introducing new habits of life, is the most substantial charity; and
that the regulation of charity-schools, hospitals, and workhouses, not
the augmentation of their number, can make them answer the wise ends,
for which they were instituted.

"The children of beggars should be also taken from them, and bred up to
labour, as children of the public. Thus the distressed might be
relieved, at a sixth part of the present expense; the idle be compelled
to work or starve; and the mad be sent to Bedlam. We should not see
human nature disgraced by the aged, the maimed, the sickly, and young
children, begging their bread; nor would compassion be abused by those,
who have reduced it to an art to catch the unwary. Nothing is wanting
but common sense and honesty in the execution of laws.

"To prevent such abuse in the streets, seems more practicable than to
abolish bad habits within doors, where greater numbers perish. We see,
in many familiar instances, the fatal effects of example. The careless
spending of time among servants, who are charged with the care of
infants, is often fatal: the nurse frequently destroys the child! the
poor infant, being left neglected, expires whilst she is sipping her
tea! This may appear to you as rank prejudice, or jest; but, I am
assured, from the most indubitable evidence, that many very
extraordinary cases of this kind have really happened, among those whose
duty does not permit of such kind of habits.

"It is partly from such causes, that nurses of the children of the
public often forget themselves, and become impatient when infants cry;
the next step to this is using extraordinary means to quiet them. I have
already mentioned the term killing nurse, as known in some workhouses:
Venice treacle, poppy water, and Godfrey's cordial, have been the kind