His father, who did not choose to comply with his wishes for various reasons, nor yet to refuse him in a mortifying manner, wrote an answer, the chief purpose of which was to make him sensible what sort of a sum half a crown a week was, and to how many more important uses it might be put, than to provide a school-boy with things absolutely superfluous to him.
“It is calculated,” said he, “that a grown man may be kept in health and fit for labour upon a pound and a half of good bread a day. Suppose the value of this to be two pence half-penny, and add a penny for a quart of milk, which will greatly improve his diet, half a crown will keep him eight or nine days in this manner.
“A common labourer’s wages in our country are seven shillings per week, and if you add somewhat extraordinary for harvest work, this will not make it amount to three half-crowns on an average the year round. Suppose his wife and children to earn another half-crown. For this ten shillings per week he will maintain himself, his wife, and half a dozen children, in food, lodging, clothes, and fuel. A half-crown then may be reckoned the full weekly maintenance of two human creatures in every thing necessary.
“Where potatoes are much cultivated, two bushels, weighing eighty pounds a piece, may be purchased for half a crown. Here are one hundred and sixty pounds of solid food, of which allowing for the waste in dressing, you may reckon two pounds and a half sufficient for the sole daily nourishment of one person. At this rate, nine people might be fed a week for half a crown; poorly, indeed, but so as many thousands are fed, with the addition of a little salt or buttermilk.
“If the father of a numerous family were out of work, or the mother lying-in, a parish would think half a crown a week a very ample assistance to them.
“Many of the cottagers round us would receive with great thankfulness a sixpenny loaf per week, and reckon it a very material addition to their children’s bread. For half a crown, therefore, you might purchase—the weekly blessings of five poor families.
“Porter is a sort of luxury to a poor man, but not a useless one, since it will stand in the place of some solid food, and enable him to work with better heart. You could treat a hard-working man with a pint a day of this liquor for twelve days, with half a crown.
“Many a cottage in the country inhabited by a large family is let for forty shillings a year. Half a crown a week would pay the full rent of three such cottages, and allow somewhat over for repairs.
“The usual price for schooling at a dame-school in a village is two pence a week. You might, therefore, get fifteen children instructed in reading, and the girls in sewing, for half a crown weekly. But even in a town you might get them taught reading, writing, and accounts, and so fitted for any common trade, for five shillings a quarter; and therefore half a crown a week would keep six children at such a school, and provide them with books besides.
“All these are ways in which half a crown a week might be made to do a great deal of good to others. I shall now just mention one or two ways of laying it out with advantage to yourself.