t "« 3 



earn; ic being too much the cuftom with them 

 (ultimately certain of relief from the parifh) to fquan- 

 der immediately all they get, be it little or much} 

 fo that our manufa6burers and labourers, with very 

 few exceptions, are equally poor at the week's end, 

 whether they have earned in that week a guinea or 

 five fhillings; the furplus in fummer, or a time of 

 plenty, inftead of being laid up againft winter, or a 

 time of fcarcity, is (quandered away in at beft what 

 is unncceflary, and often in acquiring habits of idle- 

 nefs, extravagance, and intemperance, not eafily to 

 be relinquiflied. It is the bufinefs of a wife legifla- 

 ture to corrc6t, if poflible, this extravagant tendency 

 of the people, and, where it cannot hope for a natural 

 and pofitivc habit of oeconomy, to fubftitute, if 

 practicable, a negative and artificial one ; that fome 

 kind of equilibrium and uniformity may take place 

 between the income and the expenditure of the poor 

 throughout the year; for as matters now (land, 

 (from this total want of ceconomy) the wants of the 

 labourer are greater in winter, when he has fewer 

 means of fupplying them, than they are in the fum- 

 mer, when he can earn much more ; fo likewife in 

 the fingle (late, and in the vigour of youth, a man's 

 "wants are inconfiderable to what they are in the mar- 

 ried ftatCi and in the winter of age, when from the 

 diminution of his ftrength, or the increafe of hi« 



family. 



