The annual expence of each pauper is calculated by the same Writer at about _Fifteen Guineas_; a stout healthy labourer in husbandry, with a wife and three children, earns only Thirty for the support of five persons. "The want of prudence is increased, and general industry lessened, on the part of the poor, by the facility with which voluntary contributions are raised during every temporary inconvenience, such as a few weeks' frost, or an extraordinary advance in the price of provisions.[22] And also by the constantly cloathing upwards of ten thousand children of the labouring Poor in this Country. [Footnote 22: This observation can only apply to such voluntary contributions as are liable to abuses, and where the poor are permitted to dispose of the benevolence of the opulent in their own way.--The _Soup-Charities_ established in different parts of the Metropolis are a peculiar exception, inasmuch as they contribute only to the relief of those that are really objects of distress, while no Public Charity heretofore instituted has been found to be liable to fewer abuses. In a great Metropolis like London, it has been clearly established, that in spite of every regard to prudence and oeconomy, decent families will be suddenly broke down, while the habits of life peculiar to the lower orders, and their want of the knowledge of frugal cookery have proved a source of much real calamity; for where nothing is laid up, every pressure arising from sickness, child-birth, or death throws many hundreds upon the Public, who have no legal parochial Settlement, and who but for some relief must absolutely perish;--While the Soup-Charities hold out immediate and constant relief to many families, who might otherwise perish with hunger;--while this species of relief may be said to be accessible to every indigent family in the Metropolis, no lure is held out to the idle or profligate. It cannot be disposed of, as bread, meat, and coals, for gin and other articles. There is therefore scarcely any risque of deception, more especially as the applicants pay down half the original cost on receiving it--Thus establishing the means of discrimination between _real_ and _pretended distress_. About 10,000 families, composed chiefly of persons who had not the means of obtaining sufficient food to support nature, consisting of 50,000 men, women, and children, were relieved by the daily distribution of Soups at _Spital-Fields_, _Clerkenwell_, _St. George's Fields_, and _Westminster_, during the last winter, at an expence to the Subscribers not exceeding One Guinea for every 504 meals of rich nourishing Soup, which those poor people received. But this is not the only advantage which attends these Institutions, since there is every reason to believe, that while the poor are thus frugally fed, they are taught by example, and by circulating among them printed friendly advices, what they never knew before--_The means of making a little go