Some part of this evil cannot, perhaps, be remedied, but there are certain articles that ought not to be taken in pledge, such as the clothes of young children and working tools. {196}

There is no doubt but, that, in a populous inhospitable trading town, where there is no means of obtaining aid, from friendship, where the want is sometimes extreme, the resource of pledging is a necessary one.  This is to be admitted in the degree, but by no means without limitation; for the facility creates the want, (even when it is a real want) for it brings on improvidence and carelessness.  The lower classes come to consider their apparel as money, only that it requires changing before it is quite current. {197}

If this matter were well looked into, together with the other causes from which mendicity proceeds, which increases so rapidly, we should

—–­ {196} In Scripture it is forbidden to pledge the upper or the nether mill-stone.  This is a proof, of very great antiquity, and indisputable authority, of the care taken to prevent that sort of improvidence that hurts the general interest of a people.  It should be imitated in this country with regard, to all portable implements of labour, such as mill-stones were in those early times.

{197} In Scotland, twenty years ago, there were not so many pawnbrokers as there are in Brentford, or any little village round London.  In Paris, as debauched a town as London, and where charity was as little to be expected, there was only one lending company, the profits of which, after dividing six per cent., went to the Foundling Hospital.  It was, as in London, a resource in cases of necessity, but there was too much trouble to run it on every trifling occasion, as is done in London, and, indeed, in most towns in England. -=-

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soon perceive a diminution of the poors’ rates, and the wealthiest country of Europe would not exhibit the greatest and most multiplied scenes of misery and distress.

The numbers of children left in indigence, by their parents, would be comparatively lower, and there would not be that waste in the administration of the funds on which they are supported.

There is, probably, no means of greatly diminishing the number of helpless poor, but by an encouragement to lay up in the hour of health an abundance to supply the wants of feebleness and age, but this might go a great way to diminishing the evil.  All persons who have places under government, of whatever nature, ought to be compelled to subscribe to such institutions; this would be doing the individuals, as well as the community, a real service, and would go a great way to the counteracting of the evil. {198} Preventatives are first to be applied, and after those have operated as far as may be, remedies.

The poor, &c. to whose maintenance 5,500,000 L. a year goes, (a sum greater than the revenues of any second rate monarchy in Europe,) may be divided into three classes: