The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith (best novels to read for beginners txt) 📖

This story is from Pliny, Historia Naturalis, xxxiii, cap. iv, who remarks, “Tantus erat docendae oratoriae quaestus,” but the commentators point out that earlier authorities ascribe the erection of the statue not to Gorgias, but to the whole of Greece. ↩

It is difficult to discover on what passage this statement is based. ↩

Plutarch, Alexander. ↩

This is a slip. Carneades was a native of Cyrene, and it was his colleague Diogenes who was a Babylonian by birth. ↩

Below, here through here. ↩

Above, here. ↩

15 Car. II, c. 15. ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “the.” ↩

Ed. 1 places the “is” here. ↩

C. 12. ↩

This account of the provisions of the Acts regarding settlement, though not incorrect, inverts the order of the ideas which prompted them. The preamble complains that owing to 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,” and so forth, and the Act therefore gives the justices power, “within forty days after any such person or persons coming so to settle as aforesaid,” to remove them “to such parish where he or they were last legally settled either as a native, householder, sojourner, apprentice or servant for the space of forty days at the least.” The use of the term “settlement” seems to have originated with this Act. ↩

C. 17, “An act for reviving and continuance of several acts.” The reason given is that “such poor persons at their first coming to a parish do commonly conceal themselves.” Nothing is said either here or in Burn’s Poor Law or Justice of the Peace about parish officers bribing their poor to go to another parish. ↩

3 W. and M., c. 11, § 3. ↩

Richard Burn, Justice of the Peace, 1764, vol. ii, p. 253. ↩

§§ 6, 8. ↩

§ 7 confines settlement by service to unmarried persons without children. ↩

By 9 Geo. I, c. 7. ↩

The Act, 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 12, giving the justices power to remove the immigrant within forty days was certainly obstructive to the free circulation of labour, but the other statutes referred to in the text, by making the attainment of a settlement more difficult, would appear to have made it less necessary for a parish to put in force the power of removal, and therefore to have assisted rather than obstructed the free circulation of labour. The poor law commissioners of 1834, long after the power of removal had been abolished in 1795, found the law of settlement a great obstruction to the free circulation of labour, because men were afraid of gaining a new settlement, not because a new settlement was denied them. ↩

C. 30, “An act for supplying some defects in the laws for the relief of the poor of this kingdom.” The preamble recites, “Forasmuch as many poor persons chargeable to the parish, township or place where they live, merely for want of work, would in any other place when sufficient employment is to be had maintain themselves and families without being burdensome to any parish, township or place.” But certificates were invented long before this. The Act 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 12, provides for their issue to persons going into another parish for harvest or any other kind of work, and the preamble of 8 & 9 W. III, c. 30, shows that they were commonly given. Only temporary employment, however, was contemplated, and, on the expiration of the job, the certificated person became removable. ↩

Rather by the explanatory Act, 9 & 10 W. III, c. 11. ↩

All these statutes are conveniently collected in Richard Burn’s History of the Poor Laws, 1764, pp. 94⁠–⁠100. ↩

Burn, Justice of the Peace, 1764, vol. ii, p. 274. ↩

Burn, History of the Poor Laws, 1764, pp. 235, 236, where it is observed that “it was the easy method of obtaining a settlement by a residency of forty days that brought parishes into a state of war against the poor and against one another,” and that if settlement were reduced to the place of birth or of inhabitancy for one or more years, certificates would be got rid of. ↩

Burn, Justice, vol. ii, p. 209. The date given is 1730. ↩

Since the fact of the father having no settlement would not free the parish from the danger of having at some future time to support the children. ↩

Some evidence in support of this assertion would have been acceptable. Sir Frederic M. Eden, State of the Poor, 1797, vol. i, pp. 296⁠–⁠298, may be consulted on the other side. William Hay’s Remarks on the Laws Relating to the Poor, 1735, which Eden regards as giving a very exaggerated view of the obstruction caused by the law of settlement, was in the Edinburgh Advocates’ Library in 1776, and Adam Smith may have seen it. ↩

History of the Poor Laws, p. 130, loosely quoted. After “limitation” the passage runs, “as thereby it leaves no room for industry or ingenuity; for if all persons in the same kind of work were to receive equal wages there would be no emulation.” ↩

7 Geo. I, stat. 1,