Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/240

232 palace; yet perhaps the care of above two hundred thousand souls, with the benefit of their prayers for the prosperity of their queen and country, may be almost put in the balance with the domestick convenience, or even magnificence, of any subject whatsoever.

Sir William Petty, who, under the name of captain Graunt, published some observations upon the bills of mortality above five years after the Restoration, tells us, the parishes in London were even then so unequally divided, that some were two hundred times larger than others. Since that time, the increase of trade, the frequency of parliaments, the desire of living in the metropolis, together with that genius for building which began after the fire, and has ever since continued, have prodigiously enlarged this town on all sides where it was capable of increase; and those tracts of land built into streets, have generally continued of the same parish they belonged to while they lay in fields; so that the care of about thirty thousand souls has been sometimes committed to one minister, whose church would hardly contain the twentieth part of his flock: neither, I think, was any family in those parishes obliged to pay above a groat a year to their spiritual pastor. Some few of those parishes have been since divided; in others were erected chapels of ease, where a preacher is maintained by general contribution. Such poor shifts and expedients, to the infinite shame and scandal of so vast and flourishing a city, have been thought sufficient for the service of God and religion, as if they were circumstances wholly indifferent. This