Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/434

424 be sufficient to give them nothing, and then they must starve, or follow their brethren.

It was the city that first endowed this hospital; and those who afterward contributed, as they were such who generally inhabited here, so they intended what they gave to be for the use of the city's poor. The revenues, which have since been raised by parliament, are wholly paid by the city, without the least charge upon any other part of the kingdom; and therefore nothing could more defeat the original design, than to misapply those revenues on strolling beggars or bastards from the country, which bears no share in the charges we are at.

If some of the outparishes be overburdened with poor, the reason must be, that the greatest part of those poor are strollers from the country, who nestle themselves where they can find the cheapest lodgings, and from thence infest every part of the town; out of which they ought to be whipped as a most insufferable nuisance, being nothing else but a profligate clan of thieves, drunkards, heathens, and whoremongers, fitter to be rooted out of the face of the earth, than suffered to levy a vast annual tax upon the city; which shares too deep in the publick miseries, brought on us by the oppressions we he under from our neighbours, our brethren, our countrymen, our fellow-protestants, and fellow-subjects.

Some time ago I was appointed one of a committee to inquire into the state of the workhouse; where we found that a charity was bestowed by a great person for a certain time, which in its consequences operated very much to the detriment of the house; for, when the time was elapsed, all those who were supported by that charity, continued on the same foot with the rest