An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

120

The Wealth of Nations

What security they shall require, indeed, is left altogether to

their discretion; but they cannot well require less than thirty

pounds, it having been enacted, that the purchase even of a free-

hold estate of less than thirty pounds value, shall not gain any

person a settlement, as not being sufficient for the discharge of the

parish. But this is a security which scarce any man who lives by

labour can give; and much greater security is frequently demanded.

In order to restore, in some measure, that free circulation of

labour which those different statutes had almost entirely taken

away, the invention of certificates was fallen upon. By the 8th and

9th of William III. it was enacted that if any person should bring

a certificate from the parish where he was last legally settled, sub-

scribed by the church-wardens and overseers of the poor, and al-

lowed by two justices of the peace, that every other parish should

be obliged to receive him; that he should not be removable merely

upon account of his being likely to become chargeable, but only

upon his becoming actually chargeable; and that then the parish

which granted the certificate should be obliged to pay the expense

both of his maintenance and of his removal. And in order to give

the most perfect security to the parish where such certificated man

should come to reside, it was further enacted by the same statute,

that he should gain no settlement there by any means whatever,

except either by renting a tenement of ten pounds a-year, or by

serving upon his own account in an annual parish office for one

whole year; and consequently neither by notice nor by service, nor

by apprenticeship, nor by paying parish rates. By the 12th of Queen

Anne, too, stat. 1, c.18, it was further enacted, that neither the

servants nor apprentices of such certificated man should gain any

settlement in the parish where he resided under such certificate.

How far this invention has restored that free circulation of labour,

which the preceding statutes had almost entirely taken away, we

may learn from the following very judicious observation of Doc-

tor Burn. “It is obvious,” says he, “that there are divers good rea-

sons for requiring certificates with persons coming to settle in any

place; namely, that persons residing under them can gain no settle-

ment, neither by apprenticeship, nor by service, nor by giving

notice, nor by paying parish rates; that they can settle neither ap-

prentices nor servants; that if they become chargeable, it is cer-

tainly known whither to remove them, and the parish shall be

paid for the removal, and for their maintenance in the mean time;

and that, if they fall sick, and cannot be removed, the parish which

gave the certificate must maintain them; none of all which can be

without a certificate. Which reasons will hold proportionably for

parishes not granting certificates in ordinary cases; for it is far

more than an equal chance, but that they will have the certificated

persons again, and in a worse condition.” The moral of this obser-

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121

Adam Smith

vation seems to be, that certificates ought always to be required by

the parish where any poor man comes to reside, and that they

ought very seldom to be granted by that which he purposes to

leave. “There is somewhat of hardship in this matter of certifi-

cates,” says the same very intelligent author, in his History of the

Poor Laws, “by putting it in the power of a parish officer to im-

prison a man as it were for life, however inconvenient it may be

for him to continue at that place where he has had the misfortune

to acquire what is called a settlement, or whatever advantage he

may propose himself by living elsewhere.”

Though a certificate carries along with it no testimonial of good

behaviour, and certifies nothing but that the person belongs to

the parish to which he really does belong, it is altogether discre-

tionary in the parish officers either to grant or to refuse it. A man-

damus was once moved for, says Doctor Burn, to compel the

church-wardens and overseers to sign a certificate; but the Court

of King’s Bench rejected the motion as a very strange attempt.

The very unequal price of labour which we frequently find in

England, in places at no great distance from one another, is prob-

ably owing to the obstruction which the law of settlements gives

to a poor man who would carry his industry from one parish to

another without a certificate. A single man, indeed who is healthy

and industrious, may sometimes reside by sufferance without one;

but a man with a wife and family who should attempt to do so,

would, in most parishes, be sure of being removed; and, if the

single man should afterwards marry, he would generally be re-

moved likewise. The scarcity of hands in one parish, therefore,

cannot always be relieved by their superabundance in another, as

it is constantly in Scotland, and. I believe, in all other countries

where there is no difficulty of settlement. In such countries, though

wages may sometimes rise a little in the neighbourhood of a great

town, or wherever else there is an extraordinary demand for labour,

and sink gradually as the distance from such places increases, till

they fall back to the common rate of the country; yet we never

meet with those sudden and unaccountable differences in the wages

of neighbouring places which we sometimes find in England, where

it is often more difficult for a poor man to pass the artificial bound-

ary of a parish, than an arm of the sea, or a ridge of high moun-

tains, natural boundaries which sometimes separate very distinctly

different rates of wages in other countries.

To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour, from

the parish where he chooses to reside, is an evident violation of

natural liberty and justice. The common people of England, how-

ever, so jealous of their liberty, but like the common people of

most other countries, never rightly understanding wherein it con-

sists, have now, for more than a century together, suffered them-

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