. . .t provided that the then existing rents of the three estates, amounting to £54, should be applied to the apprenticing of poor boys, but that any further rents that might be obtained beyond that sum should be applied in aid of the parish rates until the expense incurred in erecting the workhouse should be discharged.  And accordingly they were so applied until Lady Day of 1816.  This, no doubt, was a perversion of the fund, because, although the workhouse was for the relief of the poor, still by law all the parishioners were rated for that purpose, the rich as well as the poor; and in proportion as anyone was relieved from the payment of rates, so was the money diverted from the poor intended to be objects of the bounty.  However, this distinction in 1777 escaped attention; but in the report of 1810, to which I have alluded, the point was strongly made, and since 1816 the whole income has been applied to its proper purpose.

As we have seen, in 1777 the total r. . . Read More