An Essay Upon Projects

  This is gaming by rule, and in such a knot it is impossible to lose;

  for if it is in any man's or company of men's power, by any artifice

  to alter the odds, it is in their power to command the money out of

  every man's pocket, who has no more wit than to venture.

  OF FOOLS.

  Of all persons who are objects of our charity, none move my

  compassion like those whom it has pleased God to leave in a full

  state health and strength, but deprived of reason to act for

  themselves. And it is, in my opinion, one of the greatest scandals

  upon the understanding of others to mock at those who want it. Upon

  this account I think the hospital we call Bedlam to be a noble

  foundation, a visible instance of the sense our ancestors had of the

  greatest unhappiness which can befall humankind; since as the soul

  in man distinguishes him from a brute, so where the soul is dead

  (for so it is as to acting) no brute so much a beast as a man. But

  since never to have it, and to have lost it, are synonymous in the

  effect, I wonder how it came to pass that in the settlement of that

  hospital they made no provision for persons born without the use of

  their reason, such as we call fools, or, more properly, naturals.

  We use such in England with the last contempt, which I think is a

  strange error, since though they are useless to the commonwealth,

  they are only so by God's direct providence, and no previous fault.

  I think it would very well become this wise age to take care of

  such; and perhaps they are a particular rent-charge on the great

  family of mankind, left by the Maker of us all, like a younger

  brother, who though the estate be given from him, yet his father

  expected the heir should take some care of him.

  If I were to be asked, Who ought in particular to be charged with

  this work? I would answer in general those who have a portion of

  understanding extraordinary. Not that I would lay a tax upon any

  man's brains, or discourage wit by appointing wise men to maintain

  fools; but, some tribute is due to God's goodness for bestowing

  extraordinary gifts; and who can it be better paid to than such as

  suffer for want of the same bounty?

  For the providing, therefore, some subsistence for such that natural

  defects may not be exposed:

  It is proposed that a fool-house be erected, either by public

  authority, or by the city, or by an Act of Parliament, into which

  all that are naturals or born fools, without respect or distinction,

  should be admitted and maintained.

  For the maintenance of this, a small stated contribution, settled by

  the authority of an Act of Parliament, without any damage to the

  persons paying the same, might be very easily raised by a tax upon

  learning, to be paid by the authors of books:

  Every book that shall be printed in folio,

  from 40 sheets and upwards, to pay

  at the licensing (for the whole impression) 5 pounds

  Under 40 sheets 40s

  Every quarto 20s

  Every octavo of 10 sheets and upward 20s

  Every octavo under 10 sheets, and every bound

  book in 12mo 10s

  Every stitched pamphlet 2s

  Reprinted copies the same rates.

  This tax to be paid into the Chamber of London for the space of

  twenty years, would, without question, raise a fund sufficient to

  build and purchase a settlement for this house.

  I suppose this little tax being to be raised at so few places as the

  printing-presses, or the licensers of books, and consequently the

  charge but very small in gathering, might bring in about 1,500

  pounds per annum for the term of twenty years, which would perform

  the work to the degree following:

  The house should be plain and decent (for I don't think the

  ostentation of buildings necessary or suitable to works of charity),

  and be built somewhere out of town for the sake of the air.

  The building to cost about 1,000 pounds, or, if the revenue exceed,

  to cost 2,000 pounds at most, and the salaries mean in proportion.

  In the House. Per annum.

  A steward 30 pounds

  A purveyor 20

  A cook 20

  A butler 20

  Six women to assist the cook and clean the

  house, 4 pounds each 24

  Six nurses to tend the people, 3 pounds each 18

  A chaplain 20

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  152

  A hundred alms-people at 8 pounds per annum, diet, &c. 800

  ====

  952

  The table for the officers, and contingencies, and

  clothes for the alms-people, and firing,

  put together 500

  An auditor of the accounts, a committee of the

  governors, and two clerks.

  Here I suppose 1,500 pounds per annum revenue, to be settled upon

  the house, which, it is very probable might be raised from the tax

  aforesaid. But since an Act of Parliament is necessary to be had

  for the collecting this duty, and that taxes for keeping of fools

  would be difficultly obtained, while they are so much wanted for

  wise men, I would propose to raise the money by voluntary charity,

  which would be a work that would leave more honour to the

  undertakers than feasts and great shows, which our public bodies too

  much diminish their stocks with.

  But to pass all suppositious ways, which are easily thought of, but

  hardly procured, I propose to maintain fools out of our own folly.

  And whereas a great deal of money has been thrown about in

  lotteries, the following proposal would very easily perfect our

  work.

  A CHARITY-LOTTERY.

