l the other families from the
burthen of poor-rates.

The whole number of families in England, allotting five souls to each
family, is one million four hundred thousand, of which I take one third,
_viz_. 466,666 to be poor families who now pay four millions of taxes,
and that the poorest pays at least four guineas a year; and that the
other thirteen millions are paid by the other two-thirds. The plan,
therefore, as stated in the work, is, first, to remit or repay, as is
already stated, this sum of four millions to the poor, because it is
impossible to separate them from the others in the present mode of
collecting taxes on articles of consumption; and, secondly, to abolish
the poor-rates, the house and window-light tax, and to change the
commutation tax into a progressive tax on large estates, the particulars
of all which are set forth in the work, to which I desire Mr. Adam to
refer for particulars. I shall here content myself with saying, that to
a town of the population of Manchester, it will make a difference in its
favour, compared with the present state of things, of upwards of fifty
thousand pounds annually, and so in proportion to all other places
throughout the nation. This certainly is of more consequence than that
the same sums should be collected to be afterwards spent by riotous
and profligate courtiers, and in nightly revels at the Star and Garter
tavern, Pall Mall.

I will conclude this part of my letter with an extract from the Second
Part of the _Rights of Man_, which Mr. Dundas (a man rolling in luxury
at the expence of the nation) has branded with the epithet of "wicked."

"By the operation of this plan, the poor laws, those instruments
of civil torture, will be superseded, and the wasteful ex-pence of
litigation prevented. The hearts of the humane will not be shocked by
ragged and hungry children, and persons of seventy and eighty years of
age begging for bread. The dying poor will not be dragged from place to
place to breathe their last, as a reprisal of parish upon parish. Widows
will have a maintenance for their children, and not be carted away, on
the death of their husbands, like culprits and criminals; and children
will no longer be considered as increasing the distresses of their
parents. The haunts of the wretched will be known, because it will be
to their advantage; and the number of petty crimes, the offspring of
poverty and distress, will be lessened. The poor as well as the rich
will t