by Daniel Defoe
This is gaming by rule, and in such a knot it is impossible to lose;
for if it is in any man's or company of men's power, by any artifice
to alter the odds, it is in their power to command the money out of
every man's pocket, who has no more wit than to venture.
OF FOOLS.
Of all persons who are objects of our charity, none move my
compassion like those whom it has pleased God to leave in a full
state health and strength, but deprived of reason to act for
themselves. And it is, in my opinion, one of the greatest scandals
upon the understanding of others to mock at those who want it. Upon
this account I think the hospital we call Bedlam to be a noble
foundation, a visible instance of the sense our ancestors had of the
greatest unhappiness which can befall humankind; since as the soul
in man distinguishes him from a brute, so where the soul is dead
(for so it is as to acting) no brute so much a beast as a man. But
since never to have it, and to have lost it, are synonymous in the
effect, I wonder how it came to pass that in the settlement of that
hospital they made no provision for persons born without the use of
their reason, such as we call fools, or, more properly, naturals.
We use such in England with the last contempt, which I think is a
strange error, since though they are useless to the commonwealth,
they are only so by God's direct providence, and no previous fault.
I think it would very well become this wise age to take care of
such; and perhaps they are a particular rent-charge on the great
family of mankind, left by the Maker of us all, like a younger
brother, who though the estate be given from him, yet his father
expected the heir should take some care of him.
If I were to be asked, Who ought in particular to be charged with
this work? I would answer in general those who have a portion of
understanding extraordinary. Not that I would lay a tax upon any
man's brains, or discourage wit by appointing wise men to maintain
fools; but, some tribute is due to God's goodness for bestowing
extraordinary gifts; and who can it be better paid to than such as
suffer for want of the same bounty?
For the providing, therefore, some subsistence for such that natural
defects may not be exposed:
It is proposed that a fool-house be erected, either by public
authority, or by the city, or by an Act of Parliament, into which
all that are naturals or born fools, without respect or distinction,
should be admitted and maintained.
For the maintenance of this, a small stated contribution, settled by
the authority of an Act of Parliament, without any damage to the
persons paying the same, might be very easily raised by a tax upon
learning, to be paid by the authors of books:
Every book that shall be printed in folio,
from 40 sheets and upwards, to pay
at the licensing (for the whole impression) 5 pounds
Under 40 sheets 40s
Every quarto 20s
Every octavo of 10 sheets and upward 20s
Every octavo under 10 sheets, and every bound
book in 12mo 10s
Every stitched pamphlet 2s
Reprinted copies the same rates.
This tax to be paid into the Chamber of London for the space of
twenty years, would, without question, raise a fund sufficient to
build and 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
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152
A hundred alms-people at 8 pounds per annum, diet, &c. 800
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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.
A CHARITY-LOTTERY.
That a lottery be set up by the authority of the Lord Mayor and
Court of Aldermen, for a hundred thousand tickets, at twenty
shillings each, to be drawn by the known way and method of drawing
lotteries, as the million-lottery was drawn, in which no allowance
to be made to anybody, but the fortunate to receive the full sum of
one hundred thousand pounds put in, without discount, and yet this
double advantage to follow:
1. That an immediate sum of one hundred thousand pounds shall be
raised and paid into the Exchequer for the public use.
2. A sum of above twenty thousand pounds be gained, to be put into
the hands of known trustees, to be laid out in a charity for the
maintenance of the poor.
That as soon as the money shall be come in, it shall be paid into
the Exchequer, either on some good fund, if any suitable, or on the
credit of the
Exchequer; and that when the lottery is drawn, the
fortunate to receive tallies or bills from the Exchequer for their
money, payable at four years.
The Exchequer receives this money, and gives out tallies according
to the prizes, when it is drawn, all payable at four years; and the
interest of this money for four years is struck in tallies
proportioned to the maintenance; which no parish would refuse that
subsisted them wholly before.
I make no question but that if such a hospital was erected within a
mile or two of the city, one great circumstance would happen, viz.,
that the common sort of people, who are very much addicted to
rambling in the fields, would make this house the customary walk, to
divert themselves with the objects to be seen there, and to make
what they call sport with the calamity of others, as is now
shamefully allowed in Bedlam.
