to house among the gentry and citizens, will, without being very
burthensome, be sufficient to keep them alive.

It is true, the poor of the suburb parishes will not have altogether the
same advantage, because they are not equally in the road of business and
passengers: but here it is to be considered, that the beggars there have
not so good a title to publick charity, because most of them are
strollers from the country, and compose a principal part of that great
nuisance, which we ought to remove.

I should be apt to think, that few things can be more irksome to a city
minister, than a number of beggars which do not belong to his district,
whom he hath no obligation to take care of, who are no part of his
flock, and who take the bread out of the mouths of those, to whom it
properly belongs. When I mention this abuse to any minister of a
city-parish, he usually lays the fault upon the beadles, who he says are
bribed by the foreign beggars; and, as those beadles often keep
ale-houses, they find their account in such customers. This evil might
easily be remedied, if the parishes would make some small addition to
the salaries of a beadle, and be more careful in the choice of those
officers. But, I conceive there is one effectual method, in the power of
every minister to put in practice; I mean, by making it the interest of
all his own original poor, to drive out intruders: for, if the
parish-beggars were absolutely forbidden by the minister and
church-officers, to suffer strollers to come into the parish, upon pain
of themselves not being permitted to beg alms at the church-doors, or at
the houses and shops of the inhabitants; they would prevent interlopers
more effectually than twenty beadles.

And, here I cannot but take notice of the great indiscretion in our
city-shopkeepers, who suffer their doors to be daily besieged by crowds
of beggars, (as the gates of a lord are by duns,) to the great disgust
and vexation of many customers, whom I have frequently observed to go to
other shops, rather than suffer such a persecution; which might easily
be avoided, if no foreign beggars were allowed to infest them.

Wherefore, I do assert, that the shopkeepers, who are the greatest
complainers of this grievance, lamenting that for every customer, they
are worried by fifty beggars, do very well deserve what they suffer,
when a 'prentice with a horse-whip is able to lash every beggar from the
shop, who is not of the parish, and doe