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We hope it will be considered, that there are multitudes of necessitous heirs and penurious parents, persons in pinching circumstances with numerous families of children, wives that have lived long, many robust aged women with great jointures, elder brothers with bad understandings, single heirs of great estates, whereby the collateral line are for ever excluded, reversionary patents, and reversionary promises of preferments, leases upon single lives, and play-debts upon joint lives, and that the persons so aggrieved have no hope of being speedily relieved any other way, than by the dispensing of drugs and medicines in the manner they now are: burying alive being judged repugnant to the known laws of this kingdom.

That there are many of the deceased, who, by certain mechanical motions and powers, are carried about town, who would have been put into our hands long before this time, by any other well-ordered government by want of a due police in this particular, our company have been great sufferers.

That frequent funerals contribute to preserve the genealogies of families, and the honours conferred by the crown, which are no where so well illustrated as on this solemn occasion: to maintain necessitous clergy; to enable the clerks to appear in decent habits to officiate on Sundays; to feed the great retinue of sober and melancholy men, who appear at the said funerals, and who must starve without constant and regular employment. Moreover, we desire it may be remembered, that, by the passing of this bill, the nobility and gentry will have their old coaches lie upon their hands, which are now employed by our company.

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And we farther hope, that frequent funerals will not be discouraged, as it is by this bill proposed, it being the only method left of carrying some people

to church.

We are afraid, that, by the hardships of this bill our company will be reduced to leave their business here, and practice at York and Bristol, where the free use of bad medicines will be still allowed.

It is therefore hoped, that no specious pretence whatsoever will be thought sufficient to introduce an arbitrary and unlimited power for people to live (in defiance of art) as long as they can by the course of nature, to the prejudice of our company and the decay of trade.

That as our company are likely to suffer, in some measure, by the power given to physicians to dissect the bodies of malefactors, we humbly hope, that the manufacture of cases for skeletons will be reserved solely to the coffin makers,

We likewise humbly presume, that the interest of the several trades and professions, which depend upon ours, may be regarded; such as that of herses, coaches, coffins, epitaphs, and bell-ropes, stonecutters, feathermen, and bell-ringers; and especially the manufacturers of crapes; and the makers of snuff; who use great quantities of old coffins, and who, considered in the consumption of their drugs, employ by far the greatest number of hands of any manufacture of the kingdom.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN

OF THE

CITY OF LONDON.

THE

HUMBLE PETITION

OF THE

COLLIERS, COOKS, COOK-MAIDS, BLACKSMITHS, JACKMAKERS, BRASIERS, AND OTHERS.

SHOWETH,

THAT whereas certain virtuosi disaffected to the government, and to the trade and prosperity of this kingdom, taking upon them the name and title of the CATOPTRICAL VICTUALLERS, have presumed by gathering, breaking, folding, and bundling up the sunbeams by the help of certain glasses to make, produce, and kindle up several new focuses or fires within these his majesty's dominions, and there to boil, bake, stew, fry, and dress all sorts of victuals and provisions, to brew, distil spirits, smelt ore, and in general to perform all the offices of culinary fires; and are endeavouring to procure to themselves the monopoly of this their said invention: We beg leave humbly to represent to your honours,

That such grant or patent will utterly ruin and re

'duce

duce to beggary your petitioners, their wives, children, servants, and trades on them depending; there being nothing left to them, after the said invention, but warming of cellars and dressing of suppers in the winter-time. That the abolishing of so considerable a branch of the coasting trade, as that of the colliers, will destroy the navigation of this kingdom. That whereas the said catoptrical victuallers talk of making use of the moon by night, as of the sun by day, they will utterly ruin the numerous body of tallowchandlers, and impair a very considerable branch of the revenue, which arises from the tax upon tallow and candles.

That the said catoptrical victuallers do profane the emanations of that glorious luminary the sun, which is appointed to rule the day, and not to roast mutton. And we humbly conceive, it will be found contrary to the known laws of this kingdom, to confine, forestal, and monopolize the beams of the sun. And whereas the said catoptrical victuallers have undertaken by burning glasses made of ice to roast an ox upon the Thames next winter: we conceive all such practices to be an encroachment upon the rights and privileges of the company of watermen.

That the diversity of exposition of the several kitchens in this great city, whereby some receive the rays of the sun sooner, and others later, will occasion great irregularity as to the time of dining of the several inhabitants, and consequently great uncertainty and confusion in the dispatch of business and to those, who by reason of their northern exposition will be still forced to be at the expense of culinary fires, it will reduce the price of their manufacture to such inequality, as is inconsistent with common jus

tice and the same inconveniency will affect landlords in the value of their rents.

That the use of the said glasses will oblige cooks and cook-maids to study opticks and astronomy, in order to know the due distance of the said focuses or fires, and to adjust the position of their glasses to the several altitudes of the sun, varying according to the hours of the day, and the seasons of the year; which studies, at these years, will be highly troublesome to the said cooks and cook-maids, not to say any thing of the utter incapacity of some of them to go through with such difficult arts; or (which is still a greater inconvenience) it will throw the whole art of cookery into the hands of astronomers and glassgrinders, persons utterly unskilled in other parts of that profession, to the great detriment of the health of his majesty's good subjects.

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That it is known by experience, that meat roasted with sunbeams is extremely unwholesome; witness several that have died suddenly after eating the visions of the said catoptrical victuallers; forasmuch as the sunbeams taken inwardly render the humours too hot and adust, occasion great sweatings, and dry up the rectual moisture.

That sunbeams taken inwardly shed a malignant influence upon the brain by their natural tendency toward the moon; and produce madness and distraction at the time of the full moon. That the constant use of so great quantities of this inward light, will occasion the growth of quakerism, to the danger of the church; and of poetry, to the danger of the

state.

That the influences of the constellations, through which the sun passes, will with his beams be conveyed

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