Of Fools - Page 2

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 ==== 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.