wife; six tattered families flitting to be shipped off to the West Indies; a colony of a hundred and fifty beggars, all repairing to people our metropolis, and by encreasing the number of hands, to encrease its wealth, upon the old maxim, that people are the riches of a nation, and therefore ten thousand mouths, with hardly ten pair of hands, or hardly any work to employ them, will infallibly make us a rich and flourishing people.  Secondly, Travellers enough, but seven in ten wanting shirts and cravats; nine in ten going bare foot, and carrying their brogues and stockings in their hands; one woman in twenty having a pillion, the rest riding bare backed:  Above two hundred horsemen, with four pair of boots amongst them all; seventeen saddles of leather (the rest being made of straw) and most of their garrons only shod before.  I went into one of the principal farmer’s houses, out of curiosity, and his whole furniture consisted of two blocks for stools, a bench on each side the fire-place made of turf, six trenchers, one bowl, a pot, six horn spoons, three noggins, three blankets, one of which served the man and maid servant; the other the master of the family, his wife and five children; a small churn, a wooden candlestick, a broken stick for a pair of tongs.  In the public towns, one third of the inhabitants walking the streets bare foot; windows half built up with stone, to save the expense of glass, the broken panes up and down supplied by brown paper, few being able to afford white; in some places they were stopped with straw or hay.  Another mark of our riches, are the signs at the several inns upon the road, viz.  In some, a staff stuck in the thatch, with a turf at the end of it; a staff in a dunghill with a white rag wrapped about the head; a pole, where they can afford it, with a besom at the top; an oatmeal cake on a board at the window; and, at the principal inns of the road, I have observed the signs taken down and laid against the wall near the door, being taken from their post to prevent the shaking of the house down by the wind.  In short, I saw not one single house, in the best town I travelled through, which had not manifest appearances of beggary and want.  I could give many more instances of our wealth, but I hope these will suffice for the end I propose.

“It may be objected, what use it is of to display the poverty of the nation, in the manner I have done.  I answer, I desire to know for what ends, and by what persons, this new opinion of our flourishing state has of late been so industriously advanced:  One thing is certain, that the advancers have either already found their own account, or have been heartily promised, or at least have been entertained with hopes, by seeing such an opinion pleasing to those who have it in their power to reward.