Provided with a list of the names of the inhabitants, he called on the overseer of the parish and requested he would return it to him with the figures at which they were rated to the poor. Whereupon the irate overseer demanded to know if he came to disturb the harmony that existed among the parishioners in a parish where everything was properly conducted; they wanted no looking after, and therefore he should treat his request and the list accompanying it with the contempt they deserved by setting his pipe alight with the latter. Upon which Mr. Abrahams made no more requests to the courteous official, but possessed himself by other means of the amounts to which the inhabitants were assessed, and drew public attention to the matter by the publication of his pamphlet. It would have been well for parishes generally had they possessed a representative as energetic as this new parishioner of St. John’s, for the ignorance and dishonesty his pamphlet disclosed appears to have been pretty general. Six years later (1817) we find Sir Walter Scott writing to his friend Mr. Moratt, who had himself written a pamphlet on the subject, ‘Pray let me have your pamphlet on the poor-rates as soon as it is out. It is an Augean stable; it is the very canker in the bosom of the country, and no small claim will he have on the gratitude of England who can suggest a practical remedy.’ But the people of Hampstead, until they had tasted the fruits of Mr. Abrahams’ interference, thought otherwise. At that time they were paying from the inequalities of the rates 4s. 8d. in the pound poor rates, and 1s. 9d. in the pound for lighting, watching, and repairing the roads. In the happy days which preceded the appearance of this reformer, neither the parson, vestry clerk, nor beadle paid rates, and, as has elsewhere been said, the landlord of the Spaniards Inn enjoyed the same pleasant immunity. The Lady of the Manor (Lady Wilson) was rated at £100 for the Heath, to which the critical Abrahams objects that ‘when the rate was made, and till within the last few years, when _so great an impetus had been given to building_, sand, that now sold at 4s. 6d. a load, and gravel[305] at 6s. per load, had sold for 2s. 6d. and 4s. 6d.;’ he rated the Heath therefore at five times the sum, £500. Lord Erskine’s house, garden, pleasure-grounds, stables, coach-house, etc., were also rated at £100, and very few proprietors were rated higher.