Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/220

192 of the noblemen who act as administrators, fill up the yearly deficiency.

The general hospital for the poor is a recent establishment, which is indebted for its origin to Don Diego De Guevara, an opulent merchant of Lima. He had long entertained a persuasion that the most effectual mode of exterminating an importunate mendicity, consisted in the erection of a general hospital, in which invalids and infirm persons having been collected, should be provided with food and lodging, employed in some easy mechanical labours to render them industrious, and assisted with spiritual exhortations to eradicate their vices, and stimulate them to the pursuits of virtue. Accordingly, in 1757, he presented a memorial to the viceroy, in which, with the most efficacious reasonings, and the greatest weight of authority, he exposed the necessities of the poor and their vices; together with the frauds which were committed on the real objects of charity by those who, being able to live by their labour, were led by their vicious inclinations to become mendicants. He proposed the plan of an hospital in which the necessitous poor should be assembled; and described the useful and moderate labours in which they might be employed, tendering to this efFe6l his person and his fortune. He pointed out at the same time several expedients calculated to defray the indispensable expences of the hospital.

A royal schedule, dated in November 1758, not only granted the license requisite to this establishment, but likewise charged the