Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/301

Rh We hope it will be considered, that there are multitudes of necessitous heirs and penurious parents, persons in pinching circumstances with numerous families of children, wives that have lived long, many robust aged women with great jointures, elder brothers with bad understandings, single heirs of great estates, whereby the collateral line are for ever excluded, reversionary patents, and reversionary promises of preferments, leases upon single lives, and play-debts upon joint lives, and that the persons so aggrieved have no hope of being speedily relieved any other way, than by the dispensing of drugs and medicines in the manner they now are: burying alive being judged repugnant to the known laws of this kingdom.

That there are many of the deceased, who, by certain mechanical motions and powers, are carried about town, who would have been put into our hands long before this time, by any other well-ordered government: by want of a due police in this particular, our company have been great sufferers.

That frequent funerals connibute to preserve the genealogies of families, and the honours conferred by the crown, which are no where so well illustrated as on this solemn occasion: to maintain necessitous clergy; to enable the clerks to appear in decent habits to officiate on Sundays; to feed the great retinue of sober and melancholy men, who appear at the said funerals, and who must starve without constant and regular employment. Moreover, we desire it may be remembered, that, by the passing of this bill, the nobillty and gentry will have their old coaches lie upon their hands, which are now employed by our company. Rh