The following is a specimen of the attention given to this subject, and the means taken to enable the poor to pay for their maintenance, by their labour. In Middlesex, where the expense amounted, in 1803, to 123,700 L. or about 340 L. a day, the sum expended to buy materials amounted to no more than 4L.1s.11d. !!! It is impossible to comprehend how this capital stock could be distributed amongst above ten thousand labourers. It is not very easy to conceive the impertinence of those who presented this item, as a statement to the House of Commons, which would have done well to have committed to the custody of the sergeant-at-mace, the persons who so grossly insulted it. One thing, however, is very easily understood and collected from all this. The business altogether is conducted with ignorance, and executed carelessly and negligently, and that to an extreme and shameful degree. -=- [end of page #253] To have a good surgeon or physician is essential; and those who would not work, and who were able, should have the same allowance that a prisoner has in a jail; but those who would work should be paid a fair price, and allowed to lay out the money, to hoard it, or do as they please, except drinking to excess. [{200}] Though many for want of vigour are refused employment in a workshop, some for want of character, and others for various reasons, become burthensome, yet there are not a few, who, from mere laziness, throw themselves upon the parish, where they live a careless life, free from hunger, cold, and labour. When the mind is once reconciled to this situation, the temptation is considerable, and there are many of those poor people, who will boast that the have themselves been overseers, and paid their share to the expenses. Whatever evil is found to have a tendency to increase with the wealth of a nation ought, most carefully, to be kept under; and this is one not of the least formidable, and, of all others, most evidently arising from bad management and want of attention. It would be necessary to have all sorts of employment, that the persons in such places can, with advantage, be occupied in doing, and a small allowance should be made to defray general expenses; amongst which, ought to be that of surveyors of districts, who should, like those employed by the excise-office, inspect into the state of the different poor-houses, and the whole should be reported, in a proper and regular manner, to the government of the country, from time to time. Those little paltry parish democracies that tax one part of the people, and maltreat the other, ought to be under some proper con-