§ MR. BAXTERsaid, he rose to call attention to the large sum out of the assessment for the relief of the poor in Scotland spent annually in litigation; and to ask whether the Government will undertake to provide a remedy for so crying an evil? He believed that a sum of between £9,000 and £10,000 was annually spent in this litigation—an amount equivalent to the maintenance of 1,700 paupers, and he suggested that the whole jurisdiction should be given to the board of supervisors, or that questions in dispute should be summarily settled by the Sheriffs Courts.
THE LORD ADVOCATEsaid, that though no doubt a considerable amount of money was spent in Poor Law litigation in Scotland the amount was yet not so much as was spent in England, which was, indeed, about double in proportion. Still, that was no reason why the sum should not be diminished as much as possible. A great portion of the litigation 473 related to matters of settlement. He had always thought that the importance of these questions of settlement was quite overrated; and if one parish got rid of a pauper in one year, it might have to maintain ten in the next year on the very principle which it had succeeded in establishing. He consequently conceived that a shorter and more economical mode of determining these questions Should be adopted, and that questions arising in Scotch parishes, under the law of settlement, should be decided by the sheriff of the counties, but unfortunately it happened in most cases that the parish affected was beyond the jurisdiction of the sheriff. He had endeavoured to remedy the defect in the law by a clause inserted into the Sheriffs' Court Bill of 1853. It met, however, with so little encouragement at the hands of Scotch Members that it was withdrawn, but if a similar Bill would be more favourably received, he should not be unwilling to introduce one.