THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES . THE RIGHTS OF THE POOR. 33 tijr aatne author. A NEW SYSTEM of LOGIC. Upon Christian Principles. LONDON : ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKITK, I') St. Martin's Lam THE RIGHTS OF THE POOR (Kfjmttan &Jmsgtbmg totnBt THE STATE AND CHAKACTER OF THE POOR, AND THE CONDUCT AND DUTIES OF THE RICH, EXHIBITED AND ILLUSTRATED. BY S. R. BOSANQUET, ESQ. VIA CCELI PAUPER EST. ST. AUGUSTINE. LONDON: JAMES BURNS, 17 PORTMAN STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE. M.DCCC.XLI. JW NOTICE. A CONSIDERABLE portion of the matter con- tained in the following pages has appeared in two recent numbers of the " British Critic." The whole is now collected together, and presented in the form and extent in which it was originally prepared, with improve- ments and additions. 1408634 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. I-ntroDtutum. PAGE The prevalent opinion of the Poor is a harsh and uncharitable one the history and growth of this opinion ...... I CHAPTER II. iTJjf If.vtstf utr of y obrvtr*. Difficult to give a faithful picture the existence of poverty questioned importance of a correct opinion poverty caused by riches examples of great distress effects of deficiency of food starvation gradual diseases caused by it effects similar to those of intoxication distress among all classes . . . . .26 VI11 CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. EJje ausrs of |)obertg. PAGE Number of children economy of the Poor ill- ness old age, and widowhood desertion by husband want of employment loss of tools, and clothes coming to London shipwreck, and other accidents want of settlement difficulty of obtaining parish -relief insuffi- ciency of parish-relief vice drunkenness weakness of character seduction prostitu- tion 75 CHAPTER IV. &f)t Character of ttjc $oor. Virtues of the Poor contentment religion mu- tual kindness and charity liberality honesty faith self-denial heroism . Sect. II. Impostors signs of imposture fre- quency of imposture exaggerated . . .163 CHAPTER V. IJribatc Slims an& $oor*l,ato ftrltrf. Private charity ought to supersede the public provision the public provision inadequate in amount- defective in principle exainj' 1 CONTENTS. IX PAGE this a Poor-law necessary, but subsidiary connexion between the Poor-law and police Poor-law injurious to rich and poor relation between public and private charity remedy proposed the New Poor-law the workhouse test advantages of local administration and small districts example in Prussia good effects of voluntary system in foreign coun- tries in France in Piedmont in Savoy in Venice the Azores the Canaries Greece Scotland Ireland mutual charities of the Irish poor conclusion alms of the church . 205 CHAPTER VI. SErratmnu of tlic \Poor. Modern maxims of charity their failure little charity in England foreign hospitals Eng- lish charity its amount its characteristics its severity its fallacy its remedies divine and human wisdom false principles, and consequent evils Christian charity the Apostolic Fathers John Hales Law Sir Thomas Brown the Jews Maimonides charity in France out-door relief in France the principle and motive chiefly important the Poor want attention and a friend classes are disunited society disjointed symptoms of old age irresponsible property the disease CONTENTS. PAGE desperate the country gentleman the old squire ....... 291 APPENDIX. EXPERIMENT OF THE VOLUNTARY AND PAROCHIAL SYSTEM OF RELIEF IN GLASGOW. Page 344, line 10, for " St. Chrysostom" read " St. Augustine.' THE RIGHTS OF THE POOR, CHAPTER I. Intro&uction. THE PREVALENT OPINION OF THE POOR IS A HARSH AND UNCHARITABLE ONE THE HISTORY AND GROWTH OF THIS OPINION. THE present disposition of writers upon cha- rity is to depreciate the poor, to enumerate their crimes, to magnify their impostures, to prove that they bring their own misfor- tunes upon themselves by their vices, and that the alms which are given to them do in general more harm than good. The abund- ance of charity in this country, and the too great liberality of the English character, is an- other point generally assumed by them. These 6 HARSH OPINIONS OF THE POOR topics are the burden of the writings of pri- vate theorists and philanthropists, of several parliamentary reports, and especially of the reports and other publications which have emanated from the Poor-Law Commissioners. This doctrine respecting the poor had its rise so soon as the effects of the policy of Henry and Elizabeth towards the poor and vagrants had begun to be apparent. From the time when the principal resources of the poor were taken away from them, by the dissolution of monasteries and religious houses, the complaint arose and increased of their bad character and rapacity, and of the too great proportion of the wealth of the country which they obtained. Several publications upon this subject appeared in the 1/th century; of which I will mention one, a tract by Sir Josiah Child, written shortly after the fire of London. 8 He thus easily excuses the want of liberality in the rich at that time : * Proposals for the Relief and Employment of the Poor. By Sir Josiah Child. (No date.) IN XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 3 " As to the second answer to the afore- said question, wherein want of charity is assigned for another cause why the poor are now so much neglected, I think it is a scandalous, ungrounded accusation of our contemporaries; for most that I converse with are not so much troubled to part with their money, as how to place it that it may do good and not hurt to the kingdom ; for if they give to beggars in the streets, or at their doors, they fear they do hurt by encou- raging that lazy, unprofitable kind of life ; and if they give more than their proportions in their respective parishes, that (they say) is giving to the rich, for the poor are not set on work thereby, nor have they more given them; but only their rich neighbours pay the less. And for what was given in churches to the visited poor, and to such as were im- poverished by the fire, we have heard of so many and great abuses of that kind of cha- rity, that most men are under sad discou- ragements in relation thereunto/' During the last century this system and 4 HARSH OPINIONS OF THE POOR doctrine gained ground continually. At the beginning of the century, De Foe wrote a small treatise, entitled " Giving Alms no Charity. " b These are some of the sentences contained in it : " Truly the scandal lies on our charity ; and people have such a notion in England of being pitiful and charitable, that they encourage vagrants, and by a mistaken zeal do more harm than good." ee An alms ill directed may be charity to the particular persons, but becomes an injury to the public, and no charity to the nation. 5 ' " As for the craving poor, I am per- suaded I do them no wrong when I say, that if they were incorporated, they would be the richest society in the nation." C{ The poverty and exigence of the poor in England is plainly derived from one of these two particular causes casualty or crime." c b Giving Alms no Charity. By Daniel De Foe. London : 4to. 1704. c " You would think Flavia had the tenderest con- IN XVJI. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. O But still these are not the chief topics of either of these publications. Entire works were not then written^ having the deprecia- tion of the poor for their object.* 1 But this doctrine and system of economy towards the poor has now become so general and accept- science in the world, if you was to see how scrupu- lous and apprehensive she is of the guilt and danger of giving amiss. As for poor people themselves, she will admit of no complaints from them ; she is very positive they are all cheats and liars, and will say any thing to get relief, and therefore it must be a sin to encourage them in their evil ways." LAW'S Serious Call, chap. 7. (Law died in 1761.) d The following are the titles of two other tracts having the same tendency : " Some Proposals for the Imployment of the Poor, and for the Prevention of Idleness, and the conse- quence thereof, Begging ; a practice so dishonourable to the Nation and the Christian Religion. In a letter to a friend, by T. F. (i. e. Firman)." " A present Remedy for the Poor, or the most pro- bable means to provide well for the Poor of the Nation, to free us in time from paying the Poor's Rates, and deliver us from thepublick Nuisance of Beggars." Lon- don, 1700. HARSH OPINIONS able, that it may almost be said that no voice is raised against it; and the truth has be- come proved, as it were, by its universal acceptance, and the absence of any answer, or even a denial of it. The libellous and abusive descriptions of the lower orders of society which charac- terise modern publications respecting them, and the great popularity which they obtain, is one of the most alarming symptoms of the decline of the national character. It is more than alarming it is awful and appal- ling in the highest degree; and exhibits a feeling and tone of character so wholly anti- christian, as must draw down the heaviest judgments upon the nation, unless happily they may be arrested, and turned again into an opposite channel. It is not my intention to enter at all into the mere political, or rather party object, which is had in view in any of the works alluded to; though of course no real dis- tinction can exist between public and private duty between morals, religion, and poll- RESPECTING THE POOR. tics. My object is as separate as was that of the early Church, when it existed in the midst of the Roman empire. Its endeavour was not to make shifts and modifications, or to cause its rulers to adopt in preference this or that heathenism ; but to convince the people, and to make the empire Chris- tian. I feel persuaded that an entire change of opinion and feeling towards the classes beneath us, that a total change of conduct and communication must be wrought, before we can lay any just claim to the character of a really Christian people Christian, not in name and doctrines only, but in feelings and conduct. Scarcely a voice, as I said, has been raised in favour of the character of the lower orders of late years, or even of free and liberal almsgiving, except in charity -ser- mons, and the reports of particular societies. Yet who can tell but that an example on the side of mercy also may find some fol- lowers in the same career, as that on the side of merciless and s-elfish cruelty has 8 HARSH OPINIONS found many, very many; and the more, if the side of mercy should also haply be found to be the side of truth. But the facts from which these harsh conclusions have been drawn are as false, for the most part, as the reasoning which has been founded upon them. I will venture to take the initiative in an opposition to this Unitarian, antichristian system of philanthropy, which most assidu- ously and disinterestedly forwards and in- vents all schemes of benefit and relief which throw the burden of the poverty of the poor upon themselves, and promote economy in giving, and urges all these self- assisting schemes by a systematic searching out, re- cording, and exaggerating of all the crimes and charges to which the poor have been, or can be subject, without opportunity of defence or denial, and keeping all their vir- tues in the background. I will enumerate some of the charges against the lower classes brought forward in the reports above alluded to ; simply say- RESPECTING THE POOR. 9 ing of them all, that they are gross misre- presentations, and very false pictures. Many of them contradict themselves ; and most of them are too bad to be credited upon re- flection. The following is the manner in which all the lower orders are classed and con- founded together as profligates and villains. The hard-working man is not distinguished from the lazy and the loiterer ; the suffering and unfortunate from the sturdy beggar. The impression intended to be conveyed is, that every man living from hand to mouth (the necessary condition of the major part of the community) that every barrow and basket- woman that every hawker and pedlar every hop-picker every street-sweeper, porter, cabman all the criers in London, whether of hare-skins, old clothes, old bottles, water-cresses (trades by which thousands and thousands of women and men support them- selves honestly) that every body below a mechanic and a shopkeeper (and those are not spared either), is little better than a 10 HARSH OPINIONS thief, is one of the offal of society, and ought to be swept