to
make up a tolerable assembly without a majority of them. But what I have
already said, is, I hope, sufficient to justify the ensuing project,
which I shall therefore give some account of without any further
preface.

1. It is humbly proposed, that a proper receptacle or habitation be
forthwith erected for all such persons as, upon due trial and
examination, shall appear to be out of their wits.

2. That to serve the present exigency, the College in
Moorfields[50] be very much extended at both ends; and that it be
converted into a square, by adding three other sides to it.

3. That nobody be admitted into these three additional sides, but
such whose frenzy can lay no claim to an apartment in that row of
building which is already erected.

4. That the architect, physician, apothecary, surgeon, keepers,
nurses, and porters, be all and each of them cracked, provided that
their frenzy does not lie in the profession or employment to which
they shall severally and respectively be assigned.

N.B. It is thought fit to give the foregoing notice, that none may
present himself here for any post of honour or profit who is not
duly qualified.

5. That over all the gates of the additional buildings, there be
figures placed in the same manner as over the entrance of the
edifice already erected;[51] provided, they represent such
distractions only as are proper for those additional buildings; as,
of an envious man gnawing his own flesh, a gamester pulling himself
by the ears, and knocking his head against a marble pillar, a
covetous man warming himself over a heap of gold, a coward flying
from his own shadow, and the like.

Having laid down this general scheme of my design, I do hereby invite
all persons who are willing to encourage so public-spirited a project,
to bring in their contributions as soon as possible, and to apprehend
forthwith any politician whom they shall catch raving in a coffee-house,
or any freethinker whom they shall find publishing his deliriums, or any
other person who shall give the like manifest signs of a crazed
imagination; and I do at the same time give this public notice to all
the madmen about this great city, that they may return to their senses
with all imaginable expedition, lest if they should come into my hands,
I should put them into a regimen which they would not like; for