of repairing this portion of the legislative fabric, that even so great a man as Mr Locke attempted it to but little purpose."
Richard Dunning, a Devonshire gentleman, published at Exeter in 1696 a pamphlet "Bread for the Poor." He points out that in some Devonshire parishes the poor rate "had in a few years advanced from 40s. to £40 and was likely to double in a short time." The cause of this, he says, is (1) profuseness of diet, paupers drinking nothing but strong beer, and bread of the finest wheat flour; (2) idleness. "Persons receiving parish pay presently become idle alledging that the parish is bound to maintain them, and that in case they should work it would only favour the parish, from whom they say they shall have no thanks." His pamphlet is of special interest because it is one of the first which definitely advocates the adoption of the workhouse test—"Careless surly sorts," he says, "now (that is to say when offered admission) find themselves at a loss: they must either humour and comply with the tradesmen who have stocks and serve them, or work in the workhouses and submit to that government. Being reduced to that dilemma they will choose the first and rather comply with a master of their own choosing than of the Mayor's."
A Mr Cary of Bristol about two years later published an "Essay on Employing the Poor" very much upon the same lines. He, like Dunning, ascribes the increase in the poor rates to idleness, to alehouses and idle tippling, and "to games and sports which draw men away from labour." He proposes the establishment of workhouses as a restraint upon idleness, and that rates be made with more equality in cities and great towns, as under existing conditions "their chief dependence must be upon these but one step above their own
