Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/432

422 return them a dozen for one, to dispose of as they please.

As to the native poor of this city, there would be little or no damage in confining them to their several parishes. For instance: a beggar of the parish of St. Warburgh's, or any other parish here, if he be an object of compassion, has an equal chance to receive his proportion of alms from every charitable hand: because the inhabitants, one or other, walk through every street in town, and give their alms, without considering the place, wherever they think it may be well disposed of: and these helps added to what they get in eatables by going from house to house among the gentry and citizens, will, without being very burdensome, be sufficient to keep them alive.

It is true, the poor of the suburb parishes will not have altogether the same advantage, because they are not equally in the road of business and passengers: but here it is to be considered, that the beggars there have not so good a title to publick charity, because most of them are strollers from the country, and compose a principal part of that great nuisance which we ought to remove.

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 has 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 alehouses, they find their account in such customers. This evil might easily be