Volume 1

The statutes in force relating to the poor laws : to Boards of Guardians, district school and asylum managers, overseers, and the Local Government Board, from 43 Eliz. c.2, to 35 & 36 Vict, c.93, together with digests of the decisions of the courts upon each statute / by William Cunningham Glen.

  • Glen, W. Cunningham (William Cunningham), 1814-1892.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The statutes in force relating to the poor laws : to Boards of Guardians, district school and asylum managers, overseers, and the Local Government Board, from 43 Eliz. c.2, to 35 & 36 Vict, c.93, together with digests of the decisions of the courts upon each statute / by William Cunningham Glen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be liable to as many misconstruetions as the former have already gone through/^ Moreover, history belies itself when a Statute of Queen Elizabeth becomes, by repeal and re-enactment, a Statute of Queen Victoria. Mr. Eoley^s work, published in 1739, collected together all the Laws relating to the Poor, from 43 Eliz., when they first commence, to the time of its publication, and explained those Laws with the Cases adjudged upon them. The present work follows the same excellent plan. The Cases are, as in Mr. Eolcy^s work, interspersed and follow the very clauses of each Statute from which they derive their force and efficacy,—and, as in his work, from a view of the progress of the several Acts of Parliament, the reader secs, in an historical light, tlie particular incon- venience each was intended to guard against. In the Cases or decisions that follow he secs the artifice of evasion, and traces the windings and doubles of human reason.^^ Without laboiious study no one can affect, merely from perusing an Act of Parliament, to have a complete know- ledge of the law that it deals with. Such a person would be in the possession of an instrument, useful, it is true, in the hands of one skilled in the art to which it is adapted, and who is familiar with all other necessary instruments of his art, but it would be useless to another ignorant of or unskilled in the same art. I have not found it always easy to determine what parts of Statutes should be retained and what rejected, with reference to the object of this work;—no doubt opinions will differ as to how far a particular enactment bears directly on Poor Laws. In determining what shall be retained and what shall be rejected, I have been guided by my own experience of what is required for practical use, and those who also have had practical experience of Poor Law administration, will no doubt be able to discriminate where I may have erred in prolixity, and where I have judi- ciously retained enactments which others may think ought to have been omitted. Suffice it to say, that the present Edition contains, wholly or in part, 377 Statutes bearing directly on Poor Laws, or which are necessary to be known in connection with Poor Law administration, or by Poor Law administrators.