Eleventhly, that the corporation be obliged to provide for all
public beggars, and to put the laws into execution against public
beggars and idle vagrant persons.
Such of the public beggars as can work must be employed, the rest to
be maintained as impotent poor, but the laws to be severely put in
execution against those who shall ask any public alms.
This proposal, which in most parts of it seems to be very maturely
weighed, may be a foundation for those to build upon who have a
public spirit large enough to embrace such a noble undertaking.
But the common obstruction to anything of this nature is a malignant
temper in some who will not let a public work go on if private
persons are to be gainers by it. When they are to get themselves,
they abandon all sense of virtue; but are clothed in her whitest
robe when they smell profit coming to another, masking themselves
with a false zeal to the commonwealth, where their own turn is not
to be served. It were better, indeed, that men would serve their
country for the praise and honour that follow good actions, but this
is not to be expected in a nation at least leaning towards
corruption, and in such an age it is as much as we can hope for if
the prospect of some honest gain invites people to do the public
faithful service. For which reason, in any undertaking where it can
be made apparent that a great benefit will accrue to the
commonwealth in general, we ought not to have an evil eye upon what
fair advantages particular men may thereby expect to reap, still
taking care to keep their appetite of getting within moderate
bounds, laying all just and reasonable restraints upon it, and
making due provision that they may not wrong or oppress their fellow
subjects.
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