In that letter was suggested the expediency of causing all those deformed persons who infest the streets of Calcutta, in quest of eleemosynary aid, to be sent to some hospital, which should likewise accommodate such natives as might be injured by accidents within the city. The proposal was founded on the peremptory necessity for conducting all upon the cheapest plan; and contained a calculation of the expences incident to the construction of thatched ranges of huts, similar to barracks, to be erected on a piece of ground to be granted by government for that purpose. The whole expence, it appeared, would not have amounted to more than £1,500., or £2,000. yearly, yet full accommodation, and subsistence, would have been afforded for three hundred patients. The idea of permanence, which is usually supposed to carry with it cheapness, was, I understand, the plea for deviating from the proposed economical estimate: the consequence has been, that the number of patients is extremely limitted. That original expence will, in most countries, be found far cheaper than a flimsy beginning attended with constant demands for repair, cannot be doubted; but, where there is no capital, at least a very small one, it is absurd to act upon the former scale; since it must, of necessity, counteract the whole intention. Further, we should consider local circumstances: thus, in Calcutta, the same money that will cover in accommodations for a thousand persons, under a substantial thatch, laid over mud, or mat walls, adequate to the ordinary purposes of the inhabitants at large, and similar to at least ninety-nine in the hundred, of those habitations which shelter the bulk of the population; would not suffice to provide fifty, of the same description, with apartments formed of masonry, timber, &c., according to the scale on which Europeans build houses for their own residence, within that city. It is likewise a well-known fact, that, what is called a _puckah-house_, that is, one built of bricks, lime, and timber, will, at the end of ten years, cost as much in repairs, as the thatched edifices built for an equal number of inhabitants. This being the case, it will forcibly strike the reader, that, in departing from the original suggestion, the managers likewise departed from the best principle.