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 observation 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 proposes to leave.

“There is somewhat of hardship in this matter of certificates,” says the same very intelligent author in his History of the Poor Laws, “by putting it in the power of a parish officer to imprison 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 to himself by living elsewhere.”