We are, I assure you, under the necessity of being oeconomists, where the
most abundant wealth could not render us externally comfortable: and the
little we procure, by a clandestine disposal of my unnecessary trinkets,
is considerably diminished,* by arbitrary impositions of the guard and
the poor,** and a voluntary tax from the misery that surrounds us.
* I am aware of Mr. Burke's pleasantry on the expression of very
little, being greatly diminished; but my exchequer at this time was
as well calculated to prove the infinite divisibility of matter, as
that of the Welch principality.
** The guards of the republican Bastilles were paid by the prisoners
they contained; and, in many places, the tax for this purpose was
levied with indecent rigour. It might indeed be supposed, that
people already in prison could have little to apprehend from an
inability or unwillingness to submit to such an imposition; yet
those who refused were menaced with a dungeon; and I was informed,
from undoubted authority, of two instances of the sort among the
English--the one a young woman, the other a person with a large
family of children, who were on the point of suffering this
treatment, but that the humanity of some of their companions
interfered and paid the sum exacted of them. The tax for supporting
the imprisoned poor was more willingly complied with, though not
less iniquitous in its principle; numbers of inoffensive and
industrious people were taken from their homes on account of their
religion, or other frivolous pretexts, and not having the
wherewithal to maintain themselves in confinement, instead of being
kept by the republic, were supported by their fellow-prisoners, in
consequence of a decree to that purpose.
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