Giving Employment — Indirect Taxation
Mr. Babbage relates the following illustrative anecdote: An Irish proprietor, whose country residence was much frequented by beggars, resolved to establish a test for discriminating between the idle and the industrious, and also to obtain some small return for the alms he was in the habit of bestowing. He accordingly added to the pump, by which the upper part of his house was supplied with water, a piece of mechanism so contrived, that at the end of a certain number of strokes of the pump-handle, a penny fell out from an aperture to repay the labourer for his work. This was so arranged, that labourers who continued at the work obtained very nearly the usual daily wages of labour in that part of the country. The idlest of the vagabonds of course refused this new labour-test; but the greater part of the beggars, whose constant tale was that “they could not earn a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,” after earning a few pence, usually went away cursing the hardness of their taskmaster.