improved into methods that should prevent the general misery and
poverty of mankind, and at once secure us against beggars, parish
poor, almshouses, and hospitals; and by which not a creature so
miserable or so poor but should claim subsistence as their due, and
not ask it of charity.

I cannot believe any creature so wretchedly base as to beg of mere
choice, but either it must proceed from want or sordid prodigious
covetousness; and thence I affirm there can be no beggar but he
ought to be either relieved or punished, or both. If a man begs for
more covetousness without want, it is a baseness of soul so
extremely sordid as ought to be used with the utmost contempt, and
punished with the correction due to a dog. If he begs for want,
that want is procured by slothfulness and idleness, or by accident;
if the latter, he ought to be relieved; if the former, he ought to
be punished for the cause, but at the same time relieved also, for
no man ought to starve, let his crime be what it will.

I shall proceed, therefore, to a scheme by which all mankind, be he
never so mean, so poor, so unable, shall gain for himself a just
claim to a comfortable subsistence whosoever age or casualty shall
reduce him to a necessity of making use of it. There is a poverty
so far from being despicable that it is honourable, when a man by
direct casualty, sudden Providence, and without any procuring of his
own, is reduced to want relief from others, as by fire, shipwreck,
loss of limbs, and the like.

These are sometimes so apparent that they command the charity of
others; but there are also many families reduced to decay whose
conditions are not so public, and yet their necessities as great.