There is another class amongst us, and that rather numerous, whose employment is laborious, and whose conduct is irregular. Their time is divided between hard working, and hard drinking, and both by a fire. It is no uncommon thing to see one of these, at forty, wear the aspect of sixty, and finish a life of violence at fifty, which the hand of prudence would have directed to eighty.
The strength of a kingdom consists in the multitude of its inhabitants; success in trade depends upon the manufacturer; the support and direction of a family, upon the head of it. When this useful part of mankind, therefore, are cut off in the active part of life, the community sustains a loss, whether we take the matter in a national, a commercial, or a private view.
We have a third class, who shun the rock upon which these last fall, but wreck upon another; they run upon scylla though they have missed charybdis; they escape the liquid destruction, but split upon the solid. These are proficients in good eating; adepts in culling of delicacies, and the modes of dressing them. Matters of the whole art of cookery; each carries a kitchen in his head. Thus an excellent constitution may be stabbed by the spit. Nature never designed us to live well, and continue well; the stomach is too weak a vessel to be richly and deeply laden. Perhaps more injury is done by eating than by drinking; one is a secret, the other an open enemy: the secret is always supposed the most dangerous. Drinking attacks by assault, but eating by sap: luxury is seldom visited by old age. The best antidote yet discovered against this kind of slow poison is exercise; but the advantages of elevation, air, and water, on one hand, and disadvantages of crowd, smoke, and effluvia on the other, are trifles compared to intemperance.
We have a fourth class, and with these I shall shut up the clock. If this valuable machine comes finished from the hand of nature; if the rough blasts of fortune only attack the outward case, without affecting the internal works, and if reason conduces the piece, it may move on, with a calm, steady, and uninterrupted pace to a great extent of years, 'till time only annihilates the motion.
I personally know amongst us a Mrs. Dallaway, aged near 90; George Davis, 85; John Baddally, Esq; and his two brothers, all between 80 and and 90; Mrs. Allen, 92; Mrs. Silk, 84; John Burbury, 84; Thomas Rutter, 88; Elizabeth Bentley, 88; John Harrison and his wife, one 86, the other 88; Mrs. Floyd, 87; Elizabeth Simms, 88; Sarah Aston, 98; Isaac Spooner, Esq; 89; Joseph Scott, Esq; 94; all at this day, January 9, 1780, I believe enjoy health and capacity. This is not designed as a complete list of the aged, but of such only as immediately occur to memory. I also knew a John England who died at the age of 89; Hugh Vincent, 94; John Pitt, 100; George Bridgens, 103; Mrs. More, 104. An old fellow assured me he had kept the market 77 years: he kept it for several years after to my knowledge. At 90 he was attacked by an acute disorder, but, fortunately for himself, being too poor to purchase medical assistance, he was left to the care of nature, who opened that door to health which the physician would have locked for ever. At 106 I heard him swear with all the fervency of a recruit: at 107 he died. It is easy to give instances of people who have breathed the smoak of Birmingham for threescore years, and yet have scarcely left the precincts of of youth. Such are the happy effects of constitution, temper, and conduct!
Ancient State of Birmingham.
We have now to pass through the very remote ages of time, without staff to support us, without light to conduct us, or hand to guide us. The way is long, dark, and slippery. The credit of an historian is built upon truth; he cannot assert, without giving his facts; he cannot surmise, without giving his reasons; he must relate things as they are, not as he would have them. The fabric founded in error will moulder of itself, but that founded in reality will stand the age and the critic.
Except half a dozen pages in Dugdale, I know of no author who hath professedly treated of Birmingham. None of the histories which I have seen bestow upon it more than a few lines, in which we are sure to be treated with the noise of hammers and anvils; as if the historian thought us a race of dealers in thunder, lightning, and wind; or infernals, puffing in blast and smoak.
Suffer me to transcribe a passage from Leland, one of our most celebrated writers, employed by Henry the VIIIth to form an itinerary of Britain, whose works have stood the test of 250 years. We shall observe how much he erred for want of information, and how natural for his successors to copy him.