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 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, or, if the revenue exceed, to cost £2,000 at most, and the salaries mean in proportion.

In the House.

Per annum.

A steward

£30

A purveyor

20

A cook

20

A butler

20

Six women to assist the cook and clean the house, £4each

24

Six nurses to tend the people, £3 each

18

A chaplain

20

£152

A hundred alms-people at £8 per annum, diet,&c.

800

£952

The table for the officers, and contingencies, and clothesfor the alms-people, and firing, put together

500

An auditor of theaccounts, a committee of the governors, and two clerks.

Here I suppose £1,500 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.