To prevent this, and that the condition of such, which deserves
pity, not contempt, might not be the more exposed by this charity,
it should be ordered: that the steward of the house be in
commission of the peace within the precincts of the house only, and
authorised to punish by limited fines or otherwise any person that
shall offer any abuse to the poor alms-people, or shall offer to
make sport at their condition.
If any person at reading of this should be so impertinent as to ask
to what purpose I would appoint a chaplain in a hospital of fools, I
could answer him very well by saying, for the use of the other
persons, officers, and attendants in the house. But besides that,
pray, why not a chaplain for fools, as well as for knaves, since
both, though in a different manner, are incapable of reaping any
benefit by religion, unless by some invisible influence they are
made docile; and since the same secret power can restore these to
their reason, as must make the other sensible, pray why not a
chaplain? Idiots indeed were denied the communion in the primitive
churches, but I never read they were not to be prayed for, or were
not admitted to hear.
If we allow any religion, and a Divine Supreme Power, whose
influence works invisibly on the hearts of men (as he must be worse
than the people we talk of, who denies it), we must allow at the
same time that Power can restore the reasoning faculty to an idiot,
and it is our part to use the proper means of supplicating Heaven to
that end, leaving the disposing part to the issue of unalterable
Providence.
The wisdom of Providence has not left us without examples of some of
the most stupid natural idiots in the world who have been restored
to their reason, or, as one would think, had reason infused after a
long life of idiotism; perhaps, among other wise ends, to confute
that sordid supposition that idiots have no souls.
OF BANKRUPTS.
This chapter has some right to stand next to that of fools, for
besides the common acceptation of late, which makes every
unfortunate man a fool, I think no man so much made a fool of as a
bankrupt.
If I may be allowed so much liberty with our laws, which are
generally good, and above all things are tempered with mercy,
lenity, and freedom, this has something in it of barbarity; it gives
a loose to the malice and revenge of the creditor, as well as a
power to right himself, while it leaves the debtor no way to show
himself honest. It contrives all the ways possible to drive the
debtor to despair, and encourages no new industry, for it makes him
perfectly incapable of anything but starving.
This law, especially as it is now frequently executed, tends wholly
to the destruction of the debtor, and yet very little to the
advantage of the creditor.
1. The severities to the debtor are unreasonable, and, if I may so
say, a little inhuman, for it not only strips him of all in a
moment, but renders him for ever incapable of helping himself, or
relieving his family by future industry. If he escapes from prison,
which is hardly done too, if he has nothing left, he must starve or
live on charity; if he goes to work no man dare pay him his wages,
but he shall pay it again to the creditors; if he has any private
stock left for a subsistence he can put it nowhere; every man is
bound to be a thief and take it from him; if he trusts it in the
hands of a friend he must receive it again as a great courtesy, for
that friend is liable to account for it. I have known a poor man
prosecuted by a statute to that degree that all he had left was a
little money which he knew not where to hide; at last, that he might
not starve, he gives it to his brother who had entertained him; the
brother, after he had his money quarrels with him to get him out of
his house, and when he desires him to let him have the money lent
him, gives him this for answer, I cannot pay you safely, for there
is a statute against you; which run the poor man to such extremities
that he destroyed himself. Nothing is more frequent than for men
who are reduced by miscarriage in trade to compound and set up again
and get good estates; but a statute, as we call it, for ever shuts
up all doors to the debtor's recovery, as if breaking were a crime
so capital that he ought to be cast out of human society and exposed
to extremities worse than death. And, which will further expose the
fruitless severity of this law, it is easy to make it appear that
all this cruelty to the debtor is so far, generally speaking, from
advantaging the creditors, that it destroys the estate, consumes it
in extravagant charges, and unless the debtor be consenting, seldom
makes any considerable dividends. And I am bold to say there is no
advantage made by the prosecuting of a statute with severity, but
what might be doubly made by methods more merciful. And though I am
not to prescribe to the legislators of the nation, yet by way of
essay I take leave to give my opinion and my experience in the
methods, consequences, and remedies of this law.
