xceeding fourteen years of age, nor under twelve, so great
a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve, for
want of work and service: and these to be disposed of by their parents
if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due
deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a patriot, I cannot
be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my American
acquaintance assured me from frequent experience, that their flesh was
generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys, by continual
exercise, and their taste disagreeable, and to fatten them would not
answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would, I think with humble
submission, be a loss to the public, because they soon would become
breeders themselves: And besides, it is not improbable that some
scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice, (although
indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon cruelty, which, I
confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any
project, however so well intended.

But in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this expedient was
put into his head by the famous Psalmanazar,[132] a native of the
island Formosa, who came from thence to London, above twenty years ago,
and in conversation told my friend, that in his country when any young
person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to
persons of quality, as a prime dainty, and that, in his time, the body
of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison
the emperor, was sold to his Imperial Majesty's Prime Minister of State,
and other great Mandarins of the Court, in joints from the gibbet, at
four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use
were made of several plump young girls in this town, who, without one
single groat to their fortunes, cannot stir abroad without a chair, and
appear at the playhouse, and assemblies in foreign fineries, which they
never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse.

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast
number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have
been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken, to ease the
nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain
upon that matter, because it is very well known, that they are every day
dying, and rotting, by cold, and famine, and filth, and vermin, as f