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young, by keeping them as much as possible under the eye of those appointed to observe and instruct them. A certain part of each day should be devoted to their education; they should not be suffered to injure themselves by overworking; and they should be indulged with opportunity and time for those healthy recreations which are suitable to the age, and beneficial to the temper, of children. Sixpence a-day will support a young person, and six hours' labour would procure it.

The regulations of the society, and the rate of labour, being fixed by positive statute, the whole manufactory should be let for a term of from three to five years. Directors should be appointed to watch over the interests of the institution; to observe that the regulations, in regard to the rate of labour, &c. were rigidly fulfilled; and to appoint teachers, and the proper officer or officers to receive the rent and manage the disbursements. The lessee should be the sole proprietor of the manufactory in every thing else, paying and superintending his labourers, furnishing the materials, and receiving the profits of the manufactures. The directors should be the whole justices of peace of the county, who should annually appoint a special committee of their own number, or of gentlemen in the district. The rent, after defraying the expenses, should be applied as a sinking fund.

The sum required for the building and machinery could be raised by a public loan, a land-tax being imposed to pay the interest. This land-tax would be payable by the tenant, with recourse on his landlord, if the latter paid the poor's rates. Of all the taxes that could be devised, this would be the most easy; for while it would form a very small per centage on the pound of rent, it would ultimately relieve the land of at least four-fifths of its present burden.

The raising of ten millions Sterling would be of no injury in the present state of the money market. The expending of this great sum would at once give employment to many thousand mechanics and labourers. In the course of twelve months many of those manufactories would be erected, and in the course of three years the whole plan could be completed.—What then would be the result?—No person would need to be idle, or to suffer the want of the necessaries of life, for a longer time than he could consume in travelling to one of those manufactories; and the most forlorn wretch would instantly have the power of becoming an industrious member of that society, to which he might have otherwise proved a burden and a curse. Many of the crimes and misfortunes of the poor might be traced to those intervals of idleness and discontent which the want of employment occasions—and which are the times when the minister of blasphemy and treason is able to make his most numerous proselytes. But all occasion for those periods of misery and guilt would now cease. A poor man could, with a word, procure the means of support, without sacrificing in the least his independence; while he earned his bread, he would neither be a beggar nor a slave; he would have the power of introducing his family into a well-regulated society, instead of being forced, as must often occur at present, to carry it into the receptacles of misery and debauchery; his children would be trained to habits which they never else could have acquired; they would see, in their parents, persons honestly earning the means of life, and not the sharers and abusers of an ill-judged charity.

But as these establishments could not be completed at once, and, extensive as they may seem, would be insufficient to maintain the number of poor who are at present inadequately employed, I propose that an effort shall be made, worthy of a great state, to lighten in the mean time that mass of misery, which, pressing on the body of the people, excites a dark and brooding spirit of discontent, of which no human sagacity can foresee all the evils. It is well known, that in order to begin and complete innumerable works of public utility, as roads, bridges, canals, harbours,—nothing is wanting but those funds which it exceeds the power of individuals or societies to procure. There is hardly a county in Britain, in which some of these great works would not be undertaken, if the means of doing so could be commanded. Let government, then, be authorised to procure by loan, a sum to the extent of five or six millions,^[1] and empowered to take