off into some common sewer of filth and corruption by a scavenger police. A single example is sufficient for a general conclusion, when the vices of the poor are the subject. tf There are districts in London which are exclusively inhabited and most densely populated by Irish labourers, by persons who support themselves by the chance-adventure of each day, by professed beggars, and con- firmed thieves. " The nucleus of crime in St. Giles's consists of about six streets, riddled with courts, alleys, passages, and dark entries, all leading to rooms and smaller tenements, crowded with a population existing in all the filth attendant upon improvidence, crime, and profligacy, as if the inhabitants by com- mon consent deem themselves only ' tenants at will/ till the gallows or the hulks should require them." 6 Poverty, Mendicity, and Crime ; or, the Facts, Examinations, &c upon which the Report was founded, RESPECTING THE POOR. 11 There are multitudes in the district here mentioned earning a hard but honest liveli- hood ; and there is no part of it which may not be visited by the clergy, or by any other person on a charitable errand, with perfect safety. " The majority of those who live by labour in St. Giles's are Irish persons, such as por- ters, bricklayers' labourers, hawkers, &c. &c. The women also attend the markets, or sell fruit or fish in the streets, or go out charing or washing. These people live hard in their fare, and still harder in their drink, for they generally get as drunk as their means will allow them. (e There is also a great number of hawkers, boardinen, cabmen, and higglers; men of pre- carious callings, and whose characteristics are of more doubtful complexion than those of the labouring men, who rise and go to a fixed employment. f presented to the House of Lords, by W. A. Miles, Esq. London, 1839, p- 87. f Poverty, Mendicity, and Crime, pp. 88, 89. Evi- 12 HARSH OPINIONS " Most thieves have hawkers' licences, s " Mr. Burgess, the governor of Knuts- ford, states, ' I conceive the vagrant system to be quite as bad as common thieving.' 11 dence has lately been received and published, as if credible, by the House of Commons Committee on the Health of Towns (16th July, 1840, p. 61), that certain districts in Glasgow, of from 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, contain " a motley population, consisting in almost all the lower branches of occupation, but chiefly of a community whose sole means of subsist- ence consists in plunder and prostitution :" i. e. 1 in 12 to 1 in 8 of the whole population of Glasgow have this sweeping imputation cast upon them. The foundation of this evidence was four visits to these dis- tricts, in company with a police superintendent. M isery might be partially, though very imperfectly, seen in the course of four visits, in the day-time, perhaps ; but crime hides itself from broad daylight and police superintendents, and could not be witnessed to any such extent in any four visits. An experienced visiter of the poor, who habitually enters their abodes of wretchedness, can alone give a description of their condition and miseries. It would be well to know how many apartments the witness entered throughout these extensive districts in the course of his four visits. 8 Constab. Force Rep. 1839, p. 36. h Ib. p. 56. RESPECTING THE POOR. 13 fl The hare-skin time is now on. Those people take out a daily supply of bad money, and pass it away when they give change. 1 " A fellow, pale-faced, with sandy whis- kers, named Charles Smith, sells rag stable- mops, which he gets rid of at the stables or mews; he steals brushes, buckets, or any thing ; he has a bag with him ; he gets the best price in Petticoat Lane. ' ' A flower-man happened to pass at the time; Prime caught sight of him through the window, and cried out, ' Look there ; now, can that man make enough by those flowers to live honestly is it likely ? They get into houses when bargaining, see how they are constructed, and the doors fastened, which information he gives to burglars. ' k " Mr. Limbird, of the Strand, heard two old clothesmen ask a countryman, who had a parcel in his hand, if he had any thing for sale, remarking, whether it was his own or ' Constabulary Force Report, p. 97. k Ibid. p. 147. C 14 HARSH OPINIONS not, it made no difference to them, if he wanted the money. " Dog-cart men are almost all of them thieves. " Rag-gatherers generally go in pairs, and are called the school of paper-makers. They call at old -rag shops, and repre- sent themselves as agents or labourers for some mill which has been destroyed; and that in this or some other invented emer- gency, they are sent forward to collect rags ; and while one is bargaining with the shop woman, the other walks off with the bundle, stating that the master is close be- hind, and leaving his companion in pledge, who nearly always contrives to ( bolt/ with- out ' paying a stiver ;' or he satisfies the woman by chalking characters on the door- posts, -which he says is to tell the master the sum he has to pay for the rags, and he is allowed to depart. The booty is taken to a marine-store dealer, or it is swopped away at a paper-maker's for paper, which they dispose of to shops in little villages. RESPECTING THE POOR. 15 " Old-rag shops will buy all sorts of metal." 1 There is a playfulness and flippancy in this last description (which is evidently a general conclusion drawn from a particular instance), which is peculiarly contemptible and disgusting. The whole reminds us of the foolish, thoughtless children deserving whipping in spite of their foolish thought- lessness sporting with the lives of frogs. But independent of the absurdity and self- contradiction of most of these descriptions for the thief here seems to be no match for the thief, but to be as soft as any other per- son, what do the whole of these evidences and this reasoning amount to, which are in- tended to exhibit a faithful and general pic- ture ? Why to this, that all hare-skin wo- men try to stigmatise and destroy their own trade ; that one seller of stabl ( >mops is a notorious thief, and carries off buckets in a bag in broad daylight; that a flower-man is proved a thief by the opinion of another 1 Constabulary Force Report, pp. 154, 155. 16 HARSH OPINIONS thief, and a reductio ad necessitatem ; that two old clothesmen talked so loud, that amidst all the rattling of the Strand, Mr. Limbird thought he heard them both say what would readily have transported them. But the whole in effect is mere carica- ture. It is a pity that such caricature de- scriptions should be used to form our opi- nions of the poor, and be made in these times the groundwork of legislation. But these people are not satisfied with depreciating the poor. To vilify, and prove them all to be punishable, would be fulfil- ling only half their object. To steel the hearts of the rich effectually, and to stop the springs of charity, it is necessary to shew that these abandoned classes are rich ; that these seeming paupers are all wallowing in luxury. And this is the way they prove it: (f Many of the persons who hawk things about the streets in trays make ten shillings a day selling snuff-boxes, steel-pens, &c., the profits of which are more than half. RESPECTING THE POOR. 17 " Mrs. Milberry says, she knows that the men who sell pocket-books, &c. at coach- offices, consider nine shillings to be a very trifling day's profit." 10 There is no mention of the thousands who starve at this employment, or make less than a bare subsistence ; or that these profits are made during a few favourable days, and that for successive days they fall to little or nothing. " He thinks no beggar makes less than from three shillings to four shillings a day ; they all live very well ; they live as well as any respectable small shopkeeper, he thinks better too." n " Street-sweepers in squares and fashion- able neighbourhoods make a good trade; they run of errands for servants, help to clean knives, &c. &c." ' ' Beggars live well ; have hot beefsteaks and beer for breakfast; fare well at night, and are never poor."P m Poverty, Mendicity, and Crime, p. 96. " Ibid. p. 97. Ibid. p. 98. * Ibid. p. 103. c2 18 HARSH OPINIONS " Cadgers never eat broken food ; they take it and sell it. They live on the best of every thing, and drink hard ; after food, all the surplus goes in drinking." ou Kadapa yiyvrfrai TO Trapdirav, that the whole country might be thoroughly cleansed of such creatures. De Leg. lib. xi. (See The Dignity and Claims of the Christian Poor ; two Sermons, by Frederick Oakeley, A.M., p. 11.) 20 HARSH OPINIONS tiniate stage and triumph of reason and civi- lisation by positive enactment, though we are rapidly advancing towards it, and all the causes and processes are actively operating. Already it is a crime to beg, severely punish- able ; and every one, therefore, who gives is particeps criminis, and is also criminal; and as such he is complained of, but more contemned, by the Martineau writers of phi- losophy and political economy. Now, how- ever, we are coming a step closer. The opi- nion is come nearer to the fountain of legis- lation, and is paraded with greater show of authority. Thus say the Poor-Law Commis- sioners, of voluntary contributions to assist labouring persons with large families in times of distress, whose only alternative under the rules of the Commissioners is giving up work altogether, and going into the workhouse with their whole families : " The attempts which are constantly made to evade the law by indirect means, whenever there is a possibility of so doing, (as by vo- RESPECTING THE POOH. 21 luntary rates, &c. c.), confirm us in this anticipation, viz. that all old abuses would creep in again, if the Poor-Law Commission were abolished." 3 ( The only remains of it" (relief to men in work, and in aid of wages) " are to be found in certain irregular practices, to which, if they were not occasionally suggested by erroneous notions of humanity, we should give the appellation of fraudulent. We al- lude to attempts, through private subscrip- tions, by which funds have been raised to be doled out, like the poor-rates, in weekly al- lowances, to all labourers having more than three or four children." 1 " the present demoralising system of begging a thing so ruinous in its effects, that the major part of the delinquents with which our prisons are filled owe their pro- gress in crime to the encouragement given s Report of the Poor- Law Commissioners on the continuance of the Poor-Law Commission. 1840, p. 7 ' Ibid. p. 38. 22 HARSH OPINIONS to idle habits by the false feeling of charity acted on by the public, in the promiscuous dispensation of alms to those who are seldom if ever deserving of them." u (C It is much to be regretted, that the thoughtless and indifferent manner in which the richer classes too often throw away their alms to any applicant, should have afforded encouragement to so many persons to lead a vagrant, and consequently an idle and vicious life ; for it is not to be supposed, when the temptation of obtaining money without labour is offered to a large class, that many persons will not give way to it. In particular, the enormity of sending out young children to beg, and of punishing them if they do not bring home a certain sum (which has been mentioned as frequently practised by the lowest Irish), is distinctly chargeable to those who encourage the mendicity of children by indiscriminate almsgiving." v u Poverty, Mendicity, and Crime, p. 126. v Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great RESPECTING THE POOR. 23 Even the distribution of soup in winter is made to be a false and injurious bene- ficence. These are the kind of charges which are reiterated against the lower orders, and eager- ly received by the classes living at their ease, who think them all very interesting, and sur- prising, and shocking, and feel themselves all the more easy in their consciences from find- ing how unworthy these depraved classes are of their intercourse and charity. All the old stories are repeated over again from Col- quhoun to the Parliamentary Inquiry in 1818, and from the Parliamentary Inquiry to the Poor-Law Commission ; and new facts, and assertions, and estimates, are added, upon the ground of single anecdotes, and hearsay cases, and cruel heartless conjecture. But very few of these estimates are better founded upon truth than Colquhoun's conclusion that Britain. 1835, p. 25. How far the rich are entitled to the charge of giving their alms too liberally, we shall have occasion to inquire in a subsequent chapter. 