r, as to persons in
coaches and chairs, they bear but little of the persecution we suffer,
and are willing to leave it entirely upon us.

To say the truth, there is not a more undeserving vicious race of human
kind than the bulk of those who are reduced to beggary, even in this
beggarly country. For, as a great part of our publick miseries is
originally owing to our own faults (but, what those faults are I am
grown by experience too wary to mention) so I am confident, that among
the meaner people, nineteen in twenty of those who are reduced to a
starving condition, did not become so by what lawyers call the work of
GOD, either upon their bodies or goods; but merely from their
own idleness, attended with all manner of vices, particularly
drunkenness, thievery, and cheating.

Whoever enquires, as I have frequently done, from those who have asked
me an alms; what was their former course of life, will find them to have
been servants in good families, broken tradesmen, labourers, cottagers,
and what they call decayed house-keepers; but (to use their own cant)
reduced by losses and crosses, by which nothing can be understood but
idleness and vice.

As this is the only Christian country where people contrary to the old
maxim, are the poverty and not the riches of the nation, so, the
blessing of increase and multiply is by us converted into a curse; and,
as marriage hath been ever countenanced in all free countries, so we
should be less miserable if it were discouraged in ours, as far as can
be consistent with Christianity. It is seldom known in England, that the
labourer, the lower mechanick, the servant, or the cottager thinks of
marrying until he hath saved up a stock of money sufficient to carry on
his business; nor takes a wife without a suitable portion; and as seldom
fails of making a yearly addition to that stock, with a view of
providing for his children. But, in this kingdom, the case is directly
contrary, where many thousand couples are yearly married, whose whole
united fortunes, bating the rags on their backs, would not be sufficient
to purchase a pint of butter-milk for their wedding supper, nor have any
prospect of supporting their _honourable state_, but by service, or
labour, or thievery. Nay, their _happiness_ is often deferred until they
find credit to borrow, or cunning to steal a shilling to pay their
Popish priest, or infamous couple-beggar. Surely no miraculous portion
of wisdom would be required to fi