Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

or a widow, shall be bound to maintain such child, as a part of her family, until such child shall attain the age of sixteen. All relief granted to such child while under the age of sixteen shall be considered as granted to such mother, provided that such liability of such mother shall cease on the marriage of such child, if a female.

LXXII. When the mother of a bastard child is really unable to maintain it, the guardians of the parish or union may apply to the general quarter sessions, for an order on the putative father, to reimburse the parish or union for its support. No money, however, is to be applied to the relief of the mother.

LXXIII. Fourteen days' notice must be given to the putative father. If the court grants the application, the costs may be calculated from the birth of the bastard child, if within six months.

LXXIV. If the putative father or his attorney does not appear, the court may give judgment nevertheless.

LXXV. If suspicion arise that the putative father intends to abscond, he may be required to enter into a recognizance for his appearance.

LXXVI. When the putative father falls into arrear, he may be proceeded against by distress or attachment of wages.

LXXVII. Persons employed in the administration of the poor laws are not to furnish goods or provisions for their own profit in parochial relief, under a penalty of five pounds.

LXXVIII. Sums payable by father, grandfather, grandmother, child or children, of any poor person, for the relief of poor persons, shall be recoverable in like manner as penalties and forfeitures are recoverable under the provisions of this act.

LXXIX. No poor person shall be removed or removable till after notice of his being chargeable has been sent to the parish to which the order of removal is directed. If the parish agree to receive such poor person, it may then be lawful to remove him; but not in case he should appeal.

LXXX. In case of appeal, the overseers are entitled to have free access to the person to be removed, for the purpose of examining him touching his settlement.

LXXXI. Grounds of appeal must be stated in the notice, and sent to the respondent parish, and the appellant parish shall not be heard in support of such appeal, unless the notice is regularly given.

LXXXII. The parish which loses the appeal to pay such costs as the court shall direct. LXXXIII. The party making frivolous and vexatious grounds of appeal, shall pay the whole or part of the costs incurred by the other party in disputing them.

LXXXIV. The parish to which the poor person shall be finally adjudged to belong, shall be liable to pay the cost and expense of their relief and maintenance.

LXXXV. The commissioners may require trustees of rates on property for the relief of the poor, to produce true and detailed accounts in writing; which accounts, or a copy, shall be open for the inspection of the owners of property and rate payers.

LXXXVI. Advertisements in the gazette and local newspapers are not liable to stamp duty. LXXXVII. Bonds and securities made pursuant to the act 22 Geo. III. c. 83, and assignments thereof, are exempted from stamp duty.

LXXXVIII. All letters to and from the board of commissioners to be free of postage, if marked on the corners with the words, " Office of poor law commissioners pursuant to act of parliament, passed in the fifth year of the reign of his majesty king William the fourth." Letters transmitted under these covers, which do not relate solely to the business of this act, to be transmitted to the post office to be charged with postage.

LXXXIX. All payments, charges, and allowances, made by the overseers or guardians contrary to the provisions of this act, or at variance with any of its rules, orders, or regulations, shall be illegal.

XC. A summons left at the usual or last known place of abode shall be sufficient.

XCI. Repeals so much of the act & Geo. IV. c. 80, as relates to the prohibition of spirituous liquors in workhouses.

XCII. Persons introducing spirituous liquors into workhouses are liable to a penalty not exceeding ten pounds.

XCIII. Masters of work houses allowing the use of spirituous liquors, inflicting corporeal punishment, or otherwise ill using any adult person, or guilty of any other misbehaviour or misconduct themselves towards any poor person in the workhouse, on conviction, shall pay any sum not exceeding twenty pounds, as the justices shall direct. And justices may order salaries, &c., to be stopped till such penalties are paid.

XCIV. The two preceding clauses are to be hung up in a conspicuous place in each workhouse, and renewed when soiled.

XCV. Overseers or their assistants disobeying guardians are liable to a penalty not exceeding five pounds.

XCVI. No overseer, &c., shall be liable to any penalty or prosecution for disobeying illegal orders.

XCVII. Overseers, &c., purloining, embezzling, wilfully wasting, or misapplying, any of the monies, goods, or chattels, belonging to any parish or union, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds, and forfeit treble the amount so embezzled, &c.

