A Number of the inhabitants of this city, desirous of encouraging the poor, by finding them employ, did in the year 1764 agree to form themselves into a company, and to raise a common stock, to be laid out in the purchase of hemp, flax, &c. and in employing people to manufacture the same into coarse linen : ... Agreeable to this plan new articles were ordered to be drawn up, and fairly copied into the book, to be subscribed as well by those who had signed the former, as by those who should now or hereafter enter. The articles are as follows ...