which it does comfortably, and lifts me, in some sort, above the
world, and enables me to bear the character, which I should always
like to retain, of a respectable man.

We dwellers in London City proper are supposed to entertain a very
high regard for respectability, and so we do; and I am going now to
detail the operations of what, I suppose, must be called an
institution altogether peculiar to the City, of which the world out of
the City knows very little, and which has been in being I don't know
how many centuries--before there were any poor-laws, or any 'good
Queen Bess;' and which must have been a respectable affair--if I am
any judge of what that means--from the very first, whenever that was.
It is a good thing to relieve necessity in any shape, and a better
thing to help it to help itself; but to dispense charity without doing
a mischief in some way or other, either by rewarding imposture,
encouraging idleness, or repressing the springs of self-reliance or
self-exertion, is about the hardest business I have ever had to do
with, and I have had some knotty affairs to get through in my time.
Now, the various wards of the City do every year, I think, manage this
difficult matter very carefully and efficiently, though not without a
good deal of trouble; and as I think their mode of doing it sets a
good example, I have made up my mind to let the public know something
about the Inquest for the Poor, which comes off in December every
year. I believe it will be a novelty to most people out of the City
limits, and to not a few within them as well. What I know about it, I
have derived from experience: that, indeed, is all I have to relate;
and when I have told my tale, the reader will be as wise as I am, in
this respect at least.

About the middle of last December, I received a citation to attend a