vengers, highways", and the duties on houses and windows *) and, 7, Executing, when legally appointed, any public parochial office for a whole year in the parish, as church-warden, &c. are both of them equivalent to notice, and gain a settlement", if coupled with a refidence of forty days. 8. Being hired for a year, when unmarried and childless (30), and serving a year in the same service; and 9. Being bound an apprentice, give the fervant and apprentice a fettlement without notice, in that place wherein they serve the last forty days. This is meant to encourage application to trades, and going out to reputable

y Stat. 9 Geo. I. c. 7. § 6.

z Stat. 21 Geo. II. c. 10. 18 Geo. III. c. 26.

* Stat. 3 & 4 W. and M. c. 1II.

Stat. 3 & 4 W. and M. c. II. 8 & 9 W. III. c. 10. 31 Geo. II. c. 11.

(30) A widower or widow with children emancipated is confi dered as childless, for fuch children cannot follow the fettlement gained by their parent's fervice. 3 Burn. 445. If an unmarried man is hired for a year, but, before he enters upon the service, or during the fervice, marries, he may gain a fettlement. 3 T. R. 382. But this will not extend to the continuance in the service a fecond year; for he was married when this new contract was exprefsly or impliedly entered into. Cald 54. Hiring for any time certainly lefs than a year will not be fufficient; but from Whitfuntide to ` Whitfuntide is confidered a year, though it will frequently happen to be a period lefs than 365 days. To gain a fettlement as a fervant there must be a hiring for a year, and a continued fervice for a year; but it is not neceffary that the fervice should be fubfequent to the hiring; for if there is a continued fervice for eleven months or any other part of a year, by any number or modes of hirings, or with any difference of wages, and afterwards a hiring for a year and a fervice to complete the year, a fettlement is gained. Cald. 179. There seemed to be great reason to think that the service subse. quent to the hiring for a year should at least be 40 days; but it is now decided that that is not necessary. (5 T. R. 98.) The settlement of a fervant and an apprentice is where they last reside 40 days in their mafter's employ ; and where they do not refide 40 days fuc ceffively at one place, but alternately in two or more parishes, and more than 40 days upon the whole in each in the course of a year, the fettlement is in that parish in which they fleep the laft night, Doug. 633.

fervices.

fervices. 10. Laftly, the having an elate of one's own, and refiding thereon forty days, however fmall the value may be, in case it be acquired by act of law or of a third perfon, as by descent, gift, devife, &c. is a fufficient fettlement: but if a man acquire it by his own act, as by purchase, (in it's popular fenfe, in confideration of money paid,) then unless the confideration advanced, bona fide, be 30. it is no fettlement for any longer time than the perfon hall inhabit thereon ". He is in no cafe removable from his own property; but he shall not, by any trifling or fraudu lent purchase of his own, acquire a permanent and lasting fettlement.

ALL perfons, not fo fettled, may be removed to their own parishes, on complaint of the overfeers, by two justices of the peace, if they fhall adjudge them likely to become chargeable to the parish into which they have intruded : unless they are in a way of getting a legal fettlement, as by -having hired a house of 10l. per annum, or living in an an- [ 365 1 nual service; for then they are not removable. And in all other cafes, if the parish to which they belong will grant them a certificate, acknowledging them to be their parishioners, they cannot be removed merely because likely to become chargeable, but only when they become actually chargeable. But fuch certificated perfon can gain no fettlement by any of the means above-mentioned (31); unless by renting a tene ment of 10l. per annum, or by ferving an annual office in the parish, being legally placed therein: neither can an ap◄ prentice or fervant to fuch certificated perfon gain a fettlement by such their service.

