I should be apt to think, that few things can be more irksome to a city minister, than a number of beggars which do not belong to his district, whom he hath no obligation to take care of, who are no part of his flock, and who take the bread out of the mouths of those, to whom it properly belongs. When I mention this abuse to any minister of a city-parish, he usually lays the fault upon the beadles, who he says are bribed by the foreign beggars; and, as those beadles often keep ale-houses, they find their account in such customers. This evil might easily be remedied, if the parishes would make some small addition to the salaries of a beadle, and be more careful in the choice of those officers. But, I conceive there is one effectual method, in the power of every minister to put in practice; I mean, by making it the interest of all his own original poor, to drive out intruders: for, if the parish-beggars were absolutely forbidden by the minister and church-officers, to suffer strollers to come into the parish, upon pain of themselves not being permitted to beg alms at the church-doors, or at the houses and shops of the inhabitants; they would prevent interlopers more effectually than twenty beadles. And, here I cannot but take notice of the great indiscretion in our city-shopkeepers, who suffer their doors to be daily besieged by crowds of beggars, (as the gates of a lord are by duns,) to the great disgust and vexation of many customers, whom I have frequently observed to go to other shops, rather than suffer such a persecution; which might easily be avoided, if no foreign beggars were allowed to infest them. Wherefore, I do assert, that the shopkeepers, who are the greatest complainers of this grievance, lamenting that for every customer, they are worried by fifty beggars, do very well deserve what they suffer, when a 'prentice with a horse-whip is able to lash every beggar from the shop, who is not of the parish, and does not wear the badge of that parish on his shoulder, well fastened and fairly visible; and if this practice were universal in every house to all the sturdy vagrants, we should in a few weeks clear the town of all mendicants, except those who have a proper title to our charity: as for the aged and infirm, it would be sufficient to give them nothing, and then they must starve or follow their brethren. It was the city that first endowed this hospital, and those who afterwards contributed, as they were such who generally inhabited here; so they intended what they gave to be for the use of the city's poor. The revenues which have since been raised by parliament, are wholly paid by the city, without the least charge upon any other part of the kingdom; and therefore nothing could more defeat the original design, than to misapply those revenues on strolling beggars, or bastards from the country, which bear no share in the charges we are at.