XCVIII. Every person wilfully disobeying the rules, orders, and regulations, or are guilty of contempt of the board of commissioners, shall forfeit and pay a sum not exceeding five pounds for the first offence, any sum not exceeding twenty nor less than five pounds for the second offence, and for the third and every subsequent offence he shall be indicted for a misdemeanour, and, on conviction, pay not less than twenty pounds, and suffer imprisonment with or without hard labour

XCIX. All fines and forfeitures are leviable by distress and sale, and when recovered shall be applied for the use of the parish or union where the offences were committed. C. Owners and rate payers are declared to be competent witnesses in proceedings for the recovery of penalties, &c.

CI. Justices may in all cases proceed by summons for the recovery of penalties.

CII. Want of form in the proceedings shall not be deemed unlawful in recovering damages by distress, nor shall the party distraining be deemed a trespasser ab initio on account of any irregularity which shall happen in making the distress; but the person aggrieved may recover full satisfaction in an action on the case. But no plaintiff shall recover for irregu larity, if tender of amends be made.

CIII. Aggrieved parties may appeal to the quarter sessions against any order or conviction of parties, within four calendar months after cause of complaint.

CIV. No action or suit shall be commenced against any commissioner, &c., until twentyone days' notice has been given in writing to the party to be prosecuted. In such action, the defendant may plead the general issue.

[ocr errors]

CV. The commissioners' rules, &c., may be removed by certiorari to the court of King's Bench, but they shall continue in force until they are declared to be illegal.

CVI. Notice, in writing, must be left at the office of the commissioners, ten days before application be made for a writ of certiorari.

CVII. Previous to issuing a writ of certiorari, the parties applying for it must enter into recognizance with sufficient sureties in the sum of fifty pounds. If the rule, &c., be declared legal, the commissioners shall be entitled to costs.

CVIII. If rules are quashed, the same shall be notified to parishes or unions to which such rules have been directed.

[ocr errors]

CIX. This clause relates to the interpretation of the words: "auditor," "general rule," "guardian," "justice or justices of the peace," "oath," "orders and regulations," "officer," "overseer," "owner," "rack rent," "parish," "person,' ," "poor," " poor laws or "laws for the relief of the poor," "poor rate," "general quarter sessions," "union," "united workhouse," "vestry," "workhouse." In describing any person or party, matter or thing, whenever the word importing the singular number, or the masculine gender, only is used the same shall be understood to include, and shall be applied to several persons or parties, and females as well as males, and several matters or things, respectively, unless there be something in the subject or context repugnant to such construction.

CX. Provides for the alteration, amendment, or repeal, of this act in the session wherein it was made.

TITHES.

On this subject we will be extremely brief. From the beginning of the world, God himself consecrated a seventh of our time, for the purposes of rest and worship. For the support of his worship, it was also necessary to consecrate a portion of our worldly substance. In the first act of public worship which we find recorded in holy scripture, Cain and Abel each brought a portion of their wealth, as an offering to GOD. Our time is uniformly the same in all nations and climates, and therefore the law which claims a seventh is clearly laid down: Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day. But our substance varies, according to the circumstances of time and place, of wealth and ability, of soil and climate, of manners and customs; and all these, again, are subject to innumerable changes and revolutions. All these circumstances cause a vast variety in proportioning the part to be separated to the support of God's worship; and therefore God, of his infinite mercy and goodness, charged mankind with the general duty only of setting apart for his worship such a proportion of our substance as may be sufficient for its support. Abraham, on his return from the conquest of the four kings, paid a tithe of all that he had to Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High God. When Jacob avouched the Lord Jehovah to be his God at Bethel, he bound himself to pay tithes : "And this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house, and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee;" which shows that the worship of God, and the payment of tithes for the support of that worship, invariably went together. Under the law, tithes were part of the offerings unto the Lord, and they are called his inheritance: "But the tithes of the children of Israel, which they offer as an heave-offering unto the Lord, I have given to the Levites to inherit; therefore I have said unto them, among the children of Israel they shall have no inheritance."+ "The priests, the Levites, and all the tribe of Levi, shall have no part nor inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the offerings (tithes) of the Lord made by fire, and his inheritance."‡ Among the heathen, the same thing was done for the support of their idol worshippers. Mr Selden, a great lawyer in the time of Oliver Cromwell, and a decided enemy of the church, shows that the Syrians, Phenicians, Arabians, Ethiopians, Greeks, Romans, and almost all other nations, paid tithes and offerings to the priests of their false deities. This knowledge they could only have acquired by traditionary accounts, floating down the stream of time, from the first institution of revealed religion in our great

Gen. xxviii. 22.

Num. xviii. 24.

