chafing lands in fome remote and cheap part of the kingdom, and there planting those people as a colony, the whole end was utterly defeated..

A third is the infurance-office against fire, by which feveral thoufand pounds are yearly remitted to England (a trifle it feems we can easily fpare), and will gradually encrease until it comes to a good national tax. For the fociety-marks upon our houses (under which might properly be written, The Lord have mercy upon us) fpread fafter and farther than the * colony of frogs. I have, for above twenty years past, given warning feveral thousand times, to

* This fimilitude, which is certainly the fineft that could poffibly have been ufed upon this occafion, feems to require a fhort explication. About the beginning of this current cen tury, Doctor Gwythers, a physician and Fellow of the University of Dublin, brought over with him a parcel of frogs from England to Ireland, in order to propagate the fpecies in that kingdom, and threw them into the ditches of the Univerfity-park; but they all perished. Whereupon he sent to England for fome bottles of the frog-fpawn, which he threw into thofe ditches, by which means the fpecies of frogs was propagated in that kingdom. However, their number was fo fmall in the year 1720, that a frog was no where to be fen in Ireland, except in the neighbourhood of the Universitypark: But, within fix or seven years after, they spread thirty, forty, and fifty miles over the country; and fo at laft, by degrees, over the whole nation.

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many

many fubftantial people, and to fuch who are acquainted with Lords and Squires, and the like great folks, (to any of whom I have not the honour to be known:) I mentioned my daily fears, left our watchful friends in England might take this bufinefs out of our hands; and how easy it would be to prevent that evil, by erecting a fociety of perfons who had good estates, fuch, for inftance, as that noble knot of bankers under the ftyle of Swift and Company. But now we are become tributary to England, not only for materials to light our own fires; but for engines to put them out; to which, if hearth-money be added, (repealed in England as a grievance) we have the honour to pay three taxes for fire.

A fourth was the knavery of those merchants, or linen-manufacturers, or both; when, upon occafion of the plague at Marfeilles, we had a fair opportunity of getting into our hands the whole linen-trade with Spain; but the commodity was fo bad, and held at fo high a rate, that almoft the whole cargo was returned, and the small remainder fold below the prime cost.

So

So many other particulars of the fame nature crowd into my thoughts, that I am forced to ftop, and the rather because they are not very proper for my fubject, to which I fhall now return.

Among all the schemes for maintaining the poor of the city, and fetting them to work, the least weight hath been laid upon that fingle point, which is of greatest importance; I mean that of keeping foreign beggars from fwarming hither out of every part of the country; for, until this be brought to pass effectually, all our wife reasonings and proceedings upon them will be vain and ridiculous.

The prodigious number of beggars throughout this kingdom, in proportion to fo fmall a number of people, is owing to many reasons: To the lazinefs of the natives; the want of work to employ them; the enormous rents paid by cottagers for their miserable cabbins and potatoeplots; their early marriages, without the leaft profpect of establishment; the ruin of agriculture, whereby fuch vast numbers are hindred from providing their own bread, and have no money to purchase it; the mortal damp upon all kinds of trade,

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and many other circumstances too tedious or invidious to mention.

And to the fame caufes we owe the perpetual concourfe of foreign beggars to this town, the country landlords giving all affiftance, except money and victuals, to drive from their cftates thofe miferable creatures they have undone.

It was a general complaint against the poor-house, under its former governors, that the number of poor in this city did not leffen by taking three hundred into the house, and all of them recommended under the minifter and church-warden's hands of the feveral parifhes; and this complaint muft ftill continue, although the poor-house should be enlarged to maintain three thousand, or even double that number.

The revenues of the poor-house, as it is now established, amount to about two thousand pounds a year; whereof, two hundred allowed for officers, and one hundred for repairs, the remaining seventeen hundred, at four pounds a head, will support four hundred and twenty-five perfons. This is a favourable allowance, confidering that I fubtract nothing for the diet of thofe officers, and for wear and tare of furniture;

niture; and, if every one of these collegiates fhould be fet to work, it is agreed they will not be able to gain by their labour above one fourth part of their main

tenance.

At the fame time the oratorial part of thefe gentlemen feldom vouchsafe to mention fewer than fifteen hundred, or two thousand people, to be maintained in this hofpital, without troubling their heads about the fund,

*