age is
about one in sixteen or seventeen. If it be said that aged persons
do not come much into the streets, so neither do infants; and a great
proportion of grown children are in schools and in work-shops as
apprentices. Taking, then, sixteen for a divisor, the whole number of
persons in England of fifty years and upwards, of both sexes, rich and
poor, will be four hundred and twenty thousand.

The persons to be provided for out of this gross number will be
husbandmen, common labourers, journeymen of every trade and their wives,
sailors, and disbanded soldiers, worn out servants of both sexes, and
poor widows.

There will be also a considerable number of middling tradesmen,
who having lived decently in the former part of life, begin, as age
approaches, to lose their business, and at last fall to decay.

Besides these there will be constantly thrown off from the revolutions
of that wheel which no man can stop nor regulate, a number from every
class of life connected with commerce and adventure.

To provide for all those accidents, and whatever else may befall, I take
the number of persons who, at one time or other of their lives, after
fifty years of age, may feel it necessary or comfortable to be better
supported, than they can support themselves, and that not as a matter of
grace and favour, but of right, at one-third of the whole number, which
is one hundred and forty thousand, as stated in a previous page, and
for whom a distinct provision was proposed to be made. If there be more,
society, notwithstanding the show and pomposity of government, is in a
deplorable condition in England.

Of this one hundred and forty thousand, I take one half, seventy
thousand, to be of the age of fifty and under sixty, and the other half
to be sixty years and upwards. Having thus ascertained the probable
proportion of the number of aged persons, I proceed to the mode of
rendering their condition comfortable, which is:

To pay to every such person of the age of fifty years, and until he
shall arrive at the age of sixty, the sum of six pounds per annum out of
the surplus taxes, and ten pounds per annum during life after the age of
sixty. The expense of which will be,

Seventy thousand persons, at L6 per annum L 420,000
Seventy thousand persons, at L10 per annum 700,000
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L1,120,000

This support,