e honour to be known: I
mentioned my daily fears, lest our watchful friends in England might
take this business out of our hands; and how easy it would be to prevent
that evil, by erecting a society of persons who had good estates, such,
for instance, as that noble knot of bankers, under the style 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which, if hearth-money be added, (repealed in England as a grievance,)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 occasion of the plague at Marseilles, we had a fair
opportunity of getting into our hands the whole linen-trade of Spain;
but the commodity was so bad, and held at so high a rate, that almost
the whole cargo was returned, and the small remainder sold below the
prime cost.

So many other particulars of the same nature crowd into my thoughts,
that I am forced to stop; and the rather because they are not very
proper for my subject, to which I shall now return.

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

The prodigious number of beggars throughout this kingdom, in proportion
to so small a number of people, is owing to many reasons: to the
laziness of the natives; the want of work to employ them; the enormous
rents paid by cottagers for their miserable cabins and potatoe-plots;
their early marriages, without the least prospect of establishment; the
ruin of agriculture, whereby such vast numbers are hindered from
providing their own bread, and have no money to purchase it; the mortal
damp upon all kinds of trade, and many other circumstances, too tedious
or invidious to mention.

And to the same causes we owe the perpetual concourse of foreign beggars
to this town, the country landlords giving all assistance, except money
and victuals, to drive from their estates those miserable 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