66 Financial Reform. 



bodies of London, we may conjecture this fund to amount to one hundred 

 millions. 



The church ought now to relinquish the property of the poor. The 

 original tripartite division of tithes is acknowledged by all persons 

 acquainted with ancient ecclesiastical history, one- third portion of the 

 revenue of the church being the undoubted property of the poor ; and even 

 in the present day, the pauper population of Spain, Italy, and the catholic 

 countries, are supported by the monasteries and other religious houses. 

 Restitution should therefore now be made of one third portion of the reve- 

 nues of the church; and it is more convenient, with reference to the 

 expense of management, to appropriate the amount to the immediate 

 payment of the national debt, the public continuing to support the poor 

 by rate. The entire possessions of the church, in tithe and landed pro- 

 perty, amount in value to the sum of 178,450,000/., and the extensive 

 leaseholds about to revert to the bishoprick of London, will raise the 

 amount to 180,000,OOOL One third of this (60,000,000/.) is therefore 

 the sum which the state is most equitably entitled to demand from the 

 church. 



We next propose the immediate sale of the property of the decayed 

 charities. The report of the parliamentary commissioners presents a vast 

 scene of iniquity, immense bodies of property having passed into the 

 hands of fraudulent possessors. A reformed Parliament, by acting vigor- 

 ously upon this report, may obtain, towards the payment of the national 

 debt, a sum of twenty-five millions. 



The Greenwich Hospital may be advantageously abolished. This 

 establishment is now not a hospital for disabled seamen, but for ministerial 

 paupers, and its landed property is burthened with an expense of thirty 

 thousand pounds per annum for pretended management, having commis- 

 sioners, receivers, stewards, bailiffs, and whole ranks of ministerial under- 

 lings, all extravagantly paid. It also receives the wages of all deserters 

 and dead seamen, and an immense parliamentary allowance of 250,000/. per 

 annum. The real benefits resulting from this prodigious revenue are 

 extremely trifling, for the expense of maintaining the in-door pensioners 

 upon the present system, exceeds the sum of 200/. per annum for each 

 individual; and the fraudulent contracts for bad provisions, with the 

 schemes for lessening the allowance of broth, beer, and other supplies, 

 have not been altered since the time of the despicable Earl of Sandwich. 

 The disabled veterans of our navy are known to be coerced into the hos- 

 pital, which is governed, after the slavish fashion of a vessel of war, by 

 boatswains and other officers in gradation, by the insufficiency, for a decent 

 maintenance in their native villages,of the out pension of 1 8,000/. per annum, 

 and we continue to support this establishment, though it is a boastful and 

 vulgar national spectacle, which is very offensive to foreigners, and un- 

 worthy of the refining character of the age. We propose, then, to raise the 

 out-pensioners to the sum of 25,000/. per annum, and break up the whole 

 establishment. The funds derived from the wages of deserters and dead 

 seamen, with the parliamentary allowance of 250,000/., will probably pay 

 the amount, for the number of pensioners is now very rapidly declining. 

 The rental of the landed property of the hospital, derived from the estates 

 of the Earl of Derwentwater, is 1 10,000/. per annum., though it is greatly 

 underlet; arid when brought to the hammer, will probably sell to produce 