24 HARSH OPINIONS there were 50,000 prostitutes in London increased in the recent prospectus of a public charity to 80,000; whereas they are proved in the late Constabulary Force Re- port (not very humane inquirers) to be less than 5,500. Unfortunately these estimates and unfa- vourable opinions have been widely extended and eagerly entertained for a very long period. The topic has become popular, and the opi- nions have become rooted, and acknowledged as indisputable, for want of a denial and answer. The charitably disposed, and even the clergy, have become possessed with it. The spirit which has dictated these inquiries and estimates has not till now made itself decidedly apparent ; and it has not been duly considered that the parties themselves, who are the subjects of the charge, have not had, and cannot have, the opportunity of an answer. I propose to give a more favourable, and, I trust, a truer picture of the lower order of RESPECTING THE POOR. 25 society ; and to urge upon the foundation of my own experience among the poor, and the incontrovertible ground of Christian ob- ligation some of those claims and rights of the poorer classes, which have been too entirely forgotten by their richer brethren. CHAPTER II. Uristenre of DIFFICULT TO GIVE A FAITHFUL PICTURE. THE EX- ISTENCE OF POVERTY QUESTIONED. IMPORTANCE OF A CORRECT OPINION. POVERTY CAUSED BY RICHES. EXAMPLES OF GREAT DISTRESS. EFFECTS OF DEFICIENCY OF FOOD. STARVATION GRADUAL. DISEASES CAUSED BY IT. EFFECTS SIMILAR TO THOSE OF INTOXICATION. DISTRESS AMONG ALL CLASSES. I CANNOT pretend to give a perfect picture of society, even of the lowest class of it. The thing is impossible ; and if it were performed, it would be without effect. Society is not a thing with four sides to it ; no, nor with four hundred. Four thousand examples of different states and conditions of life would be insuf- ficient to depict the different shades and gra- dations of circumstances, the different com- plexities and combinations of events ; and, with all their tediousness and wearisomeness, DIFFICULT TO GIVE A FAITHFUL PICTURE. 27 enough almost to defy attention and memory, would, if the picture were perfect, convey very different impressions to the minds of different individuals. The minds and hearts of different persons would retain and rest upon different points and features, according to preconceived opinions, and impressions, and dispositions. But though all the exam- ples were observed and retained, the impres- sion would be imperfect and inadequate. Life is not to be learned by books, any more than dancing. Classifications, and tables, and figures, and statistics, will not more faithfully portray the expression and cha- racter of human life, than mechanism will its movements. Let a painter paint a likeness from description ; let the physician who has read volumes upon the pulse and symptoms, compare with the one who has walked the wards, and attuned his touch to the varied beat of life, in health and disease, in youth and old age, in joy and grief, at morning, noon, and night, in strength, in languor, and in fever. Yet the pulse' and features of social 28 DIFFICULT TO GIVE life are finer and more delicate, and fuller of variety, and expression, and character. Human life is to be learned by practice only and personal experience. But no one now is willing to acquaint himself in this way ; and least of all in this country at least with the classes below that one in which he moves. It is far easier to sit at home, and read returns, and reports, and evidence on oath, and figures, and statistics, and to work out problems of society by a table or a ma- chine, mathematically certain and demon- strable, and squaring all to a fraction, than to pry into dirty courts and lanes, and dismal rooms and cellars, full of vermin, and filth, and infection, and to converse with the low- minded, the vulgar, the dying, the drunken, the discontented, the miserable. This may be the way to very creditable philosophy, but it is not the road to truth. My object, however, is a narrow and a definite one, the existence and nature of poverty, its causes, and the treatment of it. I know that it is very difficult even to put A FAITHFUL PICTURE. 29 this in a true light; and the truest picture will affect the beholders very differently. A too-continued and exclusive view of one par- ticular aspect of society must produce an exaggerated impression ; as a too hasty one may be so faint as to have no influence on conduct. A person conversant only in cri- minal courts of justice might come to a con- clusion that almost every poor man was a rogue ; one conversant in hospitals, that dis- ease was the ordinaiy condition of humanity. One conversant in a lawyer's office might think that almost every transaction of busi- ness was a matter of legal arrangement; whereas not one in a million is so. One conversant in the preparation of trials might conclude that every matter that was settled in a lawyer's office became the subject of an action ; whereas not one in ten thousand does. One who was conversant only with the civil courts of justice might suppose that every action commenced came to trial; where- as not one in a hundred does. One conver- sant in the offices for relief, and the haunts D2 30 DIFFICULT TO GIVE and habits of the lowest classes, might sup- pose that all society, with the exception of a few rich folks, was a mass of ruin, wretch- edness, degradation, despair, feebleness of body, gloom of mind, distress of countenance, without a cheering ray of enjoyment or hope, or of forgetfulness, except in drunkenness. If too vivid an impression may be created by constant observation, too weak a one also may be the consequence of inattention. Too absorbing an attention to one subject is the exclusion of other subjects from their pro- per place in the field of truth. This is the present state of the world with regard to pauperism. We are absorbed with political measures, and neglect our own business, and the duties of private life. We are absorbed with the comforts and luxuries of life, the state and station we maintain, and the bet- tering of our condition. We study also the titles and condition of those above us, their manners, and habits, and opinions, their for- tunes, and the calamities which happen to them. But of the condition of the poor we A FAITHFUL PICTURE. 31 take little notice ; their habits, their charac- ters, their virtues, their distresses, these we study little to inform ourselves of, with these we little acquaint ourselves, either generally or personally. Of their crimes and vices, their dexterity at imposition, and the shifts to which they resort to obtain some share of the comforts they see around them ; of the mischiefs of injudicious charity, of these we have accounts, of these we have evidence, and returns, and tables, which we swallow greedily, because they comfortably warrant us in the undisturbed enjoyment of the com- petency which Providence has graciously be- stowed upon us ! My task is to exhibit the opposite side of the picture. Without being at all unaware of their faults and infirmities, or desiring to conceal them, my undertaking is to put forth the claims and virtues of the poor. Enough has been written and read of their deformi- ties : I will put forth something respecting their necessities and merits. I will dwell upon these ; the rest I will acknowledge. 32 THE EXISTENCE OF And let it be remembered, that the low- est classes of society are at its base. The base of the pyramid is the widest, and it bears the rest. There is but one king, and some hundreds of lords, and several thousand patricians. But the lowest class are millions ; and these are the subject of the remarks which I have to make. Even small circumstances must be of consequence when so much mul- tiplied. It is a point which requires to be proved, the very existence of poverty. Paupers are generally considered as a kind of nuisance, from which the genteel public ought to be protected. The sight of a beggar is felt to be in some measure indelicate to our very refined tastes ; and his importunity is a downright annoyance, which ought not to be tolerated in a country so highly advanced in civilisation. Accordingly we have laws passed which make beggary criminal, not imposture ; every beggar is bound to be treated as an impostor, because the law has said that no person shall starve in this cha- POVERTY IS DENIED. 33 ritable country. But " the poor shall never cease out of the land :" God has said it ; and human power, and wisdom, and fasti- diousness, have not been able to reverse the decree, made for our good. The charity of the poor-law system, if fairly considered, will be found to be in its spirit a charity towards ourselves. The spirit of the law which makes beggary criminal is precisely the same as that which forbids barrows and basket-women standing on the foot-pavement. The object of both is the convenience of the rich, and is wholly without regard to the condition or necessities of the poorer classes. The first establishment of poor-laws in this country was concurrent with the enactment of most severe laws against beggars and vagrants. But the good which we hope to do ourselves by forbidding beggary, would, if successful, be found to be our great evil. It is of the greatest importance that we should have a right knowledge respecting the state of the poor, and the existence of poverty. No one perhaps will deny that 34 IMPORTANCE OF A poverty exists. But a belief which does not produce practice, and exercise itself in ac- tion, is no belief ; it is a practical denial of it. It is necessary also that this belief should be a right belief, and should be founded upon a real and proper view, not only of the exist- ence and extent, but also of the causes and nature of poverty; otherwise our practice arid conduct will be correspondent to our erroneous impressions. A large proportion of those who allow the existence of poverty are ready to say confidently, it is all their own fault ; that no one in this rich and pro- sperous country can be in distress, unless they are either fools or idle. Or others will say, it is want of education which causes it ; or it must be their own worthless character, and that they ought not to be encouraged, for that they deserve it. And such persons' conduct towards the poor will be according to their language, as much as that of those who take every beggar to be a cheat and impostor. If any of these impressions and opinions RIGHT OPINION OF THE POOR. 35 be wrong, though it be only in degree, it is of the highest moment that they should be corrected, and made just in their proportion. All these causes do operate to some extent, each of them ; but a very small error in the degree and the comparison may operate in practice so as to produce a great and gross injustice in the conduct resulting from it. And particularly must the consequences of such an error be important and cruel, when it leans towards the side of ill-opinion and harshness towards the poor. We have mo- tives enough to influence us towards the withholding of charity. Want of means, selfishness, avarice, idleness, the control of fashion above all, the dislike to be imposed upon, are strong and influential motives, all drawing us towards the side of neglect or refusal. But even when we believe the ob- ject to be distressed and deserving, or at least are half convinced, how often do we pass on, and pass by on the other side, and then re- gret and condemn ourself that we did not stop and give something, or at least inquire 36 IMPORTANCE OF A further, or obtain the means of inquiry ! How great would be the effect, at such a moment, of a little better opinion of the poor, a little less belief and apprehension of imposture ! And yet a person might perhaps have been saved from starving by a little less cautious- ness, by a little more freedom and forward- ness in charity ! When we are walking fast, because the day is cold ; or we are in a hurry on business ; or when we would or might have given, but that our pocket was buttoned ; or the money was not loose, but it was in our purse, and we did not like to pull it out in the street ; or our glove was on, and it was a tight one ; or when from any other such reason we do not like to stop, but are nevertheless hesitating, how completely might a different opinion with regard to the poor, and a little less fear of imposture, have turned the scale, and impelled us to a decided conduct ! This is the way in which opinion operates ; this is practical belief. It must be evident, therefore, how great a consequence ought to be attached to the having a real and RIGHT OPINION OF THE POOR. 37 accurate and well-balanced knowledge of the actual state of the poorer classes, their ne- cessities, habits, and contrivances. We many of us wonder how any real and unmerited poverty can any where exist in this rich country. Poverty exists in its present great extent because we are rich. Wherever the greatest riches prevail, there the greatest distress also prevails ; and this pretty much in proportion to the accumulation of riches. The distress in London exceeds that of the most backward and poorest parts of the country, nearly in proportion to its wealth and luxury. It is the same with Manchester, and other great and wealthy cities ; and more or less with towns in general, in proportion to their wealth, and size, and population. In a word, " England" the commercial, wealthy, civilised, flourishing England " is the most pauperised country in Europe." 