Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/269

Rh sewed and fastened on the right and left shoulder of the outward garment of each of the said poor, by which they might be distinguished. And that none of the said poor should go out of their own parish to beg alms; whereof the beadles were to take care.

His grace the lord archbishop did accordingly give his directions to the clergy; which, however, have proved wholly ineffectual, by the fraud, perverseness, or pride, of the said poor; several of them openly protesting, "they will never submit to wear the said badges." And of those who received them, almost every one keep them in their pockets, or hang them in a string about their necks, or fasten them under their coats, not to be seen; by which means the whole design is eluded; so that a man may walk from one end of the town to the other, without seeing one beggar regularly badged, and in such great numbers, that they are a mighty nuisance to the publick, most of them being foreigners.

It is therefore proposed, that his grace the lord archbishop would please to call the clergy of the city together, and renew his directions and exhortations to them, to put the affair of badges effectually in practice, by such methods as his grace and they shall agree upon. And, I think, it would be highly necessary, that some paper should be pasted up, in several proper parts of the city, signifying this order, and exhorting all people to give no alms except to those poor who are regularly badged, and only while they are within the precincts of their own parishes. And if something like this were delivered by the ministers, in the reading-desk, two or three Lord's days successively, it would still be of farther use to put this Rh