degradation and laziness. This state of things causes others to be improvident about their wages, knowing that if their vices bring them into utter want, they must be maintained in idleness at last.3

Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay: Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made: But a bold Peasantry, their Country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied. The Deserted Village.

Repeated animadversions of The Commissioners will be found, on the demoralizing effects of appropriating Charities in aid of the Poor Rates,—which it is manifest, are so strongly opposed to the interests of Industry and of Virtue, and the prescribed injunctions of the Donors.

3 Morning Herald Newspaper, 7th Sept. 1827.Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxxv. p. 908.

* Rep. vi. p. 183.—Rep. xiv. pp. 579, 584.

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SECOND POOR.

THERE are various benefactions in the County of Somerset, for the "Second Poor,"- -a denomination which implies those poor persons, who do not receive Parochial relief.

In 1728, JOHN CARD, by his Will, gave all his lands and hereditaments, to the use of the Second Poor of the hamlet of Draycott,—the annual rents of which, in 1818, amounted to 3221. 15s. A species of beneficence, which might have been appropriated to nobler purposes, and so true it is, that Charity, like other virtues, may be improperly and unseasonably exerted.

It has been found by the Trustees, that the appropriation of so large an annual income to persons presenting themselves for relief, as coming under the description of Second Poor, has attracted a great number of idle and undeserving persons to the neighbourhood, and operated as an

encouragement to Vice and Indolence,and the Trustees are, therefore, of opinion, that the appropriation of the major part of the funds in building and establishing one or more Schools, for male and female children, in a neighbourhood in which it is so much wanted as in the Mendip District, where there is not at present (in 1819) a single School, would be eminently useful. The Trustees also conceive, that the binding out the Scholars as Apprentices, would also be a very valuable addition to the advantage which they would derive from education, inasmuch as there is not sufficient work in Agriculture for the persons who reside in the place.

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They further express themselves to be unanimously of opinion, that the present mode of applying the Funds is most prejudicial to the best interests of those who are the objects of the Charity, and that no means would be so likely to be permanently advantageous to the Second Poor themselves, as the establishing of Schools for the education of their children, and

binding them out apprentices when educated,—but, as the present mode of appropriating their funds, was proposed by themselves and approved of and directed by The Court of Chancery, it is now their wish to declare, that experience of it's bad results has produced in them this change of opinion.1

LOTS.

ONE of the Puritanical tenets was the illegality of all Games of Chance,—and he that reads GATAKER upon Lots may see how much Learning and Reason one of the first Scholars of his age thought necessary, to prove that it was no crime to throw a die, or play at cards, or to hide a shilling for the reckoning.1

Certain lands in the Parish of Bampton, in the County of Westmorland, were formerly let together, and the rest was divided as directed by the testator, between the Minister of the Parish and the Schoolmaster of the Free School in Grange,but some years ago, the land was measured and divided, and the Minister and Schoolmaster drew Lots for the choice. This was done by the consent of the

Johnson's Works, vol. ix. p. 197. 8vo. edit., 1801.

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