8 The effect of famines is a matter not here to be considered ; but with the exception of Dr. Kay's Report to the Poor- Law Commission- ers, 4th Poor -Law Report, p. 230. E 38 POVERTY CAUSED BY RICHES. these occasions, the poverty in Ireland is less pressing than the poverty in London, though many of the consequences of wealth and luxury operate in causing the distress of the Irish. The Irish labourers, it is true, and others of all crafts and professions, flock to London to make their fortune, for here the greatest fortunes are to be made ; and wherever the greatest prices are to be obtained, there will be the most competitors. But where the prizes in a mine or in a lottery are greater, the more numerous must be the blanks ; and the more likely, upon the whole, is the con- cern to be a losing one. This is the case pre-eminently where wealth is greatly accu- mulated, and where great numbers, as in towns, are congregated together, and all en- gaged in the scramble for it. In a country thinly populated, every individual in it is known. Their real circumstances are known to their neighbours, without mistrust or con- cealment ; and notice is obtained in case there is any thing extreme or unusual in the degree GREATEST IN GREAT TOWNS. 39 of poverty. The very lowness of the general condition prevents the neighbourhood from being over-resorted to, and secures their low condition from being still further lowered. But in large and populous towns notoriety becomes proportionably more difficult, and the greatest distress may fail to draw atten- tion. It is proverbial how a country neigh- bourhood is busy and gossipping; while a crowded town furnishes the means of the most perfect solitude, and a man is very fre- quently unacquainted even with his next- door neighbour. There are many other causes which operate in rich and crowded cities, as, the increased selfishness and ava- riciousness of riches ; the absence of all per- sonal connexion, and claim thence arising^ between one person and another ; the ignor- ance and inexperience of human life and miseries, and consequent want of sympathy. But of these more hereafter. At present, the existence of distress is our theme ; and of this a sufficiency and an increase is ob- servable both in town and country. 40 DEATHS FROM STARVATION. Many persons die of starvation in Lon- don. It would be difficult to find such cases in any other country. In the winter of 1827;, a female, under eighteen years of age, was seen lying on the steps of St. Andrew's churchyard, Holborn, after midnight, actually perishing through disease and famine. She was a total stranger in London, without a friend ; and died two days afterwards, unrecognised by any human being. b Two years ago, a poor man applied to the overseers of P for relief, and was turned away as being a well-known beggar. The next day he was found dying in the street, and was conveyed to St. M 's workhouse, where he died. The surgeon said that he died of starvation . More recently than the last case, a woman was refused at night at the St. G 's work- house, and was carried to St. P 's, where she died before morning. This case will be mentioned more particularly afterwards. b Report of Royal Free Hosp. 1839, p. 13. c p. 67. DEATHS FROM STARVATION. 41 Thomas Jones came to the surgeon of St. G } s workhouse, who sent him away, saying, that he wanted a baker more than a doctor. The next day he obtained two loaves from the overseers, and died the following day, from over-eating after so long fasting. All the doctors said, that destitution was the cause of his death ; and when the surgeon was asked how he came to treat his applica- tion so lightly, he said, te Oh, if you saw as many cases of this sort as I do, you would not think so much of it." d Now these are by no means rare occur- rences ; and the facts are faithful. The three last cases I have investigated myself; for the first I give my authority ; and the surgeon's answer, in the last, shews that such occa- sions cause no surprise to those who are most conversant with the condition of the poor, as to their bodily state and healthful- ness. These are cases in which charity might d Dec. 1839. E 2 42 FASHION TO DECRY THE POOR. have seemed to have been well bestowed, even to the profound political philosopher. To many such it would have been painful to reflect that they had refused a penny, or a penny's worth, even in the streets, to the above-mentioned paupers, just before they died of starvation. And such a painful feel- ing would not have disgraced their wisdom so much as their philosophy. So much has been said of late about the evils of charity, and we are so accustomed to it, that we can hear persons freely talk of almsgiving as a crime and an injury to so- ciety, and regard them as Christians. So imperative is fashion, and so conventional a matter is philosophy, and conscience, and the use of the understanding ! It matters not that some destitute persons die in the streets ; that multitudes more die by the slow effects of habitual starvation ; it matters not, the threefold exertion and toil and risk which must be undergone barely to obtain a sub- sistence, and to maintain themselves and an ordinary-sized family in the station to which FASHION TO DECRY THE POOR. 43 they were born and bred, and the numbers who hourly sink under it in strength, and become bankrupt in their health and fortunes, no, it is the theory of the day, and one of a great name has said it, and a few examples have proved it, and it suits our convenience greatly; and our refined habits and taste, in this highly civilised country, ought not to be plagued and disgusted by the sight of beggars and their importunity. So beggary is an of- fence and a crime ; the very being poor is culpable j vice, folly, idleness, want of spirit, education, character, are said to account for all beggary and pauperism ; and the false liberality of the over-charitable is said to be a greater cause and fault than all the rest. The operation of each of these causes may be acknowledged ; and their consequences, and the duties arising out of them, will be noticed afterwards. But there are other causes also in operation, producing intense misery. The chief of these will be enume- rated and described in the next chapter. But I will premise two or three examples of 44 EXAMPLES OF DISTRESS. extreme poverty, and refer to others, just to shew its existence and intensity. And none of these ought to be regarded as solitary and very extraordinary instances. M. A. W. had no home, and was forced to abide sick in the streets three nights. She went to an asylum ; and was told not to come again, as she was too ill to be admitted. 6 I saw an aged porter carrying a burden beyond his strength; and his wife walking by his side, supporting him, lest he should totter under the weight. James Leatt, aged sixty-two, applied to Sir Richard Birnie, the police-magistrate. He had once been a master butcher, but for fifteen years had served only as a journey- man. Latterly, being both ruptured and rheumatic, he had been supported chiefly by his wife and son. The son, and a daughter aged fourteen, were out of work ; and his wife had died two days before, for want of the necessaries of life. He did not know e Sermon, by the Rev. T. Dale, in behalf of the Greville- Street Free Hospital, 1839, p. 8. EXAMPLES OF DISTRESS. 45 how to bury his wife ; and they had not a sixpence. f Martha Robinson was found begging in the streets, with a written petition. Upon inquiry, it proved that she had a large family ; her husband was out of employ j and one of her children was lying dead, and they had not the means of burying it. The man had once possessed JOOOZ. He was brought up as a farmer, and afterwards kept a public- house. A distress had been put in, and all his furniture sold. A tradesman in the neigh- bourhood took compassion upon the family, and allowed them to live in one of his unoc- cupied houses, where they were found when visited. But they were entirely without any means of subsistence. & Mary Buncomb applied for relief with a wildness and incoherency of manner which created a belief that she was deranged. The scene, however, which presented itself when the case was visited, fully accounted for the f Report of the Mendicity Society, 1826, p. 46. Ibid. 1824, p. 27. 46 EXAMPLES OF DISTRESS. woman's distraction of mind. In one corner of the room lay the body of her husband, who had died nine days before of a fever ; and by his side lay a boy, who had fallen a victim to the same disorder a few days after his father. A cradle contained an infant, six months old, crying aloud ; and near the fire-place stood a half-starved boy, eight years of age. Incredible as it may appear, the landlord had distrained upon their few miser- able articles ; and this chamber of death was found in the possession of a broker. h Mary Bacon was found in the streets at night, in a deplorable condition. Having been brought to bed in a country town, at the end of sixteen days they placed her in a wagon, with directions to follow her hus- band, who had been ordered out of the town by the mayor. The fare was paid to London ; and the wagoner, having no further direc- tions, put her down in the streets immediately on their arrival. In this condition she was found, many miles from her husband's parish, h Mendicity Society, Report 1827, p. 32. EXAMPLES OF DISTRESS. 47 with two children, including the infant, in the middle of the night, in December. i Jane Randall, her husband, and three children, were all found sleeping in one room, upon the boards, not having a bed, or any covering. The wife was a decent, respectable woman ; and they all bore an excellent cha- racter. The husband was often afflicted with insanity. The eldest girl's appearance was so wretched, that she could not go out for any work. The woman had lately had a paralytic stroke, which prevented her work- ing. The. landlord had taken the whole of their things for rentJ Susan Lee applied to the late Bishop of Durham (Barrington), and was visited by one of the officers of the Mendicity Society. Her husband, a lunatic, was confined to the floor, lying on straw, and nearly naked. There were six children, the eldest a girl aged fifteen. They belonged to the parish of Mile-end Old Town, by whom they were ' Mendicity Society, Report 1819, p. 44. j Ibid. 1820, p. 46. 48 EXAMPLES OF DISTRESS. allowed five shillings a week. The overseers had offered to take the husband into the workhouse ; but as she did not expect him to live long, and as she had for some time supported him in this deplorable state, she did not wish to give him up to the care of the parish. By the usual liberality of the bishop, and other donations, she was enabled to support him till his death. k Caroline Pearson, a girl aged eighteen, was found in a churchyard by a clergyman, in a most wretched condition. Unable to walk without assistance, she was brought to the office by a humane individual, in a most dreadful state. Emaciated and feeble from disease, almost naked, loathsome with ver- min, nearly famished for want of food, ex- hausted and speechless for want of rest, and deserted by her relations, she seemed the very scorn of society ; and a few days pre- vious to her application she had been seen tormented by, and the sport of, men and boys. It appeared that she had lived as ser- Mendicity Society, Report 1826, p. 44. EXAMPLES OF DISTRESS. vant in a public-house, but in consequence of some indiscretion was discharged. Her sis- ter immediately withdrew her protection ; and thus she had become reduced to this miserable condition. Her life was saved by prompt and judicious relief, and assiduous attention. 