To this little known misery of the poor, who "starve and freeze and rot among themselves," was added the problem of streets swarming with beggars during the day, and with thieves at night. And the nation groaned under yet a third burden, that of the heavy taxes levied for the poor, by which says Fielding "as woeful experience hath taught us, neither the poor themselves nor the public are relieved." To attack such a three-headed monster as this was an adventure better fitted, it might seem, for that club which "Captain Hercules Vinegar" had wielded thirteen years before, when in the full tide of his strength, than for the pen of a man in shattered health, and already serving the public in the daily labours of a principal magistrate. But nothing could restrain the ardour of Fielding's spirit, how frail so ever had become its containing 'crust of clay,' when great abuses and great misery made their call on his powers; or countervail against the hope, with which the _Introduction_ to his plan concludes. If that plan fails, he shall indeed, he declares have "lost much Time, and misemployed much Pains; and what is above all, shall miss the Pleasure of thinking that in the Decline of my Health and Life, I have conferred a great and lasting Benefit on my Country." The _Plan_ is that of the erection of a vast combined county workhouse, prison, and infirmary; where the unemployed should find, not only work but _skilled instruction_, the poor relief, and the sick a hospital; where discipline and good order should be stringently enforced; and where two chaplains should labour at that 'correction and amendment' of the mind which "in real truth religion is alone capable of effectually executing." The entire scheme is worked out with extraordinary detail, in fifty-nine clauses; and is preceded by an elaborate architectural plan of the proposed institution (which was to house no less than five thousand six hundred persons) with its workshops, its men's quarters rigorously divided from those for the women, its recreation ground, its provision shops, its cells for the refractory and for prisoners, and its whipping post. And the pamphlet concludes by lengthy arguments in favour of the various clauses; and by a personal protest concerning the disinterestedness of proposals which "some few enemies" might assert to show signs of a design for private profit. Fielding touchingly disavows any thought of occupying, officially, the great house raised by his imagination. To a man in his state of health such a project would, he says, be to fly in the face of the advice of his 'Master,' Horace; "it would be indeed _struere dotnos immemor sepulchri_." And, he adds, those who know him will hardly be so deceived "by that Chearfulness which was always natural to me; and which, I thank God, my Conscience doth not reprove me for, to imagine that I am not sensible of my declining Constitution." The concluding words of this,