All people know, who remember anything of the times when that law
was made, that the evil it was pointed at was grown very rank, and
breaking to defraud creditors so much a trade, that the parliament
had good reason to set up a fury to deal with it; and I am far from
reflecting on the makers of that law, who, no question, saw it was
necessary at that time. But as laws, though in themselves good, are
more or less so, as they are more or less seasonable, squared, and
adapted to the circumstances and time of the evil they are made
against; so it were worth while (with submission) for the same
authority to examine:
1. Whether the length of time since that act was made has not given
opportunity to debtors,
(1) To evade the force of the act by ways and shifts to avoid the
power of it, and secure their estates out of the reach of it.
(2) To turn the point of it against those whom it was made to
relieve. Since we see frequently now that bankrupts desire
statutes, and procure
them to be taken out against themselves.
2. Whether the extremities of this law are not often carried on
beyond the true intent and meaning of the act itself by persons who,
besides being creditors, are also malicious, and gratify their
private revenge by prosecuting the offender, to the ruin of his
family.
If these two points are to be proved, then I am sure it will follow
that this act is now a public grievance to the nation, and I doubt
not but will be one time or other repealed by the same wise
authority which made it.
1. Time and experience has furnished the debtors with ways and
means to evade the force of this statute, and to secure their estate
against the reach of it, which renders it often insignificant, and
consequently, the knave against whom the law was particularly bent
gets off, while he only who fails of mere necessity, and whose
honest principle will not permit him to practise those methods, is
exposed to the fury of this act. And as things are now ordered,
nothing is more easy than for a man to order his estate so that a
statute shall have no power over it, or at least but a little.
If the bankrupt be a merchant, no statute can reach his effects
beyond the seas; so that he has nothing to secure but his books, and
away he goes into the Friars. If a Shopkeeper, he has more
difficulty: but that is made easy, for there are men and carts to
be had whose trade it is, and who in one night shall remove the
greatest warehouse of goods or cellar of wines in the town and carry
them off into those nurseries of rogues, the Mint and Friars; and
our constables and watch, who are the allowed magistrates of the
night, and who shall stop a poor little lurking thief, that it may
be has stole a bundle of old clothes, worth five shilling, shall let
them all pass without any disturbance, and hundred honest men robbed
of their estates before their faces, to the eternal infamy of the
justice of the nation.
And were a man but to hear the discourse among the inhabitants of
those dens of thieves, when they first swarm about a new-comer to
comfort him, for they are not all hardened to a like degree at once.
"Well," says the first, "come, don't be concerned, you have got a
good parcel of goods away I promise you, you need not value all the
world." "All! would I had done so," says another, "I'd a laughed at
all my creditors." "Ay," says the young proficient in the hardened
trade, "but my creditors!" "Hang the creditors!" says a third;
"why, there's such a one, and such a one, they have creditors too,
and they won't agree with them, and here they live like gentlemen,
and care not a farthing for them. Offer your creditors half a crown
in the pound, and pay it them in old debts, and if they won't take
it let them alone; they'll come after you, never fear it." "Oh! but
a statute," says he again. "Oh! but the devil," cries the Minter.
"Why, 'tis the statutes we live by," say they; "why, if it were not
for statutes, creditors would comply, and debtors would compound,
and we honest fellows here of the Mint would be starved. Prithee,
what need you care for a statute? A thousand statutes can't reach
you here." This is the language of the country, and the new-comer
soon learns to speak it; for I think I may say, without wronging any
man, I have known many a man go in among them honest, that is,
without ill design, but I never knew one come away so again. Then
comes a graver sort among this black crew (for here, as in hell, are
fiends of degrees and different magnitude), and he falls into
discourse with the new-comer, and gives him more solid advice.
"Look you, sir, I am concerned to see you melancholy; I am in your
circumstance too, and if you'll accept of it, I'll give you the best
advice I can," and so begins the grave discourse.
The man is in too much trouble not to want counsel, so he thanks
