11. Then poor-law unions were formed, and union workhouses built, in which the helpless poor might be better cared for, and vagrants and wanderers find a night's lodging. We have not a perfect plan yet, by any means. The difficulties of how to deal with the poor who, through no fault of their own, cannot help themselves, and how to deal with those who are lazy and will not work, are very great.
12. The work of the old vestries has now passed to the Parish Councils, the District Councils, and the County Councils. The work is important, and has much to do with the welfare of our towns and villages. We must not expect that these bodies can do everything at once, or that they will make no mistakes. If we know something of the past history of our towns and villages it will help us to form a right judgment concerning difficulties which have to be met in the present, and so to act that those who come after us may be able to go on building upon our work, that there may be nothing to undo, nothing to blame, but that future years may say of our times:
"They knew how to work, and they worked on right principles".
Summary.—In the course of centuries the government of most boroughs got into the hands of few people. This was altered early in the nineteenth century. Borough towns now choose a certain number of members, and the councils elect a mayor. The mayor is a magistrate; in the large towns of England trained lawyers are appointed magistrates to act in the police courts.
In country places much of the power of the manor court got into the hands of the vestry. The vestry made the rates required, and chose churchwardens, overseers, surveyors of highways, every year. In towns the inhabitants had to keep "watch and ward" in turn, till the police force was organized in the nineteenth century. Each parish looked after and provided for its own poor till early in the nineteenth century.
The work of the vestries is now done by Parish Councils, District Councils, and the County Councils.
[CHAPTER XLIX]
SOME CHANGES
1. There was not much alteration in the outward appearance of the villages and the "look" of the country round them for many centuries. Indeed even now many of the villages themselves are not greatly altered in their general arrangement. Down to the times of the Tudor kings the old land and manor customs had gone on since Saxon days, changing but very slowly. Many of the class which had been villeins in the Middle Ages had become yeomen; some had got lands of their own, and some land on the old manors, which they rented. But they did not alter very much the old way of treating the land, and it was only gradually that farmhouses sprang up away from the villages.
2. In some parts of the country these lonely farmhouses are more common than in others. There are, for instance, a good many in the Weald of Sussex which sprang up first as huts in forest clearings, and afterwards became houses with farm-buildings attached to them.
3. On the borders of great lonely heaths and commons we can often see very old and very small cottages, with walls of clay, or wood, or stone, according to the district in which they happen to be. Long ago some squatter built his little hut here, and out of pity, perhaps, or carelessness, the lord of the manor took no notice. There he remained, year after year, until custom allowed him to look upon it as his own; and in time it actually became his private property. Such squatters in lonely places were often looked upon more or less with fear by the timid folk living in the distant village. They did not care to do or say anything to upset the stranger, fearing for the safety of their sheep, cattle, and poultry. Many little holdings and small farms began in this way.