entertainment of our most gracious Sovereign, his nobles, and his people; permit an humble individual, who rejoices on the occasion, and participates in the satisfaction it affords, to offer his mite to the general applause; and add to the memento, an humble tribute of respect to your Lordship's character.

Permit me, my Lord, to offer you the slowly-ripening fruits of my researches and labours, which have been collected from an examination into the state of the various prisons of this kingdom.

Allow me to dedicate to your Lordship (as the noble patron of an institution, so judiciously, and humanely, adapted to alleviate, and relieve, the sufferings and the necessities of the poor and captive debtors,) this little tract, descriptive of their condition, and the hardships they are necessitated to endure.

It

It is, my Lord, an offering of gratitude, to which your Lordship's humanity and benevolence are most justly entitled; and which have so highly exalted the noble name of ROMNEY.

It includes, my Lord, the united suffrages of thousands of our fellow creatures, and inscribes upon this tablet, which your Lordship's own virtues have raised, the indelible characters, which Horace so elegantly pourtrays, Exegi monumentum ære perennius.”

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To the patronage of your Lordship's venerable father, from the small beginnings of a celebrated divine, the Society owes its origin; and to your philanthropy, my Lord, must be attributed its present prosperity. You have not only aided it by your pecuniary services, but by unremitted personal attentions, and by nourishment proper to its age. You have brought it forward, my Lord, to public obser

vation,

vation, and now introduced it as the beloved child of a large body of the community, who have generously assisted by their labours to raise it to maturity, under your Lordship's vigilance, unwearied exertions, assiduity, and care. "In carcere eram, et venistis ad me," are words, my Lord, that dignify a coronet, and would ornament a crown: the honour they confer are truly a robe and a diudem, and cannot be applied to your Lordship, disjoined from the elegant description of Job, "When "the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and "when the eye saw me, it gave witness to

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me; because I delivered the poor that cried,

"and the fatherless, and him that had none to

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'help him. The blessing of him that was

ready to perish came upon me; and I "caused the widow's heart to sing for joy."

May that pleasure and satisfaction, which are the constant companions of a benevolence like your Lordship's, accompany your humanė

exertions

exertions through a long old age; and when the period shall arrive, when our accounts must be given, may you, my Lord, receive that sentence, which shall then be pronounced, "Good and faithful servant, enter thou into "the joy of thy Lord!”

Such, my Lord, is the prayer of him, who, with the highest respect, has the honour to be,