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your county or any adjacent ones contains, Hounslow Heath, Epping
Forrest, or any other Heath or Forest that the Crown His Majesty has already in
His its possession, would answer every plea he could put in: and out of that
he would crib gardens, and farm yards, and I know not what besides. As to
Running water, it is indeed is to every purpose a very agreable circumstance, and under
the ordinary Jail regimen a very desirable, possibly an essential one.
But many of the Lords and Commons make shift without it, even at
their Villas: their villas, and almost all when not at their villas, without ascribing any want of health they may labour
under to the want of running water. As to my Contractors boarders,
they must have water, indeed, because every body must have water:
But, under the provision I have made for turning the operations of
cleanliness into motions of course, I should apprehend, their condition
might still be tolerable, though they should have no other running
stock of that necessary element than what falls to the share of better
men.
When the ground thus dearly wrung from the grasp of Luxury
came to be covered, think what another source of expence was to
be opened, when, over and above nine hundred roomy chambers, for so
many person to lie in, three other different classes of apartments were
to be provided, to I know not what number nor extent, for them to
work in, to pray in and to suffer in: four operations the scenes of which are upon our
plan the scenes are consolidated into one.
I need not add much to what I have said in a former
letter, about the tribe of subordinate establishments, each of them taken
singly an object of no mean expence, which it seems to have been in
contemplation to inclose within the fortress. I mean the mills, the forges, the
engines, the timber-yards, and the rope-walks. The seal which stamps
my contract, dispells, as if it were a talisman, this great town in nubibus; and
two or three plain round-houses take its place. Either I am much
mistaken, or a sum inferior to what was paid, or destined, for the bare
ground of the proposed Penitentiary-house, would build and compleatly
fit up those Round-houses, besides paying for the ground.
To this account of the dead stock, is to be added, if I may
say it without offence, that of the livestock, of Inspectors of every rank and
denomination. I mean the pyramid of Under-keepers, Task-masters and
Store keepers, Governors, and Committees of Magistrates which it builds
up, all to be paid and salaried, with allowances rising in proportion
to the rise of dignity: the whole to be crowned with a grand triumvirate
of Superintendants, two of whom were to have been members of
parliament, men of high birth and quality, whose toilsome dignity a
minister would hardly have affronted, by the offer of salaries much
inferior to what are still to be found annexed to sinecures.
I will not say much of the "other officers" without number,
which, I see by my View of the Hard-Labour Bill, were to have been
added, and of course must have been added, in such number as the
"Committees" of your worship's, to whom this business was then committed, or
any rate some other good Judges, should have "Judged necessary"
you for one, your son, is in duty bound, assures himself, would have employed
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