184 Life of Count Rumford. 



himself to the doors of the principal citizens, with 

 printed blanks containing the forms for an elaborate 

 system of regular voluntary subscriptions. The city 

 was again districted for this purpose, and the plan was 

 so thoroughly contrived that pledges by name or anony- 

 mous gifts acknowledged in the Munich Gazette, or 

 the contents of alms-boxes, all under the oversight 

 of the committees, seemed to engage the generosity of 

 all citizens. The reasonable motive was urged, that 

 systematic benevolence, besides being alone effective, 

 was also much cheaper than enforced and desultory 

 almsgiving. 



Provision had to be made for some embarrassments 

 attendant upon the comprehensiveness of this system. 

 Several public establishments in Munich, like the 

 schools for poor students, orders of Sisters of Charity, 

 the Hospital for Lepers, and others, had been long privi- 

 leged to make periodical appeals from house to house. 

 To avoid collision and jealousy, an equivalent to these 

 former resources of such institutions was provided from 

 the public treasury. Then, too, the vested rights of 

 German apprentices to beg on their travels a custom 

 attended with many abuses had to be restrained and 

 regulated, as did also the privilege granted to sufferers 

 from fire to go about with a government license asking 

 for aid. In fact, the oversight and removal of men- 

 dicity required safeguards in every direction. When the 

 wretched objects of Thompson's resolute measures, de- 

 prived of their former range and liberty of mendicancy, 

 were thus gathered into a central asylum, he had an 

 administrative and executive task to accomplish to 

 which only his own v.-onderful powers and skill would 

 have been equal. He was to provide profitable work for 



