To say the truth, there is not a more undeserving vicious race of human kind than the bulk of those who are reduced to beggary, even in this beggarly country. For, as a great part of our publick miseries is originally owing to our own faults (but, what those faults are I am grown by experience too wary to mention) so I am confident, that among the meaner people, nineteen in twenty of those who are reduced to a starving condition, did not become so by what lawyers call the work of GOD, either upon their bodies or goods; but merely from their own idleness, attended with all manner of vices, particularly drunkenness, thievery, and cheating. Whoever enquires, as I have frequently done, from those who have asked me an alms; what was their former course of life, will find them to have been servants in good families, broken tradesmen, labourers, cottagers, and what they call decayed house-keepers; but (to use their own cant) reduced by losses and crosses, by which nothing can be understood but idleness and vice. As this is the only Christian country where people contrary to the old maxim, are the poverty and not the riches of the nation, so, the blessing of increase and multiply is by us converted into a curse; and, as marriage hath been ever countenanced in all free countries, so we should be less miserable if it were discouraged in ours, as far as can be consistent with Christianity. It is seldom known in England, that the labourer, the lower mechanick, the servant, or the cottager thinks of marrying until he hath saved up a stock of money sufficient to carry on his business; nor takes a wife without a suitable portion; and as seldom fails of making a yearly addition to that stock, with a view of providing for his children. But, in this kingdom, the case is directly contrary, where many thousand couples are yearly married, whose whole united fortunes, bating the rags on their backs, would not be sufficient to purchase a pint of butter-milk for their wedding supper, nor have any prospect of supporting their _honourable state_, but by service, or labour, or thievery. Nay, their _happiness_ is often deferred until they find credit to borrow, or cunning to steal a shilling to pay their Popish priest, or infamous couple-beggar. Surely no miraculous portion of wisdom would be required to find some kind of remedy against this destructive evil, or at least, not to draw the consequences of it upon our decaying city; the greatest part whereof must of course in a few years become desolate, or in ruins. In all other nations, that are not absolutely barbarous, parents think themselves bound by the law of nature and reason to make some provision for their children; but the reasons offered by the inhabitants of Ireland for marrying is, that they may have children to maintain them when they grow old and unable to work.