a discretional power of disposal, they might as well consider themselves
_the poor_, for they were both in the parish.

There is nothing easier than to coin excuses for a fault;--there is
nothing harder than to make them pass.

What must be his state of mind, who is in continual apprehensions of a
disgraceful discovery? No profits can compensate his feelings.

Had the deviser been less charitable, William and John had been less
guilty: the gift of one man becomes a temptation to another. These nine
acres, from which the donor was to spring upwards, lay like a mountain
on the breasts of William and John, tending to press them downwards.
Although poverty makes many a rogue, yet had William and John been more
poor, they would have been more innocent. The children themselves would
have been the least gainers by the bequest, for, without this legacy,
they could just as well have procured trades; the profit would have
centered in the inhabitants, by softening their levies.--Thus a donation
runs through many a private channel, unseen by the giver.

Matters continued in this torpid state till 1782, when a quarrel between
the brothers and a tenant, broke the enchantment, and shewed the actors
in real view.

The officers, in behalf of the town, filed a bill in Chancery, and
recovered the dormant property, which was committed in trust to

John Dymock Griffith,
John Harwood,
Thomas Archer, > Overseers, 1781.