception of the 
impotent? rather than as Houses of Industry. At the same 
time, the responsibility for carrying out the provisions of the 
measure was transferred from the parochial officials to men of 
better social status, who,as guardians and justices of the peace, 
acted for the several parishes combined in a Union; in the dis- 
bricts where Gilbert's Act was adopted, the churchwardens and 
+ 4 Plan, etc., 50. 2 Jb. p. 69. 8 22 Geo. ITI. c. 83. 
1 Sir G. Coode, Report on the Law of Settlement, in Reports, 1851, XxVI. 251, 
orinted pag. 57. § Parl. Hist. xxi. 301. 
8 T. Gilbert, Considerations on the bills for the better relief of the poor (1787),18 
378