notwithstanding the very laudable intention of those who subscribed to form the fund, and the yet more praiseworthy, because more difficult, exertions of those who superintend it, the issue of the scheme will occasion full as much mischief as good to the people engaged in it. Private gentlemen, acting on something like a similar system, may make it answer better, because they have not the lazy dross of a metropolis to contend with--because they have fewer hands to manage--and, above all, because an individual always manages his own concerns better than those of the country can be managed. Yet all who have employed those who were distressed for want of work at under wages, have had, less or more, similar complaints to make. I {p.167} think I have avoided this in my own case, by inviting the country people to do piece-work by the contract. Two things only are necessary--one is, that the nature of the work should be such as will admit of its being ascertained, when finished, to have been substantially executed. All sort of spade-work and hoe-work, with many other kinds of country labor, fall under this description, and the employer can hardly be cheated in the execution if he keeps a reasonable lookout. The other point is, to take care that the undertakers, in their anxiety for employment, do not take the job too cheap. A little acquaintance with country labor will enable one to regulate this; but it is an essential point, for if you do not keep them to their bargain, it is making a jest of the thing, and forfeiting the very advantage you have in view--that, namely, of inducing the laborer to bring his heart and spirit to his work. But this he will do where he has a fair bargain, which is to prove a good or bad one according to his own exertions. In this case you make the poor man his own friend, for the profits of his good conduct are all his own. It is astonishing how partial the people are to this species of contract, and how diligently they labor, acquiring or maintaining all the while those habits which render them honorable and useful members of society. I mention this to you, because the rich, much to their honor, do not, in general, require to be so much stimulated to benevolence, as to be directed in the most useful way to exert it. I have still a word to say about the poor of our own parish of Parnassus. I have been applied to by a very worthy friend, Mr. Scott of Sinton, in behalf of an unfortunate Mr. Gilmour, who, it seems, has expended a little fortune in printing, upon his own account, poems which, from the sample I saw, seem exactly to answer the description of Dean Swift's country house:--