_Support and Employment of the Adult Poor._ [Sidenote: Relief of the able-bodied out-doors.] 75. With respect to the adult poor, it is enacted by our oldest laws, that such grown-up poor who would willingly work, but cannot find employment, _shall_, as far as possible, _have means found them by the magistrates_ to earn a livelihood by their labour; but that lazy idlers who are strong and healthy _shall be compelled to work_; and, according to a recent ordinance, the able-bodied who claim support from the public funds are bound to take any work for which they have adequate strength, whether it be public or private, which is assigned to them by the local overseers, receiving for it proportionate moderate wages. If they refuse to do the work assigned them, and cannot allege that they can earn something by other work, or produce some other excuse, the overseer is authorized to employ towards them means of compulsion. According to old laws, poor persons who still have a house and lands, or at least some little portions of land, and who have suffered by failure of the crops, frost, &c., or who cannot sow their lands, or are unable to dispose of them without great loss, but are still able to work, and have hopes of retrieving their losses in the harvest and autumn, shall be assisted by the communities, which, according as the case may be, shall lend to them from the public fund a sufficient sum, to be repaid as they may be able to do it in course of time, or shall at least give security for them. The laws also order that in public works which the communities have executed by daily labourers, able-bodied poor who have a claim to support from the public funds shall be employed in preference. In places where the hospitals have lands of their own, and farm them on their own account, poor persons are also employed in preference, at suitable wages. Not only in the year of scarcity, 1817, and subsequently, many adult poor have been employed at suitable wages on the public account in other hard work, such as forest labours, planting trees, cultivating waste lands, turf-digging, working in the quarries, lime-pits, or excavating for antiquities, pulling down old buildings, cutting down avenues of old trees, levelling ground, laying out new public walks or churchyards, draining marshes, cleaning common sewers and streets, working at bridges, roads, and canals, &c. 79. According to the ancient laws, the communities are bound to advance money on loan according to the ability of the poor fund, and to the circumstances of the persons, to poor mechanics who cannot begin or carry on their trade, without assistance, which sum they are to repay as they may be able to do in time. 81. But the indirect support of the poor by employment and loans has, however, its limits.