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. 
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