  That a lottery be set up by the authority of the Lord Mayor and

  Court of Aldermen, for a hundred thousand tickets, at twenty

  shillings each, to be drawn by the known way and method of drawing

  lotteries, as the million-lottery was drawn, in which no allowance

  to be made to anybody, but the fortunate to receive the full sum of

  one hundred thousand pounds put in, without discount, and yet this

  double advantage to follow:

  1. That an immediate sum of one hundred thousand pounds shall be

  raised and paid into the Exchequer for the public use.

  2. A sum of above twenty thousand pounds be gained, to be put into

  the hands of known trustees, to be laid out in a charity for the

  maintenance of the poor.

  That as soon as the money shall be come in, it shall be paid into

  the Exchequer, either on some good fund, if any suitable, or on the

  credit of the
Exchequer; and that when the lottery is drawn, the

  fortunate to receive tallies or bills from the Exchequer for their

  money, payable at four years.

  The Exchequer receives this money, and gives out tallies according

  to the prizes, when it is drawn, all payable at four years; and the

  interest of this money for four years is struck in tallies

  proportioned to the maintenance; which no parish would refuse that

  subsisted them wholly before.

  I make no question but that if such a hospital was erected within a

  mile or two of the city, one great circumstance would happen, viz.,

  that the common sort of people, who are very much addicted to

  rambling in the fields, would make this house the customary walk, to

  divert themselves with the objects to be seen there, and to make

  what they call sport with the calamity of others, as is now

  shamefully allowed in Bedlam.

  To prevent this, and that the condition of such, which deserves

  pity, not contempt, might not be the more exposed by this charity,

  it should be ordered: that the steward of the house be in

  commission of the peace within the precincts of the house only, and

  authorised to punish by limited fines or otherwise any person that

  shall offer any abuse to the poor alms-people, or shall offer to

  make sport at their condition.

  If any person at reading of this should be so impertinent as to ask

  to what purpose I would appoint a chaplain in a hospital of fools, I

  could answer him very well by saying, for the use of the other

  persons, officers, and attendants in the house. But besides that,

  pray, why not a chaplain for fools, as well as for knaves, since

  both, though in a different manner, are incapable of reaping any

  benefit by religion, unless by some invisible influence they are

  made docile; and since the same secret power can restore these to

  their reason, as must make the other sensible, pray why not a

  chaplain? Idiots indeed were denied the communion in the primitive

  churches, but I never read they were not to be prayed for, or were

  not admitted to hear.

  If we allow any religion, and a Divine Supreme Power, whose

  influence works invisibly on the hearts of men (as he must be worse

  than the people we talk of, who denies it), we must allow at the

  same time that Power can restore the reasoning faculty to an idiot,

  and it is our part to use the proper means of supplicating Heaven to

  that end, leaving the disposing part to the issue of unalterable

  Providence.

  The wisdom of Providence has not left us without examples of some of

  the most stupid natural idiots in the world who have been restored

  to their reason, or, as one would think, had reason infused after a

  long life of idiotism; perhaps, among other wise ends, to confute

  that sordid supposition that idiots have no souls.

  OF BANKRUPTS.

  This chapter has some right to stand next to that of fools, for

  besides the common acceptation of late, which makes every

  unfortunate man a fool, I think no man so much made a fool of as a

  bankrupt.

  If I may be allowed so much liberty with our laws, which are

  generally good, and above all things are tempered with mercy,

  lenity, and freedom, this has something in it of barbarity; it gives

  a loose to the malice and revenge of the creditor, as well as a

  power to right himself, while it leaves the debtor no way to show

  himself honest. It contrives all the ways possible to drive the

  debtor to despair, and encourages no new industry, for it makes him

  perfectly incapable of anything but starving.

  This law, especially as it is now frequently executed, tends wholly

  to the destruction of the debtor, and yet very little to the

  advantage of the creditor.

  1. The severities to the debtor are unreasonable, and, if I may so

  say, a little inhuman, for it not only strips him of all in a

  moment, but renders him for ever incapable of helping himself, or

  relieving his family by future industry. If he escapes from prison,

  which is hardly done too, if he has nothing left, he must starve or

  live on charity; if he goes to work no man dare pay him his wages,

  but he shall pay it again to the creditors; if he has any private

  stock left for a subsistence he can put it nowhere; every man is

  bound to be a thief and take it from him; if he trusts it in the

  hands of a friend he must receive it again as a great courtesy, for

  that friend is liable to account for it. I have known a poor man

  prosecuted by a statute to that degree that all he had left was a

  little money which he knew not where to hide; at last, that he might

  not starve, he gives it to his brother who had entertained him; the

  brother, after he had his money quarrels with him to get him out of

  his house, and when he desires him to let him have the money lent

  him, gives him this for answer, I cannot pay you safely, for there

  is a statute against you; which run the poor man to such extremities

  that he destroyed himself. Nothing is more frequent than for men

  who are reduced by miscarriage in trade to compound and set up again

  and get good estates; but a statute, as we call it, for ever shuts

  up all doors to the debtor's recovery, as if breaking were a crime

  so capital that he ought to be cast out of human society and exposed

  to extremities worse than death. And, which will further expose the

  fruitless severity of this law, it is easy to make it appear that

  all this cruelty to the debtor is so far, generally speaking, from

  advantaging the creditors, that it destroys the estate, consumes it

  in extravagant charges, and unless the debtor be consenting, seldom

  makes any considerable dividends. And I am bold to say there is no

  advantage made by the prosecuting of a statute with severity, but

  what might be doubly made by methods more merciful. And though I am

  not to prescribe to the legislators of the nation, yet by way of

  essay I take leave to give my opinion and my experience in the

  methods, consequences, and remedies of this law.

