A Country That Has No Money, Is By No Means Convenient For Beggars,
Both Because Such Countries Are Commonly Poor, And Because Charity
Requires Some Trouble And Some Thought.
A penny is easily given
upon the first impulse of compassion, or impatience of importunity;
but few will deliberately search their cupboards or their granaries
to find out something to give.
A penny is likewise easily spent,
but victuals, if they are unprepared, require houseroom, and fire,
and utensils, which the beggar knows not where to find.
Yet beggars there sometimes are, who wander from Island to Island.
We had, in our passage to Mull, the company of a woman and her
child, who had exhausted the charity of Col. The arrival of a
beggar on an Island is accounted a sinistrous event. Every body
considers that he shall have the less for what he gives away.
Their alms, I believe, is generally oatmeal.
Near to Col is another Island called Tireye, eminent for its
fertility. Though it has but half the extent of Rum, it is so well
peopled, that there have appeared, not long ago, nine hundred and
fourteen at a funeral. The plenty of this Island enticed beggars
to it, who seemed so burdensome to the inhabitants, that a formal
compact was drawn up, by which they obliged themselves to grant no
more relief to casual wanderers, because they had among them an
indigent woman of high birth, whom they considered as entitled to
all that they could spare.
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