Perhaps it may be a wise measure, in a place like Birmingham, where the manufactures flourish in continual sunshine, not to be over strict with regard to removals. Though it may be burdensome to support the poor of another parish, yet perhaps it is the least of two evils: to remove old age which hath spent a life among us, is ungenerous; to remove temporary sickness, is injurious to trade; and to remove infancy is impolitic, being upon the verge of accommodating the town with a life of labour. It may be more prudent to remove a rascal than a pauper. Forty pounds hath been spent in removing a family, which would not otherwise have cost forty shillings, and whose future industry might have added many times that sum to the common capital. The highest pitch of charity, is that of directing inability to support itself. Idleness suits no part of a people, neither does it find a place here; every individual ought to contribute to the general benefit, by his head or his hands: if he is arrived at the western verge of life, when the powers of usefulness decline, let him repose upon his fortune; if no such thing exists, let him rest upon his friends, and if this prop fail, let the public nurse him, with a tenderness becoming humanity. We may observe, that the manufactures, the laborious part of mankind, the poor's rates, and the number of paupers, will everlastingly go hand in hand; they will increase and decrease together; we cannot annihilate one, but the others will follow, and odd as the expression may sound, we become rich by payment and poverty. If we discharge the poor, who shall act the laborious part? Stop the going out of one shilling, and it will prevent the coming in of two. At the introduction of the poor's laws, under Elizabeth, two pence halfpenny in the pound rent was collected every fortnight, for future support: time has made an alteration in the system, which is now six-pence in the pound, and collected as often as found necessary. The present levy amounts to above 10,000_l_. per ann. but is not wholly collected. As the overseers are generally people of property, payment in advance is not scrupulously observed. It was customary, at the beginning of this admirable system of jurisprudence, to constitute two overseers in each parish; but the magnitude of Birmingham pleaded for four, which continued 'till the year 1720, when a fifth was established: in 1729 they were augmented to half a dozen; the wishes of some, who are frighted at office, rise to the word _dozen_, a number very familiar in the Birmingham art of reckoning: but let it be remembered, that a vestry filled with overseers is not calculated for the meridian of business; that the larger the body, the slower the motion; and that the time and the necessities of the poor demand dispatch.