At the root of the domestic and social ruin which the old Poor-law was silently but surely spreading through our villages, lay the two principal factors of labour and public morals--the farmers paying low wages and the parish making up the difference according to the number of a man's family, and the lax way in which bastardy was dealt with by the parish. As to Royston, in 1831, when the Commissioners were appointed to inquire into the laws affecting the relief of the poor, there were fifty agricultural labourers in the town; wages nine or ten shillings a week without beer; the magistrates required an allowance to be made from the rates to make up earnings, according to the number in family, but, it is added, that "this system is objected to by this parish." "The desire to build the largest number of cottages upon the smallest space and with no ground attached was strongly condemned," but the seed had been sown and the harvest is still with us. Upon the subject of making up a labourer's pay out of the parish funds, and the labourer looking to the Overseer to pay him when he was not at work, a remarkable test case occurred in Royston, of which I transcribe the following particulars from the parish books-- "There is a difference of opinion existing between the parishioners of this parish and some very respectable and intelligent magistrates acting for this neighbourhood. The magistrates think it is within their jurisdiction (if they are convinced of its necessity) to order Overseers to pay money to able-bodied labourers in full employment by private individuals, in order to make up their earnings to a sum considered by the magistrates necessary for the support of their families." This the parishioners seemed inclined to resist, and it is added--"the parishioners consider that if the Overseer be ordered to make up the wages of one farmer's labourers, he may be ordered to go round the parish and make up the wages of every labourer. It would then be the {161} interest of every master to lower his wages and throw as much of them as possible on to the poor rates. The poor rates might thus be enormously increased and those ratepayers not employing labourers might be crushed."