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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 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 purposes 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

himself by living elsewhere."