1 Mary Ann Bowman, a girl eighteen years of age, was found late at night by an in- spector of police standing under an arch- way. All her clothes were in pawn, and she was without means of procuring either food or lodging. She proved to be an orphan. Her father had been a respectable tradesman in Tottenham-Court Road. Since his death she had lived in different situations ; but an obstinacy of disposition, and great dislike to service, prevented her keeping them. There was no other imputation upon her cha- racter. 111 John Bishop and his wife were found begging in Oxford Street. From their ap- 1 Mendicity Society, Report 1820, p. 48. m Ibid. 1835, p. 25. F 50 SLOW DEATH FROM STARVATION. pearance, it was evident that they were almost in a state of starvation; and the man shewed symptoms of rapid consump- tion. He had been a cloth-dresser in Wilt- shire. He was admitted into an hospital, where he soon after sunk under the com- plaint, leaving his wife without any means of support. 11 The cases of immediate death from star- vation are comparatively rare. The mode in which deficiency of food occasions death among the poor, is by gradually wasting and destroying their constitutions, and pre- disposing them to diseases and complaints, by which apparently and immediately they are carried off. The multitudes of such cases are great beyond belief; and the instances in which persons among the poorer classes have their strength undermined, and are in- capacitated both in body and mind by the habitual deficiency and inferiority of food, though their death, perhaps, is not occa- sioned by it, are still more numerous; and " Mendicity Society, Report 1837, p. 33. SLOW DEATH FROM STARVATION. 51 of not less injurious consequence to the well-being of the state. An essay upon the Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, especially amongst the poor, has been published by Dr. Howard. His experience was derived chiefly during his attendance at the Royal Infirmary and the Poor-house, at Manchester. He states, that " the public generally have a very inadequate idea of the number of persons who perish annually from defi- ciency of food ; and there are few who would not be painfully surprised if an accurate re- cord of such cases were presented to them. It is true that, in this country, instances of death from total abstinence occur only casu- ally; yet every medical man, whose duties have led him much amongst the poor, who is familiar with the extreme destitution which often prevails amongst them, and the diseases thereby occasioned, is too often a witness to fatal results from gradual and protracted star- vation. Although death directly produced by hunger may be rare, there can be no doubt 52 EXTENT OF SUFFERING that a very large proportion of the mortality amongst the labouring classes is attributable to deficiency of food as a main cause, aided by too long continued toil and exertion, without adequate repose, insufficient cloth- ing, exposure to cold, and other privations to which the poor are subjected." The loss of children and infants from this cause is particularly great.P " The principal mode in which deficiency of food operates, is in weakening the system, and undermining the constitution, and pre- disposing it to the effects of contagion and the development of specific disease. . . . The destruction of life amongst the poor in this indirect manner is most extensive ; but from death being readily referred to some parti- cular disease, to which a name can at once be given, it attracts little notice. In many of these cases there is nothing peculiar in An Inquiry into the Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, chiefly with reference to their occurrence amongst the Destitute Poor, by R. B. Howard, M.D., 1839, p. 2. v Ibid. pp. 16 and 34. FROM DEFICIENCY OF FOOD. 53 the symptoms to indicate the real cause of their origin. . . . Yet in estimating the mor- tality amongst the destitute poor from scar- city of food, we must not forget that the result is still the same, whether the priva- tion is so complete as to destroy life in ten days, or so slight and gradual that the fatal event does not occur till after many months' suffering." i The suffering portion of the labouring poor are in a continual state of depression and weakness. The feebleness, and dejec- tion, and distress of countenance which gene- ralty prevails with, and pointedly charac- terises them, must be familiar to every one wio has been accustomed to visit them in tieir abodes of wretchedness. And Dr. Howard remarks, " Those who are not familiar with the isually delicate state of health, and enfeebled constitutions of these people, would be sur- prised at the serious evils which result from i Inquiry into the Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, pp. 38, 39. F2 54 DISEASES PRODUCED BY what might be considered no intolerable de- terioration in the quality, or diminution in the quantity of their diet." r " In persons labouring under an impaired state of health from deficiency of food, there is a remarkable susceptibility to the effects of contagion, unwholesome conditions of the atmosphere, vicissitudes of the weather, and, in short, to all the existing causes of disease ; and it is this class which always suffers most severely during the prevalence of endemic, epidemic, or contagious disorders. . . . There is a great variety of chronic diseases, wl.ose origin is excited, or whose progress is in- creased with frightful rapidity by inadequate nutrition; and the number of persons amongst the poor, whose death is accelerated fron this cause, it is melancholy to contemplate 1 It has frequently been observed, and chargel against the poor, that they will buy nothing but tht best bread, and other food ; alleging that they find i the best economy, as being the most nourishing. Th< above testimony of Dr. Howard seems to justify them in this practice. DEFICIENCY OF FOOD. 55 It is amongst these habitual invalids that the greatest mortality occurs during periods of distress." 8 Even mental and moral imbecility are among the ordinary effects produced by de- ficiency of food, and habitual and gradual starvation. (t A gradual deterioration of the moral and intellectual, as well as of the physical condition of man, is the more remote conse- quence of a slighter diminution in the supply of food ; and, as vitally affecting the well- being and prosperity of a nation, has strong claims on the attentive consideration of the legislator. . . . The functions of the brain suffer equally with those of the other organs, and the mental powers exhibit a languor and dulness proportionate to the degree of the physical debility. The sufferer is listless and depressed, and often manifests a remark- able apathy to his condition. . . . Mania or mental imbecility has sometimes been pro- s Inquiry into the Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, pp. 4, 38, 39. 56 DISEASES PRODUCED BY duced by defective nutrition. The former is the common effect of sudden privation of food, whilst the latter is the more frequent consequence of gradual starvation." " It may perhaps be thought by some that I have given an exaggerated description of the effects of defective nutrition on the intellectual faculties and moral feelings ; but I believe those who are most familiar with the condition of the poor, when suffering from sickness and the despair of poverty, will recognise the fidelity of the picture I have drawn." " This effect of inadequate nutrition in retarding intellectual development in child- ren, is often very conspicuous amongst the families of the indigent poor. They exhibit none of that intelligent vivacity and quick- ness which children who have been plenti- fully supplied with nutritious food display. Their mental operations and physical move- ments are equally slow and languid, and their countenances want that look of intel- ligence and animation which a full develop- DEFICIENCY OF FOOD. 57 ment and early exercise of the brain alone give. Hence the pernicious results of defi- ciency of food in early life are not confined to arresting the physical growth, and ren- dering the frame puny and feeble, but, by checking the cerebral development and the expansion of the intellectual faculties, favour that moral debasement and mental barbarism, so much to be lamented in the lower classes, and to which so many of their miseries and so much of their poverty are attributable. The baneful effects of defective nutrition may thus be shewn to extend their influence to the social condition and habits of the poor, to affect materially their position as moral and intelligent beings, and to bear powerfully upon matters with which, at first sight, it might appear to have little con- nexion.' 5 * * Inquiry into the Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, pp. 2, 19, 27, 31, 42, 44. It would be an error to attribute all the want of vivacity and intelligence among the children of the poor to want of sufficient nourishment. Great languor, and lameness, and want of playfulness, are observable among the children in 58 DISEASES PRODUCED BY But the diseases more ordinarily engen- dered by habitual low living and deficiency of food are scrofula in all its varied forms, tubercles, dyspepsia, diarrhrea, dysentery, scurvy, petechiae, dropsy, an ulcerated state of the mouth and throat, chronic ulcers, &c. Paraplegia also, paralysis, apoplexy, fever, water in the head, consumption, are among the diseases more or less frequently arising from deficiency of food among the destitute poor. u People in general, however, have little workhouses, even when they are not insufficiently fed. Continual restraint, and want of air and exercise, and the being closely crowded together, which is especially hurtful to children, are partly the occasion of this de- pression. But deficient nourishment is a very general cause of want of energy and cheerfulness among poor people's children. u Inquiry into the Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, pp. 16, 20, 21, 40, 41, 63. Typhus fever espe- cially most frequently results from long -continued misery and destitution. (See Mendicity Society's 10th Report, 1828, p. 37 ; 21stReport, 1839, p. 29 ; Begging- Letter Department, c. 54,305.) DEFICIENCY OF FOOD. 59 or no idea that these complaints, when they are developed, can have had their ori- gin in any way from a deficient supply of food. Even medical men, being engaged in removing the symptoms of the specific dis- ease, have not their attention called to the origin of it, and become but very imperfectly acquainted with the real predisposing causes of the complaints of this nature which they are called upon to cure. The closest atten- tion and examination are not sufficient to discover the true source of many of these maladies, when they have been gradually brought on by low living and insufficient diet, or a mere predisposition has been ripened into flagrant symptoms by this cause, which would otherwise have been subdued by the vigour of the constitution. " Even if any suspicion is aroused that a person has died of starvation, and a post mortem examination instituted to ascertain its probability, if structural disease of any important organ is found, it is too generally assumed as a matter of course that death 60 EFFECTS OF STARVATION has arisen from natural causes. Yet no con- clusion can be more fallacious." v But even the peculiar and characteristic symptoms and state of body caused by de- fective nourishment have been very little attended to, and are ill understood. One point to which I would particularly draw attention, is the very great similarity of the symptoms produced by intoxication to those which follow upon exhaustion from any causes, but particularly that which arises from abstinence from food. It has been no- ticed that starvation sometimes produces apo- plexy. It also produces delirium, lethargy, dizziness. It produces languor, giddiness, swimming in the head, staggering, stupor. fe In many respects the symptoms in these cases have considerable resemblance to the effects of exposure to cold;" w which are known to be, unwillingness to move, torpor, drowsiness. All these are conclusive proofs of intoxication to ordinary observers. " Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, p. 40. w Ibid. pp. 20, 27, 66. LIKE INTOXICATION. 