A third is, the insurance office against fire, by which several thousand pounds are yearly remitted to England, (a trifle, it seems, we can easily spare,) and will gradually increase until it comes to a good national tax:  for the society-marks upon our houses (under which might properly be written, “The Lord have mercy upon us!”) spread faster and farther than the colony of frogs.[192] I have, for above twenty years past, given warning several thousand times to many substantial people, and to such who are acquainted with lords and squires, and the like great folks, to any of whom I have not the honour to be known:  I mentioned my daily fears, lest our watchful friends in England might take this business out of our hands; and how easy it would be to prevent that evil, by erecting a society of persons who had good estates, such, for instance, as that noble knot of bankers, under the style of “Swift and Company.”  But now we are become tributary to England, not only for materials to light our own fires, but for engines to put them out; to which, if hearth-money be added, (repealed in England as a grievance,) we have the honour to pay three taxes for fire.

A fourth was the knavery of those merchants, or linen-manufacturers, or both, when, upon occasion of the plague at Marseilles, we had a fair opportunity of getting into our hands the whole linen-trade of Spain; but the commodity was so bad, and held at so high a rate, that almost the whole cargo was returned, and the small remainder sold below the prime cost.

So many other particulars of the same nature crowd into my thoughts, that I am forced to stop; and the rather because they are not very proper for my subject, to which I shall now return.

Among all the schemes for maintaining the poor of the city, and setting them to work, the least weight has been laid upon that single point which is of the greatest importance; I mean, that of keeping foreign beggars from swarming hither out of every part of the country; for, until this be brought to pass effectually, all our wise reasonings and proceedings upon them will be vain and ridiculous.

The prodigious number of beggars throughout this kingdom, in proportion to so small a number of people, is owing to many reasons:  to the laziness of the natives; the want of work to employ them; the enormous rents paid by cottagers for their miserable cabins and potatoe-plots; their early marriages, without the least prospect of establishment; the ruin of agriculture, whereby such vast numbers are hindered from providing their own bread, and have no money to purchase it; the mortal damp upon all kinds of trade, and many other circumstances, too tedious or invidious to mention.

And to the same causes we owe the perpetual concourse of foreign beggars to this town, the country landlords giving all assistance, except money and victuals, to drive from their estates those miserable creatures they have undone.