| Citation |
PC.768.002
28 Dec 1767-4 Jan 1768:2004 (1/51)
London. . . October 1. 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, has
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, fiddles, 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 nobility, 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. (This patriotic
nobleman perhaps might serve his country, without much
trouble, by acting in the monkey part of the shew.)
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