Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/433

Rh be remedied, if the parishes would make some small addition to the salaries of beadles, and be more careful in the choice of those officers. But I conceive there is one effectual method in the power of every minister to put in practice; I mean, by making it the interest of all his own original poor to drive out intruders; for, if the parish beggars were absolutely forbidden by the minister and church officers to suffer strollers to come into the parish, upon pain of themselves not being permitted to beg alms at the church doors, or at the houses and shops of the inhabitants, they would prevent interlopers more effectually than twenty beadles.

And here I cannot but take notice of the great indiscretion of our city shopkeepers, who suffer their doors to be daily besieged by crowds of beggars (as the gates of a lord are by duns) to the great disgust and vexation of many customers, who I have frequently observed to go to other shops, rather than suffer such a persecution; which might easily be avoided, if no foreign beggars were allowed to infest them.

Wherefore I do assert, that the shopkeepers, who are the greatest complainers of this grievance, lamenting that for every customer they are worried by fifty beggars, do very well deserve what they suffer, when an apprentice with a horsewhip is able to lash every beggar from the shop, who is not of the parish, and does not wear the badge of that parish on his shoulder, well fastened, and fairly visble; and if this practice were universal in every house to all the sturdy vagrants, we should in a few weeks clear the town of all mendicants, except those who have a proper title to our charity: as for the aged and infirm, it would Rh