It is certain, that if the children are provided for, the parents are
relieved of consequence, because it is from the expense of bringing up
children that their poverty arises.

Having thus ascertained the greatest number that can be supposed to need
support on account of young families, I proceed to the mode of relief or
distribution, which is,

To pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family, out of the surplus
taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four pounds a year for every child
under fourteen years of age; enjoining the parents of such children to
send them to school, to learn reading, writing, and common arithmetic;
the ministers of every parish, of every denomination to certify jointly
to an office, for that purpose, that this duty is performed. The amount
of this expense will be,

For six hundred and thirty thousand children
at four pounds per annum each L2,520,000

By adopting this method, not only the poverty of the parents will be
relieved, but ignorance will be banished from the rising generation, and
the number of poor will hereafter become less, because their abilities,
by the aid of education, will be greater. Many a youth, with good
natural genius, who is apprenticed to a mechanical trade, such as
a carpenter, joiner, millwright, shipwright, blacksmith, etc., is
prevented getting forward the whole of his life from the want of a
little common education when a boy.

I now proceed to the case of the aged.

I divide age into two classes. First, the approach of age, beginning at
fifty. Secondly, old age commencing at sixty.

At fifty, though the mental faculties of man are in full vigour, and
his judgment better than at any preceding date, the bodily powers for
laborious life are on the decline. He cannot bear the same quantity of
fatigue as at an earlier period. He begins to earn less, and is
less capable of enduring wind and weather; and in those more retired
employments where much sight is required, he fails apace, and sees
himself, like an old horse, beginning to be turned adrift.

At sixty his labour ought to be over, at least from direct necessity.
It is painful to see old age working itself to death, in what are called
civilised countries, for daily bread.

To form some judgment of the number of those above fifty years of age,
I have several times counted the persons I met in the streets of London,
men, women, and children, and have generally found that the aver