Imatges de pàgina
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diseases which deform the body and destroy the regularity of features; then the youth of each sex experienced privations incident to war, and the whole population must have suffered in the gracefulness of their persons. It required many years of quiet to restore the disorders of the body politic; and those of individuals recovered in the same slow proportion. In the reign of Edward III. Englishmen had again expanded into full military vigour; they marched with the front of Hercules against their enemies, and they maintained their strength and courage beyond the period of our Henry V.

.After that reign, I should imagine, their stature diminished, and their countenances assumed a less pleasing form; and we find them bending under the most profligate despotism through the reigns of Henry VII. and VIII. Elizabeth, possessed of equal power, but inclined to use it for the benefit of her subjects, as far as the confined ideas of the time permitted, raised the people nearer to manhood; and her young soldiers waited for the enemy on their coasts, not yet as volunteers, but as defenders of their metropolis for a virtuous arbitrary Monarch.

The sentiments imbibed during this auspicious period, contributed to render domestic life more cheerful than it had hitherto been; the person was enlarged, and became more graceful; discontent fled from the features; and the Londoner,

still nearer perfection, at last accomplished those two Revolutions which have for ever banished Despotism, and secured his home-nay made it his castle. See the consequences in the myriads of beautiful infants that smile on every side of him, with the regular and placid lines that mark their faces, and the strait and truly proportioned limbs that distinguish vast numbers of all ranks of people of both sexes.

Still the deformed and pallid are numerous; but deformity and disease in London generally proceed from causes which may be prevented; very confined residences destroy the health of parents and their offspring; the lowest class of inhabitants drink away their comforts, and suffer their children to crawl into manhood.

The highest classes sometimes trust infants to mercenaries; crooked legs and injured spines are too often the consequence: yet we find thousands of males and females, who appear to have been nursed by the Graces, and as far surpass the celebrated statues of the Venus de Medicis and the Apollo Belvidere, as the works of the Creator ever will those of man. When a female of high rank emerges from the controul of her governess, and receives the last polish, I pronounce her an ornament to any Court in Europe.

Those favoured with an opportunity of seeing the 30,000 volunteers assembled at Hyde-park in 1804, determined to fight for their homes, must

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agree with me that no nation ever produced an equal number together so finely proportioned and handsome.

In confirmation of my assertion that part of the deformity observable in the lower class of people might be prevented, I shall insert a Parliamentary report concerning their children, and show how numbers taken from parents have been disposed of.

"Mr. Whitworth reported from the Committee appointed to inquire into the state of the parish poor infants, under the age of 14 years, within the bills of mortality, and to report their opinion to the House; that the Committee had inquired accordingly, and had come to several resolutions which they had directed him to report to the House. The said Report was read, and is as follows:

"The Committee having examined the registers of the several parishes referred to them by the House, have collected from them the state of the parish infant poor; and find, that taking the children born in workhouses or parish houses, or received of and under 12 months old in the year 1763, and following the same into 1764 and 1765, only seven in one hundred appeared to have survived this short period.

"That having called for the registers of the years 1754, 1755, 1761, 1762, of the children placed out apprentices by the parishes within the

bills of mortality, it appears that there have been apprenticed out the number of 1419; but, upon examining the ages at which the said children so placed out were received in the seven years from 1741 till they grew up to be placed out, it appears that only 19 of those born in the workhouses, or received into them under 12 months old, compose any part of the 1419; and even of those received as far as three years old, only 36 appear to have survived in the hands of the said parishes to be placed out apprentices.

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appears that the children are kept in the several workhouses in town, or in the hands of parish nurses in town, only a small portion of them being sent into the country to be nursed, and the price of 38. and 2s. 6d. per week first paid, is often reduced so low as 1s. 6d. and 1s. per week; that it cannot be presumed to be equal to the necessary care of infants.

"Your Committee find the conduct of parish nurses was taken notice of by Parliament in the year 1715; and upon examining also into the recent facts above related, it doth not appear to your Committee that the evil is or can be remedied, unless proper regulations are established by legislative authority. It appears from the evidence of the parish officers of St. Andrew, Holborn (called within the City liberties), and also from Mr. Hutton, a principal inhabitant of that parish, that the sum of 2s. 6d. a week for the

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article of nursing, is as little as a child can be nursed at to have justice done it; but at the same time, they being sensible of the good conduct and management of the Hospital for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children, they have proposed to the governors and guardians thereof, to receive their infant parish poor at a certain rate, which, by the minutes of the general court of the said Hospital, dated Feb. 18, 1767, which was produced to your Committee and read, the said governors and guardians are ready to comply with, and likewise to forward any general purpose the Legislature may think proper to direct, in relation to the preservation of the infant parish poor within the bills of mortality.

"It appears upon the examination of Saunders Welch, esq. that great inconveniences have been found from parish boys being placed out apprentice so long as till the age of 24; and upon reading the clause in the 43d of Elizabeth, cap. 2, intituled, An Act for the relief of the Poor,' in the 5th section thereof it is said, Parish officers are to bind their man child to the age of 24, but the woman child to the age of 21, or time of marriage. This, your Committee thinks, checks marriage, and discourages industry. It appears to your Committee, that the usual sum given by parishes with apprentices, has been generally

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