1827.] Public Chanties. 9 



aritlimetic. But will the funds allow of more ? On the present securities 

 the income of the school must be considered to be 130/., exclusive of the 

 premises the school master's house is worth at least 70/. a year; and had 

 Trotman's donation been, as he directed, laid out in land, that income 

 would not be less than four or five hundred ; and such a sum, in common 

 equity, the company are bound to expend upon this institution placed 

 too, as it is, in the midst of a population of 50,000, including as many 

 miserable and destitute persons as any in London, or more. The account 

 we have here given of this school is taken from the commissioners' first 

 report, in which the inefficiency of the school is distinctly attributed to the 

 age. and incapacity of the master. In the tenth report, published in 1822, 

 it is added, ' the master is since dead, and under his successor the school 

 is regaining a greater degree of efficiency/ This greater degree of effici- 

 ency was not very discoverable last year, when eighteen boys only, and 

 some of them not on the foundation, were found in the school-room, and 

 nobody, apparently, but a greater boy to superintend them. The present 

 master lives in Charles Square, and lets the school-house, and, as it should 

 seem, delegates the office and duties of master. The Haberdashers have 

 appointed a committee to inquire into the state of the school apparently 

 in consequence of the publicity given to the subject, by the publication to 

 which we hold ourselves so much indebted. 



BANKS' LEASEHOLD, 17J6. This property consisted originally of seventy- 

 two houses in the parish of St. James's, Westminster, held of the crown ; 

 in addition to which were two freeholds in St. John's, Clerkenwell. The 

 rental of the Westminster houses in 1822, in which year the lease expired, 

 amounted to 1 764/. 4s. The conditions demanded by the commissioners 

 of woods and forests, for renewal, were such as the company did not, and 

 perhaps could not accede to ; and the original endowment of Mr. Banks 

 is thus nearly lost nothing remaining but the freeholds, producing 

 451. 13s. 6d. The company, however, have made ample savings out of 

 the leaseholds, amounting, at the time of the inquiry to 54,482/., three per 

 cent, consols. Now under what obligations stand the company ? The 

 payment of 1 U/. namely, 12/. to the minister and deacons of the con- 

 gr^gation, held near the Three Cranes ; 21. to the meeting-house, adjoin- 

 ing the company's hall ; 50/. to ten poor men and single women, of 

 St. Bennett's, Paul's Wharf; 251. to ten men and women of Battersea ; 

 and 251. to as many in the park, in the parish of St. Mary Overy, South- 

 wark. Here then the company have a surplus of above 1,500/. a year, 

 and yet the payments have never been augmented a single doit. 



BENEFACTIONS FOR LOANS, amounting to 2,5 JO/., the gifts of eighteen 

 different individuals, and intended by them to be lent to young men of the 

 company gratis; and a farther sum of 1,010/. on interest, at too high a 

 rate perhaps to be covetable. Of the sums thus directed to be lent gratis, 

 3961. appear to have been lost still leaving 2,1 14/. to be so applied. No 

 loans have been made since 1670; but the money has not, of course, lain 

 idle for a century and a half. The money was destined for the benefit of 

 such as required assistance; and if loans with interest, or without, were 

 no longer desirable, became it not the obvious duty of the company, if they 

 still held the money and the responsibility of it, to make the best use of it 

 in their power, and distribute the proceeds to the relief of indigence of some 

 description or other? 



MISCELLANEOUS GIFTS. Of some of these the amount is unknown; 



M.M. New Series, VOL. IV. No. 1 9. C 



