5_s._ 6_d._ per
week, rent exclusive; and his remuneration consisted in the difference
between their cost and that pitiful allowance. The cries of the poor
at length forced their way to the ears of the opulent, the contractor
was turned out, and it was then humanely determined that the
overseers, aided by a master and matron, should in future superintend
the workhouse as trustees for the parish.

I understood that they had hitherto performed this duty with great
attention and humanity, giving meat-dinners four days in the week, and
soup-dinners on the other days, the cost proving about 6_s._ 9_d._ per
head, on the one hundred poor in the house, of whom forty were
children. In the petty labours with which the aged, crippled, and
infant poor are too often harassed in these receptacles, they had, as
yet, made no essays. The stipends out of the house amounted, I
learned, to nearly as much as the cost within, or to about 30_l._ per
week, which, at 2_s._ 6_d._ per head, assists two hundred and forty
objects, making a total charge on the parish of from 3 to 4000_l._ per
annum.

How many parishes in the metropolis still, however, persist in the
negligent practice of farming their wretched poor at only 4_s._ or
even 3_s._ 6_d._ per week! And how few of the opulent, idle, and
well-intentioned of the parishioners, concern themselves about their
condition or sufferings! When the overseer calls for the rates, they
perhaps complain so heavily of the amount, that he fears to increase
the allowance, however sensible he may be of its necessity; or,
perhaps, when accosted by a beggar in the street, they excuse
themselves by quoting their large contributions to the rates, and
refer the despairing wretch to the workhouse! How incumbent then to
see what that workhouse is!--Whether its arrangements are not more
fitted for dogs or pigs, than for rational and heart-broken
fellow-creatures, however unequal in fortune, or however differing
even in virtue! Let us then neither wonder nor complain, that our
streets or highways are filled with objects of misery, preferring the
cold ground, the unsparing storm, and the inclemency of seasons, to
the provisions legally provided for them; if we have not had the
industry to ascertain, the courage to reform, and the benevolence to
improve, the condition of their parochial asylums!

The reader of sensibility will not, I trust, complain of the length of
details on an object which interests every son and