  All people know, who remember anything of the times when that law

  was made, that the evil it was pointed at was grown very rank, and

  breaking to defraud creditors so much a trade, that the parliament

  had good reason to set up a fury to deal with it; and I am far from

  reflecting on the makers of that law, who, no question, saw it was

  necessary at that time. But as laws, though in themselves good, are

  more or less so, as they are more or less seasonable, squared, and

  adapted to the circumstances and time of the evil they are made

  against; so it were worth while (with submission) for the same

  authority to examine:

  1. Whether the length of time since that act was made has not given

  opportunity to debtors,

  (1) To evade the force of the act by ways and shifts to avoid the

  power of it, and secure their estates out of the reach of it.

  (2) To turn the point of it against those whom it was made to

  relieve. Since we see frequently now that bankrupts desire

  statutes, and procure
them to be taken out against themselves.

  2. Whether the extremities of this law are not often carried on

  beyond the true intent and meaning of the act itself by persons who,

  besides being creditors, are also malicious, and gratify their

  private revenge by prosecuting the offender, to the ruin of his

  family.

  If these two points are to be proved, then I am sure it will follow

  that this act is now a public grievance to the nation, and I doubt

  not but will be one time or other repealed by the same wise

  authority which made it.

  1. Time and experience has furnished the debtors with ways and

  means to evade the force of this statute, and to secure their estate

  against the reach of it, which renders it often insignificant, and

  consequently, the knave against whom the law was particularly bent

  gets off, while he only who fails of mere necessity, and whose

  honest principle will not permit him to practise those methods, is

  exposed to the fury of this act. And as things are now ordered,

  nothing is more easy than for a man to order his estate so that a

  statute shall have no power over it, or at least but a little.

  If the bankrupt be a merchant, no statute can reach his effects

  beyond the seas; so that he has nothing to secure but his books, and

  away he goes into the Friars. If a Shopkeeper, he has more

  difficulty: but that is made easy, for there are men and carts to

  be had whose trade it is, and who in one night shall remove the

  greatest warehouse of goods or cellar of wines in the town and carry

  them off into those nurseries of rogues, the Mint and Friars; and

  our constables and watch, who are the allowed magistrates of the

  night, and who shall stop a poor little lurking thief, that it may

  be has stole a bundle of old clothes, worth five shilling, shall let

  them all pass without any disturbance, and hundred honest men robbed

  of their estates before their faces, to the eternal infamy of the

  justice of the nation.

  And were a man but to hear the discourse among the inhabitants of

  those dens of thieves, when they first swarm about a new-comer to

  comfort him, for they are not all hardened to a like degree at once.

  "Well," says the first, "come, don't be concerned, you have got a

  good parcel of goods away I promise you, you need not value all the

  world." "All! would I had done so," says another, "I'd a laughed at

  all my creditors." "Ay," says the young proficient in the hardened

  trade, "but my creditors!" "Hang the creditors!" says a third;

  "why, there's such a one, and such a one, they have creditors too,

  and they won't agree with them, and here they live like gentlemen,

  and care not a farthing for them. Offer your creditors half a crown

  in the pound, and pay it them in old debts, and if they won't take

  it let them alone; they'll come after you, never fear it." "Oh! but

  a statute," says he again. "Oh! but the devil," cries the Minter.

  "Why, 'tis the statutes we live by," say they; "why, if it were not

  for statutes, creditors would comply, and debtors would compound,

  and we honest fellows here of the Mint would be starved. Prithee,

  what need you care for a statute? A thousand statutes can't reach

  you here." This is the language of the country, and the new-comer

  soon learns to speak it; for I think I may say, without wronging any

  man, I have known many a man go in among them honest, that is,

  without ill design, but I never knew one come away so again. Then

  comes a graver sort among this black crew (for here, as in hell, are

  fiends of degrees and different magnitude), and he falls into

  discourse with the new-comer, and gives him more solid advice.

  "Look you, sir, I am concerned to see you melancholy; I am in your

  circumstance too, and if you'll accept of it, I'll give you the best

  advice I can," and so begins the grave discourse.

  The man is in too much trouble not to want counsel, so he thanks