[152a-194]

Fundamental Positions

Conclusion continued

The mode of calculation by averages, would, on such an occasion, be equally discouraging and delusive. In a certain Poor house, the daily expence of diet has amounted (say) to 9 d a day: be it so: be it the same in a hundred Poorhouses. But under Count Romford's plan of management the diet of an equal number of persons having equal wants, and maintained in an equal degree of health and strength, amounted but to 2 d a day. Would 9 d be the fair sample of the expence? would even 5 d2 (the average) be a fair sample? - by no means: 2 d, and no more than 2 d is the true mark.

In a certain Poor house the earnings of the inhabitants (such of them included as were employd in spinning) never amounted to so much (say) as 1 d a day upon an average: be it so: and be it the same in a hundred Poorhouses. But in the year 1790, in the District of Lindsey in Lincolnshire, 112 children, chiefly females being all that were tried, their ages not exceeding upon an average 11 years and 11 months, earned for two months together, at spinning the sort of worsted called Jersey, each of them upon an average 52 a day: and as the rate Paid[?], for five years that the experiment