However, the situation of the inmates of an hospital, even of those which are the most liberal to their inmates, is by no means so enviable as from the above comparison it might seem to be. Frequently their residence is embittered by their being obliged to live together with rude, quarrelsome, mad, silly, and disgusting persons. Many embitter their own lives by a discontentedness, which may either be natural to them, or communicated by others. Many dislike the kind or the quantity of the work allotted to them, the restrictions with respect to the time of going out and returning home which are prescribed by the regulations of the house. Prisoners, in particular, consider the loss of their freedom as an intolerable burden. Besides this, too, the treatment is by no means in general and in _every_ poor-house so good as it is represented in the above comparison; hence it is not the case with all the poor received into a poor-house, that they have voluntarily sought admission there, or that they voluntarily and willingly remain in it; hence, too, the applications for admission to these houses are not everywhere equally pressing; hence the assertion that the existence of such houses increases the numbers of prodigals, idlers, and poor, cannot be taken as generally correct. At all events, the above comparison applies to the actual inmates of the hospital, rather than to those poor who are relieved only by money and commodities, or by finding them employment; for the relief which they receive in this manner is in most places dealt out with so scanty a measure, that their situation is little or not at all better than that of a healthy poor person, who maintains himself independently by the labour of his hands, without external assistance. The independent poor man always has the cheering consciousness of maintaining himself and his family by his own exertions, and of enjoying the respect of his fellow-citizens, which is always lost in a greater or less degree by the poor man who receives relief, to whom, in the eyes of the better classes, a kind of disgrace attaches, which must often fall on the idle, who is excluded from elections of the community, &c., restricted in marrying, &c. And the authors go on to express a belief that pauperism is diminishing, and that the number of paupers, which in 1820 amounted to 64,896, does not now exceed 50,000, or about 1-30th of the whole population. The preference which the government reporter appears to give to out-door relief is opposed to the preface to the rules of the Weinsburg House of Industry.