| Citation |
BC.768.005
11-18 Jan 1768:431,432 (1/5)
London. Extract of a letter from John Wilkes Esq; Paris,
Rue de Saints Peres. . . [3/4 column. Near bottom of 1st
column:] We are informed from good hands that a French
Nobleman, of great sagacity and penetration, who spent some
months of the last winter in our metropolis, had laid before
his Most Christian Majesty, and his chief council, a scheme
for the destruction of all the capital manufactures of
London; founded on the observations he made, during his
residence amongst us, on the humours of our common people;
their disposition to idleness: their appetite for novelty,
and their want of a police, to enforce industry and labour.
The plan is no more than this; to employ about three or four
hundred vagabonds, with dogs, fiddlers, bears, monkies,
parrots, birds of all colours, &c. &c. to disperse
themselves daily throughout all the streets in London,
occupied principally by our manufacturers; which, by
exciting the curiosity of the mobility, and gratifying their
love of idleness, cannot fail, in a short time, according to
this Nobleman's conception, of annihilating our
manufactures, and thereby rendering our common people an
absolute burthen on the whole community.
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