space of forty six years—­I told him he was welcome to spend the residue of his life upon the spot gratis.  He continued there ten years after, when finding an inability to procure support from labour, and meeting with no assistance from the parish in which he had been resident for an age, he resigned the place with tears, in 1778, after an occupation of fifty six years, and was obliged to recoil upon his own parish, about twelve miles distant; to be farmed with the rest of the poor; and where, he afterwards assured me, “They were murdering him by inches.” —­ But no complaint of this ungrateful kind lies against that people whose character I draw.

Perhaps it may be a wise measure, in a place like Birmingham, where the manufactures flourish in continual sunshine, not to be over strict with regard to removals.  Though it may be burdensome to support the poor of another parish, yet perhaps it is the least of two evils:  to remove old age which hath spent a life among us, is ungenerous; to remove temporary sickness, is injurious to trade; and to remove infancy is impolitic, being upon the verge of accommodating the town with a life of labour.  It may be more prudent to remove a rascal than a pauper.  Forty pounds hath been spent in removing a family, which would not otherwise have cost forty shillings, and whose future industry might have added many times that sum to the common capital.  The highest pitch of charity, is that of directing inability to support itself.  Idleness suits no part of a people, neither does it find a place here; every individual ought to contribute to the general benefit, by his head or his hands:  if he is arrived at the western verge of life, when the powers of usefulness decline, let him repose upon his fortune; if no such thing exists, let him rest upon his friends, and if this prop fail, let the public nurse him, with a tenderness becoming humanity.

We may observe, that the manufactures, the laborious part of mankind, the poor’s rates, and the number of paupers, will everlastingly go hand in hand; they will increase and decrease together; we cannot annihilate one, but the others will follow, and odd as the expression may sound, we become rich by payment and poverty.  If we discharge the poor, who shall act the laborious part?  Stop the going out of one shilling, and it will prevent the coming in of two.

At the introduction of the poor’s laws, under Elizabeth, two pence halfpenny in the pound rent was collected every fortnight, for future support:  time has made an alteration in the system, which is now six-pence in the pound, and collected as often as found necessary.  The present levy amounts to above 10,000_l_. per ann. but is not wholly collected.

As the overseers are generally people of property, payment in advance is not scrupulously observed.