[572] Grisenthwaite’s Remarks.
[573] The reader will perceive that this is not perfectly correct; but so it stands in Mr. Grisenthwaite’s Pamphlet. The incorrectness, however, is trivial, and cannot affect the main subject. It may be supposed to lie among the separate articles, rather than in the casting up; but it cannot be rectified without a sight of the original account.
[574] This statement also is somewhat inaccurate, but not so as to affect the main subject. The sum total may be presumed to be strictly correct, whatever slight errors may have crept among the separate articles, which might be easily rectified by a sight of the original documents.
[575a] See Grisenthwaite’s Remarks, p. 21, and the last Account of Receipts and Disbursements published by the Corporation of Guardians.
[575b] They were between fire and six score last year, and are supposed to be more now. This is said to have already occasioned to our Lynn house-owners a loss of above 1000l. a year: of course, they have no great reason to exult in the goodness of the times, or to boast of the salutary or beneficial effects of the new poor and paving laws.
[576a] Lynn, unquestionably, owes much of its present declension to the new poor and paving laws, which have so greatly added to those burdens which were already become almost unbearable: they therefore ought not to have been brought forward at such a time; especially as they were disapproved by a large proportion of the inhabitants. Though their bad effects are visible to the most superficial observer, yet that avails nothing: we are too self-sufficient to be taught by experience, or to let the remembrance of past errors correct our future conduct. The present sudden advance, or augmentation of the water-rent, at the rate of fifty per cent, may serve to illustrate this. Under our present circumstances, this measure must appear exceedingly inconsiderate, unfeeling, and illtimed. It would not have been disreputable in the managers of this concern to pay the inhabitants the compliment of explaining to them the reason of this measure: but, perhaps, they might think that the inhabitants had no light to know the reason, nor yet the reasonableness of their exactions. Private householders are to be charged higher than shopkeepers: this also seems to want explanation. Were we possessed of the whole secret, it would probably appear that abuses exist in the management of our waterworks not very dissimilar to those of our work-house.
[576b] Grisenthwaite’s Remarks, page 40.
[577a] Sixty Stone a week, or more, as it is positively reported.
[577b] Grisenthwaite’s Remarks, p. 41.
[578a] Account of Receipts and Disbursements of 1809, published by the Corporation of Guardians.