three times the
number, have been the great cause of rendering so good a design not only
useless, but a grievance instead of a benefit to the city. In the
present commission all the city clergy are included, besides a great
number of 'squires, not only those who reside in Dublin, and the
neighbourhood, but several who live at a great distance, and cannot
possibly have the least concern for the advantage of the city.

At the few general meetings that I have attended since the new
Establishment, I observed very little was done, except one or two Acts
of extreme justice, which I then thought might as well have been
spared: and I have found the Court of Assistants usually taken up in
little brangles about coachmen, or adjusting accounts of meal and small
beer; which, however necessary, might sometimes have given place to
matters of much greater moment, I mean some schemes recommended to the
General Board, for answering the chief ends in erecting and establishing
such a poor-house, and endowing it with so considerable a revenue: and
the principal end I take to have been that of maintaining the poor and
orphans of the city, where the parishes are not able to do it; and
clearing the streets from all strollers, foreigners, and sturdy beggars,
with which, to the universal complaint and admiration, Dublin is more
infested since the Establishment of the poor-house, than it was ever
known to be since its first erection.

As the whole fund for supporting this hospital is raised only from the
inhabitants of the city, so there can be hardly any thing more absurd,
than to see it mis-employed in maintaining foreign beggars and bastards,
or orphans, whose country landlords never contributed one shilling
towards their support. I would engage, that half this revenue, if
employed with common care, and no very great degree of common honesty,
would maintain all the real objects of charity in this city, except a
small number of original poor in every parish, who might, without being
burthensome to the parishioners, find a tolerable support.

I have for some years past applied myself to several Lord Mayors, and to
the late Archbishop of Dublin[189], for a remedy to this evil of foreign
beggars; and they all appeared ready to receive a very plain proposal, I
mean, that of badging the original poor of every parish, who begged in
the streets;[190] that the said beggars should be confined to their own
parishes; that, they should wear their badge