Deut xviii. 1.

ancestor. And therefore we must conclude, that the payment of some portion of our substance was appointed of God. Whatever we possess is his gift. God reserved the tenth of our substance as a tribute to himself, and an acknowledgment of his sovereignty and dominion. The payment of tithes is part of the worship of God, and as we cannot pay them immediately to God, he has ordained that we shall pay them mediately to his ministers, who are his ambassadors and earthly representatives. As before mentioned, he has reserved a seventh of our time, that is Sunday, for his worship, and a portion of our substance for the maintenance of those who "serve at the altar." And therefore God called the tithes, which the eleven tribes paid to the tribe of Levi, HIS INHERITANCE. The tribe of Levi had no other inheritance or property whatever but the tithes. When the Jews began to murmur against the payment of tithes, and to withhold them, he sent the prophet Malachi to tell them that they had robbed him: "Will a man rob God? yet ye have robbed me. Ye say, wherein have ye robbed me? IN TITHES AND OFFERINGS. Ye are accursed with a

curse, for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation."*

In the times of the apostles, and during the first ages of christianity, many that were possessors of lands and houses sold them, and laid the price at the apostles' feet. And to the end of the fourth century, the devotion of the people was so great that their offerings and oblations considerably exceeded what the tenth would have been, had they paid a regular tithe. The general duty of providing a maintenance for the christian ministry, is most strictly enjoined in the New Testament. When Christ sent forth his apostles and disciples to preach the gospel, he commanded them to take "no money in their purses, nor scrip," that is, provision, "neither two coats, nor shoes, nor yet staves, for the workman is worthy of his meat." And to these repeated commands of our Saviour, St Paul adds both reasoning and command. "For it is written in the law of

Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? or saith he it altogether for our (the ministry's) sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written; that he that ploweth should plow in hope, and that he that thrasheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we (the ministers) shall reap your carnal things? If others (the heathen priests) be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Do ye not know, that they which minister about holy things, live of the things of the temple, and they that wait at the altar are partakers with the altar? Even so hath the Lord ordained, that they which preach the gospel, should live of the gospel." In these commands, tithes are not

M.l. iii. 8, 9.

f Matt. x. 10.

1 Cor. ix. 9--14.

mentioned; only the general duty of maintaining the ministers of religion. The evangelical or gospel ministry is after the order of Melchizedek. They claim tithes, or a maintenance in some shape, as their right, and as being due to that order which is a superior and a more exalted priesthood than that of Levi. Our Saviour was of the tribe of Judah, and therefore did not belong to the order of the Levitical priesthood. Of Judah," Moses spake nothing concerning the priesthood."* But Christ was a priest after the order of Melchizedek, to whom faithful Abraham paid tithes long before Levi was born. "And as I may so say, Levi also, who received tithes, payed tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him." The ministers of the gospel have therefore a divine right to a maintenance. To the Jews a tenth part was set apart by God himself, as his inheritance, and therefore the Jewish church possessed tithes by divine right. The christian ministry have an equally divine right to a sufficient maintenance to support them in such a manner as may best operate to the glory of God and the salvation of men. Although a tenth is not specified in the New Testament, yet, as the christian church followed the Jewish in its order, all christian nations have followed it also in appropriating a tenth of the produce of the soil as God's inheritance. But it does not signify what name we give it, or in what shape we pay it, it still remains God's inheritance. It is all one whether it is a tithe taken in kind, or a stipend paid in money, or an offering at the church doors, or in seat rents. In all these cases the object is the same-the glory of God and the salvation of men. We are thereby paying tribute to God," according as we are disposed in our heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver."

Mr Selden himself acknowledges, "that before the end of the fourth century, it became the usual phrase, to offer tithes, because they were paid in the offerings of the faithful, who thought themselves obliged, in the making of these offerings, to give every year unto the churches of which they were members, tithes, or greater parts, of their annual increase, for the support of God's worship in them." Before the end of the fifth century, the only obligation on the people to maintain their offerings were the admonitions of conscience. After the inroads of the barbarians on the Roman empire, this part of the worship of God was much neglected. And therefore synods and general councils resorted to the spiritual sword to enforce the payment. In the year 585, the council of Alascon made a solemn decree, enjoining the whole kingdom of France "to pay the tithes of their fruits to holy places, under the anathema, that "if any one shall be contumacious to these our most wholesome orders, let him be for ever

*Heb. vii. 14.

Heb. vii. 9, 10.

t Hist. of Tithes, c. 5.

« AnteriorContinuar »