spot as
airy as the scheme; conduct a manufacture, and the poor; dispose of the
present workhouse; seize and confine idle or disorderly persons, and
keep them to labour, till they have reimbursed the parish all expences.

But it may be asked, Whether spending 15,000_l_. is likely to reduce the
levies?

Whether we shall be laughed at, for throwing by a building, the last
wing of which cost a thousand pounds, after using it only three years?

Our commerce is carried on by reciprocal obligation. Every overseer has
his friends, whom he cannot refuse to serve; nay, whom he may even wish
to serve, if that service costs him nothing: hence, that over-grown
monster so justly complains of, _The Weekly Tickets_; it follows,
whether _sixty_ guardians are not likely to have more friends to serve,
than six overseers?

Whether the trades of the town, by a considerable manufacture
established at the workhouse, will not be deprived of their most
useful hands?

Whether it is not a maxim of the wisest men who have filled the office,
"to endeavour to keep the poor _out_ of the house, for if they are
admitted, they become more chargeable; nor will they leave it without
clothing?"

A workhouse is a kind of prison, and a dreadful one to those of tender
feelings--Whether the health of an individual, the ideas of rectitude,
or the natural right of our species, would not be infringed by a cruel
imprisonment.

If a man has followed an occupation forty years, and necessity sends him
to the parish, whether is it preferable to teach him a new trade, or
suffer him to earn what he can at his old? If we decide for the latter,
whether he had better walk four hundred yards to business, or four
miles? His own infirmity will determine this question.

If a young widow be left with two children, shall she pay a girl
six-pence a week to tend them, while she earns five shillings at the
mops, and is allowed two by the parish, or shall all three reside in the
house, at the weekly expence of six, and she be employed in nursing
them? If we again declare for the latter, it follows, that the parish
will not only have four shillings a week, but the community may gain
half a crown by her labour.

Whether the morals of the children are more likely to be injured by the
shops, than the morals of half the children in town; many of whom labour
to procure levies for the workhouse?

Whether the morals of a child will be more corrupted in a small shop,
consisti