THESE are the general heads of the laws relating to the poor, which, by the refolutions of the courts of justice thereon

within a century past, are branched into a great variety (32). And yet, notwithstanding the pains that have been taken about them, they ftill remain very imperfect, and inadequate to the purposes they are defigned for: a fate, that has generally attended most of our statute laws, where they have not the foundation of the common law to build on. When the fhires, the hundreds, and the tithings, were kept in the fame admirable order in which they were difpofed by the great Alfred, there were no perfons idle, confequently none but the impotent that needed relief: and the statute of 43 Eliz. seems entirely founded on the fame principle. But when this excellent scheme was neglected and departed from, we cannot but obferve with concern, what miferable shifts and lame expedients have from time to time been adopted, in order to patch up the flaws occafioned by this neglect. There is not a more neceffary or more certain maxim in the frame and conftitution of fociety, than that every individual must contribute his share, in order to the well-being of the community: and surely they must be very deficient in found policy, who fuffer one half of a parish to continue idle, diffolute, and unemployed; and at length are amazed to find, that the industry of the other half is not able to maintain the whole.

(32) For a full and complete knowledge of this extensive subject, recourse must be had to Burn's Juftice, and Mr. Conft's valuable edition of Bott, and the reporters there referred to.

CHAPTER THE TENTH.

•F THE PEOPLE, WHETHER ALIENS, DENIZENS, OR NATIVES.

HA

AVING, in the eight preceding chapters, treated of perfons as they stand in the public relations of magiftrates, I now proceed to confider fuch perfons as fall under the denomination of the people. And herein all the inferior and fubordinate magistrates, treated of in the last chapter, are included.

THE first and most obvious divifion of the people is into aliens and natural-born fubjects. Natural-born fubjects are fuch as are born within the dominions of the crown of England; that is, within the ligeance, or, as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king: and aliens, such as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or ligamen, which binds the fubject to the king, in return for that protection which the king affords the fubject. The thing itself, or substantial part of it, is founded in reafon and the nature of government; the name and the form are derived to us from our Gothic ancestors. Under the feodal system, every owner of lands held them in fubjection to fome fuperior or lord, from whom or whose ancestors the tenant or vafal had received them: and there was a mutual trust or confidence fubfifting between the lord and vafal, that the lord should protect the vasal in the enjoyment of the territory he had granted him, and, on the other hand, that the vafal fhould be faithful to the lord and [367] defend him against all his enemies. This obligation on the part of the vafal was called his fidelitas or fealty; and an oath of fealty was required, by the feodal law, to be taken, by all tenants to their landlord, which is couched in almo't 'the

Kk 2

BOOK I. the fame terms as our antient oath of allegiance *: except that in the ufual oath of fealty there was frequently a faving or exception of the faith due to a fuperior lord by name, under whom the landlord himfelf was perhaps only a tenant or vafal. But when the acknowlegement was made to the abfolute fuperior himself, who was vafal to no man, it was no longer called the oath of fealty, but the oath of allegiance; and therein the tenant fwore to bear faith to his fovereign lord, in opposition to all men, without any faving or ex ception: "contra omnes homines fidelitatem fecit." Land held by this exalted fpecies of fealty was called feudum ligium, a liege fee; the vasals homines ligii, or liege men; and the fovereign their dominus ligius, or liege lord. And when fovereign princes did homage to each other, for lands held under their respective sovereignties, a dictinction was always made between fimple homage, which was only an acknowlegement of tenure; and liege homage, which included the fealty before mentioned, and the fervices confequent upon it. Thus when our Edward III., in 1329, did homage to Philip VI. of France, for his ducal dominions on that continent, it was warmly disputed of what fpecies the homage was to be, whether liege or fimple homage. But with us in England, it becoming a fettled principle of tenure, that all lands in the kingdom are holden of the king as their fovereign and lord paramount, no oath but that of fealty could ever be taken to inferior lords, and the oath of allegiance was neceffarily confined to the perfon of the king alone. By an eafy analogy the term of allegiance was foon brought to fignify all other engagements, which are due from fubjects to their prince, as well as thofe duties which were fimply and merely territo 368 Irial. And the oath of allegiance, as administered for upwards of fix hundred years, contained a promife" to be "true and faithful to the king and his heirs, and truth and "faith to bear of life and limb and terrene honour, and "not to know or hear of any ill or damage intended him,