1764 RICHARD BURN'S HISTORY OF THE POOR LAWS THE FIRST HISTORY OF THE POOR LAWS 047. BURN, Richard. The history of the Poor Laws: with observations. London: Printed by H. Woodfall and W. Strahan. 1764. [4],295,[1]p. Original blue boards, paper spine, uncut. An excellent copy in the original condition as issued. HIGGS 3291. GOLDSMITHS 10030 (Adam Smith's copy; Higgs notes that he quotes from it in Wealth of Nations.) KRESS 6160. MAXWELL AND MAXWELL, A Legal Bibliography, Section IV, Poor Law, 2i This important work is described by Beatrice and Sidney Webb as the "first history of the Poor Laws". In addition it contains the best summary of the pamphlet literature on the subject before Eden's The State of the Poor and is many times referred to by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in The Old Poor Law. Richard Burn (1709-1785), justice of the peace for the counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland. The History of the Poor Laws contains Burns's well-known account of the Overseer. "And this leads to the other great fundamental defect. . . in our present Poor Laws, and that is that the whole in a great measure (and indeed, in practice altogether) is left to the management of those annual officers called Overseers of the Poor.....In practice the office of an Overseer of the Poor seems to be understood to be this... to maintain their Poor as cheap as they possibly can...to hang over them in terrorem if they shall complain to the justices for want of maintenance...to pull down cottages; To drive out as many inhabitants, and admit as few as they possibly can...to depopulate the parish in order to lessen the Poor Rate. " Richard Burn History of the Poor Laws pp. 210- 211. Burn was no soft liberal but even he was appalled by practice, then common, of "Farming the Poor." "...the matter seemeth at length to have been carried too far; the Overseers in many places having found out a method of contracting with some obnoxious person, of savage disposition, for the maintenance of the poor; not with any intention of the poor being better provided for, but to hang over them in terrorem, if they will not be satisfied with the pittance which the Overseers think fit to allow them." ( Quoted from the article "Poor" in Burn's Justice of the Peace.) It was this system which convened the Workhouse into a "House of Terror."