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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