The only other works of Fielding which precede the posthumously published _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_ are the _Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor_, etc., a pamphlet dedicated to the Right Honble. Henry Pelham, published in January 1753; and the _Clear State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning_, published in March. The former, which the hitherto unfriendly _Gentleman's_ patronisingly styles an "excellent piece," conceived in a manner which gives "a high idea of his [the author's] present temper, manners and ability," is an elaborate project for the erection, _inter alia_, of a vast building, of which a plan, "drawn by an Eminent Hand," was given, to be called the County- house, capable of containing 5000 inmates, and including work-rooms, prisons, an infirmary, and other features, the details of which are too minute to be repeated in these pages, even if they had received any attention from the Legislature, which they did not. The latter was Fielding's contribution to the extraordinary judicial puzzle, which agitated London in 1753-4. It is needless to do more than recall its outline. On the 29th of January 1753, one Elizabeth Canning, a domestic servant aged eighteen or thereabouts, and who had hitherto borne an excellent character, returned to her mother, having been missing from the house of her master, a carpenter in Aldermanbury, since the 1st of the same month. She was half starved and half clad, and alleged that she had been abducted, and confined during her absence in a house on the Hertford Road, from which she had just escaped. This house she afterwards identified as that of one Mother Wells, a person of very indifferent reputation. An ill-favoured old gipsy woman named Mary Squires was also declared by her to have been the main agent in ill- using and detaining her. The gipsy, it is true, averred that at the time of the occurrence she was a hundred and twenty miles away; but Canning persisted in her statement. Among other people before whom she came was Fielding, who examined her, as well as a young woman called Virtue Hall, who appeared subsequently as one of Canning's witnesses. Fielding seems to have been strongly impressed by her appearance and her story, and his pamphlet (which was contradicted in every particular by his adversary, John Hill) gives a curious and not very edifying picture of the magisterial procedure of the time. In February, Wells and Squires were tried; Squires was sentenced to death, and Wells to imprisonment and burning in the hand. Then, by the exertions of the Lord Mayor, Sir Crisp Gascoyne, who doubted the justice of the verdict, Squires was respited and pardoned. Forthwith London was split up into Egyptian and Canningite factions; a hailstorm of pamphlets set in; portraits and caricatures of the principal personages were in all the print shops; and, to use Churchill's words, "--_Betty Canning_ was at least, With _Gascoyne's_ help, a six months feast."