61 But there is another point in relation to this topic, which is the subject of much ignorance, and mistake, and harsh judgment. The symptoms are at the best equivocal, as has been just mentioned. But if, when a wretched sufferer is exhibiting these equi- vocal symptoms, the smell of spirits, in how- ever slight degree, should be detected upon him, then the judgment and sentence is no longer delayed, but he is set down in a mo- ment for a disgusting drunkard and a worth- less impostor. But this conclusion is too hasty. One of our harsh and ignorant judg^ ments in respect of the poor is, that all use of ardent spirits is injurious ; and that every one who touches them is a gin-drinker. This opinion is erroneous. Spirits are a useful and wholesome medicine to the poor,* and necessary to them under the exposure, and chill, and exhaustion, to which they are subject in pursuing many of their arduous callings, in cold, and wet, and misery. But x It must be recollected that wine is too expensive in this country for the poor to make use of it. G 62 EFFECTS OF STARVATION there is something more to be said, in excuse at least, if not in praise of the moderate use of spirits, which ought to weigh with those who, looking upon the poor in general as an inferior order of beings, ought not to expect of them self-discipline beyond the ordinary standard of human nature. " Narcotics, particularly opium and to- bacco, have the power of relieving the pangs of hunger, and the feeling of exhaustion con- sequent upon long fasting. The former is constantly used in eastern countries for this purpose, when food cannot be procured; and the property which the latter possesses in this respect is well known to sailors, who find relief from it when suffering from scar- city of provisions." ? It is well known that spirits have a simi- lar operation, and produce the same effect. That they are frequently used for this pur- pose is but too well known to those who are conversant with the distresses and sufferings of the poor, and the temptations they are r Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, p. 52. LIKE INTOXICATION. 63 subjected to. The numbers whom distress of mind and wretchedness have driven to the use of ardent spirits, for the sake of drowning their miserable thoughts and in- tolerable reflections, is so great, that it af- fords a grave doubt whether more persons are driven to poverty by drinking, or by poverty to drunkenness. 2 But these cases are not necessary to our present subject. We have mentioned them here because the occasion introduced them, and afforded the opportunity ; and they are facts which ought to be known and recol- lected by those who are desirous to form a right estimate of the character and condi- tion of the working-classes. Upon the pre- 1 The vestry-clerk of St. Giles's made a return to the rector of Bloomsbury of 170 drunkards in the work- house. It appeared that of these, two to one at least had become drinkers from poverty, and only one in three were poor from being drunkards. " Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more." (Prov. xxxi. 6, 7.) 64 EFFECTS OF ABSTINENCE sent topic we have only to suppose that a destitute person has taken a single glass of spirits from any of these causes. What says Dr. Howard of such an occasion ? fe It is not uncommon for individuals exhausted with abstinence to become giddy, stagger, and fall down senseless in the street. As soon as he is discovered, he is perhaps conveyed to an hospital, stupified and cold, with almost suspended action of the heart and respiration, and unable to answer ques- tions. Now, let us suppose that the miser- able condition of the sufferer had attracted the pity of some passer-by, and that he had expended the pittance bestowed upon him at a dram-shop, with the hope of reviving his prostrated strength ; the alcoholic draught would very 'probably, by its powerful effect upon so exhausted a frame, hasten that in- sensibility it was taken to avert. When in this state, his breath would be perceived to be tainted with the smell of spirits, and he would probably be considered by those who saw him to be in a state of disgusting in- LIKE INTOXICATION. 65 toxication, and left neglected to perish from cold and exhaustion. Such is by no means a rare case, and one which all who have been long attached to a public medical charity must have witnessed. The stupor, stagger- ing, occasional wandering of mind, and in- sensibility, consequent on exhaustion from starvation, are constantly mistaken by the public for intoxication ; and though, in the state of the pulse and pale collapsed appear- ance of the countenance, the medical man has symptoms to guide him, yet if an indi- vidual in the insensibility of intoxication has been exposed to cold, the pulse becomes so much reduced, and the countenance so much altered, as to afford no certain criterion." a The effect of a single glass of liquor upon an empty stomach is well known to be greater than large quantities under opposite circum- stances. It will bring on a fit of insanity, where there is a predisposition to it. Even wholesome food, hastily administered, will have too exciting an effect. & Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, pp. 66, 67. 66 EFFECTS OF ABSTINENCE " I once knew an instance," writes Dr. Howard, " where a copious draught of milk, given to a woman in a state of great exhaus- tion from fasting, immediately brought on giddiness, and caused her to stagger and fall down/" b I have adverted to these cases in which the smell of liquor may be added to the other proofs, because they are very strong cases, and instances in which the most conclusive evidence might seem to be afforded of vicious drunkenness; nevertheless with injustice. But these are by no means the most general instances. In by far the larger number of cases, the evidences of intoxication which are received as conclusive are such only as those above enumerated. But the bias and willingness produced by the numerous books which have been written against the poor, containing heavy charges and instances of imposture, which are greedily received and circulated, is sufficient, in this state of doubt, to turn the balance against the defenceless, b Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, p. 71. LIKE INTOXICATION. 67 and to lead the vast majority to identify the symptoms of vice with the symptoms of mi- sery, and to conclude that all the signs of wretchedness which they see, are signs only of imposture. An elderly woman was found, late at night, crouching upon the pavement. She had nothing on but one filthy and miserable garment, which did not cover her ; and was unable to walk without being supported. She was brought to St. G 's workhouse, and refused admittance, upon the ground of her being drunk, and of her own statement that her lodging was in St. P 's. She was carried to the station-house, where she sunk upon the floor, and afterwards to St. P 's workhouse, upon a shutter. They administered restoratives, but she died before morning. When her lodging was examined, a few rags only were found in it, and a crust in a corner. Catharine Green, aged nineteen, was a servant out of place. A lady saw her faint- ing from want of food. She had not lodged 68 EFFECTS OF ABSTINENCE in a house for six nights. Her character was perfectly good. 6 Many other interesting details might be entered upon respecting the actual effects of deficiency of food among the poorest classes, and the different conditions which they exhibit. Positive starvation, or death from total deprivation of food, very rarely occurs among the poor ; and this is what is usually meant by being starved to death. The poor, at least, have always a sufficiency of water ; and it is known that water alone will protract life for many weeks, when total want of nourishment is fatal in a few days. For this cause this occasion of death among the poor has been less attended to. Habit also will regulate in a great degree the quantity and nature of the food that will be found requi- site. A plant, as well as the human body, may grow and be nurtured for a long time upon water alone ; but no one can suppose that a plant so nurtured would be equally strong and healthy. I fully believe that the Mendicity Society's 4th Report, 1822. LIKE INTOXICATION. 69 constitutions of the poor acquire by habit the power of deriving a greater proportion of nou- rishment from the air than we do . d But this cannot be supposed to be a healthy state of existence. Another topic might be, the want of appetite which is consequent upon habi- tual want of food ; and the want of impor- tunity, and apathy and indifference to their own state, which are consequent upon the exhaustion of mind and body brought on by gradual starvation ; both which cause this existing condition of the suffering poor to be little noticed. 6 Mary Cardale, aged twenty-two, had no- thing whatever to eat for three days, the 27th, 28th, and 29th February, 1840, till, on Saturday evening, her brother brought a pair of trousers, which her mother pledged for Is. 3d. The mother had nothing during the d There is no doubt but that the body derives much nourishment from the air. The weight of air which we breathe is ordinarily three times the weight of the solid food which we eat in the twenty-four hours. ' See Dr. Howard's Inquiry, pp. 23, 29, 30. 70 DEFICIENCY OF FOOD. same time, except that she called at a friend's on the second day, who gave her a cup of tea and a little bit of meat. The daughter tasted nothing but water. She fainted twice or three times on the third day. They were both ill the day following, from eating too heartily after so long fasting. I have no doubt, from my experience, that such cases are common ; but the proof is very unfrequently so good as it happened to be in this case. They are remarkably decent people. A brushmaker, of good character, had only a mess of water-gruel last Christmas- day ; and the same on other days. f f The following was the week's subsistence of John Malony (a man of excellent character, but weak health), his wife and three children, aged eight and seven years, and nine months. Thursday, Dec. 19, 1839- Three pounds of pota- toes, one pennyworth of cabbage, and a bit of salt to boil the cabbage with. Friday 20. Five pounds of potatoes, and nothing with them. DISTRESS IN ALL RANKS. 71 Enough has been said in illustration of the present topic the extent of extreme suffering among the lowest classes from de- ficiency of nourishment. But the miseries and sufferings above described, especially those which arise from low living, are by no means confined to the labouring classes. The distress existing among the lower class of shopkeepers, and this in numerous instances, is not much less in degree than that which has been exhibited ; Saturday 21. Five pounds of potatoes. Two half- penny herrings. Sunday 22. Two halfpenny loaves, of which the boy took a piece in his pocket to church and the Sunday- school, and half an ounce of chocolate to make a drink for the husband, who was ill. Monday 23. Four pounds of potatoes. Tuesday 24. Two shillings and sixpence was given by the clergyman, with which they purchased candles, tea and sugar, oatmeal, and three half-quartern loaves. Wednesday 25. The remains from yesterday, and five pennyworth of rashers of bacon, three pounds of potatoes, three pennyworth of milk to dress with some spoonsful of sago, which had been given for the hus- band, who was ill, and a halfpenny- worth of linseed. 72 DISTRESS IN ALL RANKS. and it is much heightened in poignancy by the circumstance, that most persons in these cases have fallen from a comparative state of ease, independence, and comfort. Some fall even from the higher ranks into the most abject distress. Many men brought up at Eton, and doubtless at other principal schools also, have been applied to on account of others, their contemporaries, who have come to great poverty. There is nothing but liberal assistance to prevent such per- sons from falling to the condition of mere beggars ; and such cases do occur. The following passage is met with in Dr. Conelley's report, the physician to the Han- well Lunatic Asylum for the county of Mid- dlesex. It forcibly convinces us of the hard struggle for existence which is maintained by large numbers of the low and middle classes. " Under the head of causes (of insanity) the blanks in the register are numerous. Those inserted are, it will be seen, in a great number of instances, referable to poverty, DISTRESS IN ALL CLASSES. 73 and the general struggle of the poorer and middle classes for existence. "& Of 281 cases, there were From reverses 24 From poverty directly . . . . 23 From grief 23 From intemperance, which, in a majority of in- stances, is caused by distresses . . 