should the tiller of the soil have to pay this charge either
directly or indirectly. It is continued by the inadequacy of wages,
and the improvidence engendered by a social system which arose out
of injustice, and produced its own penalty.

Legislation with regard to the poor commenced contemporaneous with
the laws against the eviction of the small farmers. I have already
recited some of the laws to preserve small holdings; I now pass to
the acts meant to compel landholders to provide for those whom they
had dispossessed. In 1530 the act 22 Henry VIII., cap. 12, was
passed; it recites:

"Whereas in all places through the realm of England, vagabonds and
beggars have of long time increased, and daily do increase, in
great and excessive numbers by THE OCCASION OF IDLENESS, THE MOTHER
AND ROOT OF ALL VICES, [Footnote: See 4 Henry VII., cap, 19, ante,
p. 27, where the same expression occurs, showing that it was
throwing the land out of tilth that occasioned pauperism.] whereby
hath insurged and sprung, and daily insurgeth and springeth,
continual thefts, murders, and other heinous offences and great
enormities, to the high displeasure of God, the inquietation and
damage of the king and people, and to the marvellous disturbance of
the commonweal of the realm."

It enacts that justices may give license to impotent persons to beg
within certain limits, and, if found begging out of their limits,
they shall be set in the stocks. Beggars without license to be
whipped or set in the stocks. All persons able to labor, who shall
beg or be vagrant, shall be whipped and sent to the place of their
birth. Parishes to be fined for neglect of the constables.