ing is a necessary
one. This is to be admitted in the degree, but by no means without
limitation; for the facility creates the want, (even when it is a real
want) for it brings on improvidence and carelessness. The lower
classes come to consider their apparel as money, only that it requires
changing before it is quite current. {197}

If this matter were well looked into, together with the other causes
from which mendicity proceeds, which increases so rapidly, we
should

---
{196} In Scripture it is forbidden to pledge the upper or the nether
mill-stone. This is a proof, of very great antiquity, and indisputable
authority, of the care taken to prevent that sort of improvidence that
hurts the general interest of a people. It should be imitated in this
country with regard, to all portable implements of labour, such as
mill-stones were in those early times.

{197} In Scotland, twenty years ago, there were not so many
pawnbrokers as there are in Brentford, or any little village round
London. In Paris, as debauched a town as London, and where charity
was as little to be expected, there was only one lending company, the
profits of which, after dividing six per cent., went to the Foundling
Hospital. It was, as in London, a resource in cases of necessity, but
there was too much trouble to run it on every trifling occasion, as is
done in London, and, indeed, in most towns in England.
-=-

[end of page #251]

soon perceive a diminution of the poors' rates, and the wealthiest
country of Europe would not exhibit the greatest and most multiplied
scenes of misery and distress.

The numbers of children left in indigence, by their parents, would be
comparatively lower, and there would not be that waste in the
administration of the funds on which they are supported.

There is, probably, no means of greatly diminishing the number of
helpless poor, but by an encouragement to lay up in the hour of health
an abundance to supply the wants of feebleness and age, but this
might go a great way to diminishing the evil. All persons who have
places under government, of whatever nature, ought to be compelled
to subscribe to such institutions; this would be doing the individuals,
as well as the community, a real service, and would go a great way to
the counteracting of the evil. {198} Preventatives are first to be
applied, and after those have operated as far as may be, remedies.

The poor, &c. to whose maintenance 5,500,000 L. a year goe