Page:The reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor (IA b21971961 0001).pdf/29

fuel increased; so as to give more comfort to their habitations, and to remove an inducement to petty thefts, too frequently the source of criminal habits:—that parish mills, village shops, and all other means of affording the poor a plentiful and cheap supply of the necessaries of life, be gradually introduced wherever they may be useful and proper;—that the cases of beggars be inquired into;—that the idle and criminal be compelled to work, and the friendless and distressed either relieved at home, or received into a clean and comfortable asylum—that the condition of poor children, consigned in lots as apprentices to manufactories, and there left unprotected and forgotten, be placed under a system of inspection.——Let us suppose friendly societies the subjects of individual and voluntary aid and encouragement in every part of the kingdom:—parish workhouses amended and regulated, and tenanted by the only persons who should be resident in them—those whose forlorn and insulated condition precludes their doing better out of them:—