1. It is humbly proposed, That a proper receptacle or habitation be forthwith erected for all such persons as, upon due trial and examination, shall appear to be out of their wits.
2. That, to serve the present exigency, the college in Moorfields be very much extended at both ends; and that it be converted into a square, by adding three other sides to it.
3. That nobody be admitted into these three additional sides but such whose frenzy can lay no claim to any apartment in that row of building which is already erected.
4. That the architect, physician, apothecary, surgeon, keepers, nurses, and porters be all and each of them cracked, provided that their frenzy does not lie in the profession or employment to which they shall severally and respectively be assigned.
N.B. It is thought fit to give the foregoing notice, that none may present himself here for any post of honour or profit who is not duly qualified.
5. That over all the gates of the additional buildings there be figures placed in the same manner as over the entrance of the edifice already erected, provided they represent such distractions only as are proper for those additional buildings; as of an envious man gnawing his own flesh; a gamester pulling himself by the ears and knocking his head against a marble pillar; a covetous man warming himself over a heap of gold; a coward flying from his own shadow, and the like.
Having laid down this general scheme of my design, I do hereby invite all persons who are willing to encourage so public-spirited a project to bring in their contributions as soon as possible; and to apprehend forthwith any politician whom they shall catch raving in a coffee-house, or any free-thinker whom they shall find publishing his deliriums, or any other person who shall give the like manifest signs of a crazed imagination. And I do at the same time give this public notice to all the madmen about this great city, that they may return to their senses with all imaginable expedition, lest, if they should come into my hands, I should put them into a regimen which they would not like; for if I find any one of them persist in his frantic behaviour I will make him in a month's time as famous as ever Oliver's porter was.
JOSEPH ADDISON.
(1672-1719.)