The Free Rural Population. 297 
to some so afflicted ; but this I am sure would not 
be the only object of their construction ; and in the 
sicknesses most affecting such a class as the rural people, 
I doubt indeed if the patients would be disposed to leave 
their homes. Thus it is quite possible that unless for the 
occasional sheltering of a chronic or itinerant patient, 
the village Hospitals would be most of their time empty. 
Again there are reasons connected with the prejudices 
of these people, that upon slight grounds, might make 
them object to the hospital; and thus such a contingency, 
as I have above suggested, might, through this latter cause, 
become a positive fact ; and being an issue far from the 
intention of the proposers of such hospitals, it is, at least 
in my opinion, an event not to be entirely ignored. 
By the idle and good-for-nothing class, found in all com- 
munities, the hospitals would be looked upon as a dernier 
resort ; and with such an institution always staring them 
in the face with extended arms, I fear much that it would 
be but a means of increasing improvidence amongst 
such a class ; and if these institutions saved them- 
selves in the near future from the taunts of being but 
monuments of quixotic philanthropy, it might indeed 
be by their becoming little better than Alms Houses 
studded over the colony — figurative milestones, as it 
were, along the high road of improvidence leading to 
the portals of the Castle of Indolence in Georgetown, 
otherwise known as the Alms House. 
Amongst our legislators there has been a ten- 
dency, philanthropic it may possibly have been, but 
mistaken it undoubtedly was, to do everything for these 
people. Why I consider such an attempt to be a mis- 
take, is that it encourages improvidence ; for why need 