37 107 I forbear to multiply instances of this kind. Suffice it to say, that such cases are numerous, if people are willing to acquaint themselves with them. Some of those al- ready mentioned have been of this descrip- tion; and I refer to others out of the Re- ports of the Mendicity Society, h because they * 5 1st Report of Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, 1839, p. 31. h Mendicity Society's Report, 1820, c. 5592 ; ib. c. 5798. Report, 1821, c. 9524 widow with six child- ren, one ruptured. Report, 1820, c. 5582 a miller. Report, 1823, c. 16,354 a woman who left her help- less father and two children, and attempted suicide, II 74 DISTRESS IN ALL CLASSES. may there be inquired into. But I would recommend the reading of the whole series of that society's reports, as calculated to give an instructive, though not a perfect picture of the poor ; and though by no means devoid of harshness, as being a society having the suppression, and not the relief of mendicants, for its primary object. not bearing to see them perish. Report, 1824, c. 17,319 an officer in the army. Report, 1826, c. 20,033 ; ib. c. 20,124; ib. c. 20,532 a girl highly educated. Report, 1828, c. 22,256 a master silk-weaver; ib. c. 22,036 acabinet-maker, with ten children ; ib. c. 33,030 a medical man, who had become security. Report, 1830, c. 24,230 lieutenant of marines, son insane. Report, 1835, c. 22,722 son of a lord mayor. Re- port, 1837, c. 31,355 medical man. Report, 1839, c. 34,112 fever from low living. These are all cases of persons reduced to the condition of street-beggars. CHAPTER III. fje Causes of $obertg. NUMBER OF CHILDREN ECONOMY OF THE POOR ILLNESS OLD AGE, AND WIDOWHOOD DESER- TION BY HUSBAND WANT OF EMPLOYMENT LOSS OF TOOLS, AND CLOTHES COMING TO LON- DON SHIPWRECK, AND OTHER ACCIDENTS WANT OF SETTLEMENT DIFFICULTY OF OBTAIN- ING PARISH RELIEF INSUFFICIENCY OF PARISH RELIEF VICE DRUNKENNESS WEAKNESS OF CHARACTER SEDUCTION PROSTITUTION. IT is impossible to enumerate all the causes of poverty, or the half of them. They are as various as the circumstances of life; the changes and chances of which are infinite. But individuals, acquainted as they are each with their own peculiar situation, cannot themselves tell in what quarter they are likely to meet with reverses ; and those who have observed the providences which have befallen them, will have found that the greatest joys and blessings, the greatest evils and reverses, have generally come to them from a quarter in which they were least 76 THK CAUSES OF POVERTY. looked for, and at a time when they were least expected. In every station we are sub- ject to these visitations. We may have for- tified ourselves by all manner of worldly en- trenchments and securities we may have built our barns as great as you please, and stored them as plentifully; but every for- tress yet erected by man has already been pulled down by man from its height and confidence, and the greatest store has ever proved to be as a heap of snow or sand. under the disposing hand which specially orders all the events that happen to us. What, then, must the case be with those who live from hand to mouth, and have but one dependence ! whose whole support is in the strength of one arm, the vigour of one mind, the health of one frame, the credit of one name, the integrity of one character. The former are not a whit less in the hand or under the control of Providence; and examples are abundant, if proof of it were our present purpose. But in these cases his support and our dependence are more di- VARIETY OF CAUSES. 77 rectly seen and acknowledged. In these, too, God delights more especially to shew his providence and power for good and for ill; to awaken trust and dependence, and exercise faith. Their reverses also and changes are sent for the use and instruction of the rich, and are intended as exercises for their study and benevolence. The accidents of life are as various as the circumstances of it. The reverses of trade and of the labouring poor are. subject to no rule or classification, though certain causes of distress are much more prevalent than others. This is a truth which ought especially to be kept in mind. It is an answer to those who establish universal causes of poverty. Neither idleness, nor vice, nor the unequal division of property, nor want of education, nor all these together, nor a hundred more than these, are the causes of all the poverty which exists ; no one can tell, or ascertain, or guess at, all the causes from which poverty arises. Every such pre- tension must be defeated by the next day's H 2 78 THE CAUSES OF POVERTY. investigation ; and any general rules by which we may bind ourselves must work injustice, and will be more and more defeated by a wider and more impartial experience. " The poor shall never cease out of the land ;" and if all the present causes were provided against, still would God in his own way, and by his own means, fulfil his own decree, which was given for our use ; and still must it ever be the duty of the rich to keep the poor and poverty continually under their eye to look upon it, to acquaint themselves with, and minister to it. Wetherby's shop in Fleet Street, near St. Dunstan's Church, was taken down to widen the street. A jury awarded him a com- pensation. The situation of the shop had been very favourable, from its prominent projection into the street. He took another house half-way down Fleet Street, and en- deavoured to re-establish himself. His cus- tomers did not follow him. He did his best to form a new connexion, but failed. He was forced to give up the house and the shop- VARIETY OF CAUSES. 79 front, and took the first floor only, as a lodger, in the same house. He was soon obliged again to retire to the second floor; and in a short time he became completely and irretrievably ruined. A shopman of Davis, the great linen- draper in Lamb's Conduit Street, who had served him faithfully for many years, having retired, and tried other things, was desirous to return to his post behind the counter; but no one would take him, in spite of his excellent character. The whole style and manner of shopkeeping had been altered in the meantime, and no one would hire a man who was more than five-and- twenty years old. The man therefore became a beggar. This Davis above mentioned experienced a remarkable fall, becoming himself com- pletely ruined. The shopman just described was asked whether Davis had not been ruined by drinking ; to which he replied, that Davis did not become ruined by drinking, but that he took to drinking because he was ruined ; that the cause of his ruin was his taking an 80 THE CAUSES OF POVERTY. active part in the vestry of St. Andrew's, Holborn, which caused him to neglect his business. But so many are daily injured in their trade by devotion to politics, that this ought hardly to be mentioned as an extraordinary case. The most general causes of distress are : A great number of children Old age Ill- ness Desertion by husband Want of em- ployment Want of tools, clothes, &c. Coming to London Shipwreck, and other accidents W r ant of a settlement, as Irish, Scotch, Foreigners Difficulty of obtaining parish relief Insufficiency of parish relief, and of the provision made by law Vice, especially drunkenness Weakness of cha- racter Seduction Prostitution. I will proceed to give some account of these several causes of poverty, repeating again, that the particular causes being for ever new, and infinitely various, each case must be viewed and dealt with according to its own circumstances ; although much in- NUMBER OF CHILDREN. 81 struction and experience may be derived from contemplating distress in some of its more prevailing forms and most general aspects. NUMBER OF CHILDREN. A man of great good sense and expe- rience used to say to me, " Every man with a large family is a poor man, whatever his fortune may be ;" and I believe that the experience of every observing person will justify this conclusion. Not that a nume- rous family is a misfortune for, on the contrary, it is a blessing but the blessings of it are generally such as are consistent with narrowness of pecuniary means, or arise out of it. How the poor manage to live, is a perfect miracle. No one who is in a higher rank could make out a calculation how a poor family with two or three children could be supported, clothed, and housed, for the ave- rage earnings of working people in any par- ticular locality ; the poor themselves do not 82 NUMBER OF CHILDREN. know how they live. Contrivances by which they are enabled to exist are found and adopted; and the household economy of a clever and thrifty housewife among the poor is truly extraordinary. The poor are said to waste a great deal. It is said that they ought to save ; and that they would get things much cheaper, if they would lay in a stock at whole- sale prices, instead of dealing with the little retail-shops, which charge so extravagantly. This observation is founded upon an igno- rance of life. Is it to be supposed that the complicated plan of society ought to be wholly reconstructed ? or that trade has not fallen into those divisions and arrangements which are most convenient and suitable to the various wants and circumstances of life ? a The whole system and machinery among a Every good economist knows, that it is better to buy the exact quantity you want, and not to lay in a stock merely because you can get a bargain. The opportunity of purchasing things in the smallest quan- tities, though dearer, chiefly constitutes the economy of living in London. ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 83 the poor is a wonder, and incalculable, and quite beyond the contrivances of those who profess to redispose society upon philoso- phical and Utopian principles. More good may be done by improving and using well the present order of things than by new systems. The pawn-shops are an essential ingredient in the economy of the poor in towns ; but they may be the subject of im- provement. The poor are also said to live extrava- gantly and luxuriously when they have the means, and to waste a great deal of money, which they might save, in this way. To this it ought, in the first place, to be answered, that though good living is to us a vulgar enjoyment, and one which is little required or valued, because we may have many other fertile resources, yet to the poor it is almost the only enjoyment in which they can in- dulge. It is also a useful and necessary one. I believe that the full and superfluous living in which the poor indulge occasion- ally, alone enables thousands of them to 84 NUMBER OF CHILDREN. exist during the want and deficiency which come upon them in turn. The habit of the body can accommodate itself to these changes, even at long intervals, though at the sacrifice of the constitution. Thus life is saved for the present, and starvation is protracted. We who take our meals at regular intervals should think it a great privation if our din- ner were delayed for two or three hours much more, if we had eaten nothing in the morning till the hour of dinner. But the necessities of the poor enable them by habit to go without a meal for a day, or even more, without any present very evil consequences ; though not without the necessary and per- manent effects of insufficient nourishment. I do not mean to say that there is not great neglect and extravagance among work- men who earn the highest and most regular wages. These are not the poor, however; they are rather the rich, though by their ex- travagance they also may become beggars. Some idea of the household economy of the poor may be derived from a few ex- ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 85 amples. The clippings and trimmings of tongues and hams, from the ham and tongue warehousemen, are a cheap article of nou- rishing diet, and are much sought after by some thrifty housewives. The tobacco-pipes that have been used without being broken are sent in numbers from the public-houses to be rebaked ; the unburnt tobacco which is left in the bowls is taken out, and is an article of considerable traffic as a cheap tobacco. A mess of potatoes flavoured with a red herring is a usual diet of the Irish. But some of the most remarkable eco- nomies among the poor are in the article of clothing. Clothes descend by infinite gra- dations from the rich to the poor, by gift, exchange, and sale, after continual repair. The class of persons who repair and restore shoes are called translators. They are very numerous ; and shoes are scarcely ever thrown away so long as the upper-leather holds to- gether. Women's shoes, thus translated, may be purchased at twopence, twopence- halfpenny, fourpence, and sixpence, very i 86 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. good; the best, ninepence; men's at eigh- teenpence. Sometimes two odd shoes will be purchased instead of a pair, by some great economist, which come on that ac- count still cheaper. It must be understood, however, that these are mere shifts, rather than good eco- nomy. They are resources in distress, with- out which the poor could not get on. But the best economy for men in good work is to get new things, except shoes perhaps. A good suit of corderoy or fustian will last a year. The price in London would be about 16. I have said that the poor themselves do not know how they live. It is almost im- possible to ascertain the current expenses of people who live from hand to mouth, and cannot therefore follow a system. It would be difficult with those who are regularly employed, and are the most prosperous. The following is the nearest approximation which I have been able to make, in the coun- try, in a case of some urgency and interest. ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 87 Dame Mott, aged 50, of Ticehurst, Sussex, had five persons to feed herself and four daughters, aged 16, 14, 12, and 10; and three more to wash for namely, two sons, aged 25 and 22; and a daughter, aged 18. Her whole income, made up by what her elder children allowed her, and parish allowance, was 10*. 6d. a week. Her weekly expenses were thus apportioned : *. a. Five gallons flour, at Is. 3d. . . .63 Half-pound butter, at lOd. . . .05 One and a half pounds cheese, at Id, . 10 Half-ounce tea, at 5s. . . . 2 Half-pound sugar, at 6d. . . .03 Half-pound salt, at Id Yeast 04 Half-pound candles, at 6d. . . .03 Quarter-pound soap, at 3d. . . .02 Half-ounce starch, at \d. . . . OJ Blue Weekly rent . . . . . .16 10 4^ Leaving her l%d. over. Besides this, she had a moderate-sized gar- den, which supplied them with vegetables. 88 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. It is to be observed that, in this bill of fare, there is no meat whatever; and no- thing is allowed for clothes, nothing for firing, and they had no pig. One gallon of flour, or two quartern-loaves, one and a half ounces of butter, and five ounces of cheese, was the staple support of each person for the week. Though there is something peculiar in this case, in respect of the sources of in- come the sons being grown up, and con- tributing to the fund; yet this may afford a sample of the ordinary case of a man and wife, and three children, the man earning ten shillings a week. But a working man must eat more than a woman or child ; and the rest must suffer in proportion. If the condition of a man with three children be such as this, and so difficult, what must be the case of a family where there are six or ten ? No experience or ingenuity can devise the means by which a family of six or eight children may be maintained at the ordinary ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 89 wages of labour in most parts of the country, under the usual circumstances of occasional illness and accident, and slackness of em- ployment things which must come from time to time upon all trades and persons. And yet there are people who set down all distress to want of care and forethought, and are ready to say to every poor man, <{ You would never have come to poverty, if you had saved as you ought to have done ; your distress is all your own fault, and I should only be encouraging you and making you worse by now relieving you/' Let any one who has a family calculate what the necessary food and clothing of a single child costs him, and multiply this by six and ten, and remember that children are not fed cheaper by wholesale, and that a poor child requires a no less quantity of nourishment than a rich one, and that one of the most economical kinds of food is the best bread, and say in what way it is pos- sible for ten, or even six children to be main- tained with food, clothing, lodging, washing, i2 90 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. and firing, upon ten shillings a week in the country, and twenty shillings in towns, bar- ring interruptions and accidents. Having explained this miracle, and it is one which is wrought, by God's help, and not by man's ability, continually, let him next say how much may be saved under the circumstances against accidents and illness. If he should fail in this attempt, he must then admit that there may be cases of distress with- out culpability, among those who have large families of children at all events ; and he will not be surprised at meeting with such cases occasionally : unless indeed, perhaps, our modern philosopher should pronounce, that no man ought to marry without calcu- lating upon the probability of seven children at the least, the likelihood of a six-weeks' fever once a year, a broken limb, or other such accident. There are some, we know, who are ready to say this ; and, moreover, that a wife is too great a luxury, which a poor man ought not to indulge in ; and that education would soon convince them of it. ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 91 The following are the actual weekly ex- penses of three different families in London, where the man was in full work. They will furnish a standard from which to estimate the condition of larger families, or of fami- lies where, from illness or other causes, the expenses are increased, or the employment is irregular. Richard Goodwin, 45 Great Wild Street : a wife and five children. . t. d. 2 oz. tea . , . . .008 7 oz. coffee 104 3 Ibs. sugar 019 1 cwt. coals . . . . .018 4 bushel coke, and wood . . .007 12 loaves, at 8d 080 18 Ibs. potatoes . . . .009 14 Ibs. butter 016 1 Ib. soap, 4 Ib. soda . . .007 Blue and starch . . . .002 Candles 007 Bacon 026 Greens or turnips, onions, &c. . .006 Pepper, salt, and mustard . .003 Carry forward . 1 4 92 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. . I. d. Brought forward . 1 4 Herrings 009 Snuff 006 1 1 74 To this ought to be added about 6d. a day for butcher's meat . .036 And rent 040 1 9 14 And the wages of a man earning 30s. a week are wholly expended, leaving \0%d. for clothes, beer, medicine, tools, and other accidents and contingencies. These are the wages of a good carpenter, stonemason, bricklayer, plumber, glazier, &c. Glover, 8 Little Wild Street: a wife and two children. Dec. 2 to Dec. 8, 1839. . s. d. 2 oz. tea, at 4s 008 4 oz. coffee 006 2 Ibs. sugar 012 7 4-lb. loaves 048 1 Ib. butter ,010 Carry forward .080 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 93 . i. d. Brought over .080 18 Ibs. potatoes . . . .009 1 Ib. candles 007 1 Ib. soap, i Ib. soda, starch, and blue 4i 1 Ib. bacon 010 Salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar .003 cwt. coals, 1 bushel coke, and wood 018 Table-beer 009 Tobacco 006 Herrings .003 Greens and onions , ,004 14 5 Add 6d. a day for butcher's meat .036 And 3*. for rent 030 1 Hi In this bill nothing is put down for cheese or milk. Man, wife, and five children ; ages, 18, 14, 11, 8, and 5. In Tavistock Mews. Saturday, Dec. 7, to Friday evening, Dec. 13, 1839. . s. d. 9 loaves 069 Butter 016 Tea ,010 Carry forward .093 94 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. . s. d. Brought over .093 Coffee 1(H Sugar 10k Meat 036 Potatoes 012 Milk 007 Cheese 004 Pepper and salt . . . .001 Coals 016 Candles 007 Soap, starch, soda, blue . . .007 19 4 Add rent . ,040 134 Meat and milk are included in this list, but no beer, clothes, medicine, tobacco. The following are three different scales of expenditure, corresponding to three dif- ferent rates of wages, in London ; namely, 30*., 20*., and 15*. Good mechanics' wages are from 25*. to 60*. ; the average is 30*. : those of inferior workmen are less. This includes carpenters, joiners, cabinet-makers, smiths, masons, bricklayers, slaters, plas- ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 95 terers, plumbers, painters, glaziers, and all the building trade. They all require a stock of tools, and those of joiners are very expen- sive. Bricklayers and carpenters, though their tools are less expensive, earn nearly the same wages as joiners ; because of the wear of health and clothes in working out of doors. Also, being unemployed in winter and wet weather, their wages in fact average less. The repair of a stone-dresser's tools will cost half-a-crown or three shillings a week, besides the worth of them. His wages are 24*. Journeymen bakers earn from 15*. to 25s. ; with an allowance of bread. Labourers' wages are from 10*. to a guinea a week, while employed. The regular wages are 15*. and 18*. A smith's hammerman earns 18*. to a guinea. But there are seasons of the year in which each trade is slack, and there is little doing. A wet day not only depresses all trade, but throws thousands of labourers, porters, workmen in the docks, &c. wholly out of employment. The day-.wages in the 96 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. docks are 2*. 4d. and 2s. 6d. Porters and others earn what they can pick up. In wet days nothing but illness. b The following tables are founded upon the experience of one himself accustomed to b The following is a statement of wages, by an experienced assistant overseer of one of the largest parishes in London : Agricultural labourers . . . 9s. to 12s. Excavators, and men employed on road- work about 18s. Labourers in factories . . . . 18s. to 21s. Shoemakers . . . . 12s. to 20s. Plasterers and bricklayers . . . 18s. to 30s. Carpenters ...... 21s. to 30s. Tailors, if employed on contract or com- mon work 12s. to 21s. if good workmen, and employed on better work 24s. to 36s. Mechanics generally from . . . 21s. to 42s. This account may be taken as fairly representing the state of the great majority of work-people in and about London. It neither rises to the highest scale of first-rate mechanics, nor descends to the lowest and very numerous grade of jobbing and inferior workmen. ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 97 struggle with difficulties, and to see other people do so. He is at present employed as agent of a district visiting society. He says that it is impossible for a man, his wife, and three children, to subsist on less than 15*. a week earnings, without assistance. A man, his wife, and three children, having 30s. per week: s. d. 5 4-lb loaves, at 8^d. ; 1 quartern flour, 9%d. 4 4 14 Ibs. meat, at 6d 70 7 quarts porter, at 4d. . . . . .24 1 cwt. coals 17 28 Ibs. potatoes . . . . . .13 i Ib. tea, at 5s. ; 1 J Ibs. sugar, at 7d. . .214 14 Ibs. butter, at Is 16 1 Ib. candles, 6%d. ; 1 Ib. soap, 6%d. . .11 Rent, 4s. ; schooling, 6d. . . . .46 Clothes and sundries . . . . . 4 34 30 Another, having 20*. per week, the same number to support : s. d. 5 4-lb. loaves, at 8%d 3 64 7 Ibs. meat, at 5d 211 Carry forward . 6 54 K 98 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. s. d. Brought over . 6 54 7 pints porter, at Id 12 1 cwt. coals 17 28 Ibs. potatoes 10 i Ib. tea, at 5s. ; 1 \ Ibs. sugar, at 7d. . f 2 1 i 1 Ib. butter 10 1 Ib. soap; 3 Ib. candles . . . . 9 Rent, 3s. ; schooling, 6d. . . . .36 Clothes and sundries . . . . 2 4k 20 Another, having 15s. per week, the same number to support : s. d. 5 4-lb. loaves, at 8e? 3 6 5 Ibs. meat, at 5rf 21 7 pints porter, at 2d 12 cwt. coals 9J 40 Ibs. potatoes . . . . .14 3 ounces tea, at 5s. ; 1 Ib. sugar, at Id. . I 6 1 Ib. butter 09 4 Ib. soap ; -J Ib. candles . . . . 6 Rent, 2s. 6d. ; schooling, 4d. . . . 2 10 Sundries . . . . . . . 5 15 This is in cases where it is properly laid out ; where it is wasted, of course, no account can be obtained. ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 99 The following cases of three widows, each having four children to support, are authentic : Elizabeth Sach, aged 34 ; Mary- Ann, 14 ; Emma, 10 ; Elizabeth, 5 ; Anne, 3. 6 Little Russell Street. Rents a kitchen, 4s. 6d. a week. Does mangling ; earned last week 4s. 6d. ; this week, 10s. Owes ten weeks' rent ; paid 4s. 6d. towards it last Tuesday. Mary-Ann at home, wants a place. Buried a son, William, that died Dec. 6, aged 12 ; he was in a place at 3s. a week. Received 10s. from the Mendicity Society, and paid 5s. out of it towards the funeral. Has 51. of clothes in pledge ; has a mother and sister, who assist a little ; goes to them sometimes on Sunday to dinner. Expenditure. Dec. 15, 1839. i. d. Sunday. Potatoes, Ijd. ; steak, 6d. . . 7 Monday. Meat, 5%d.; potatoes, Id. ; loaf, 4d. ; tea and sugar, 4|d. ; butter, 3d. ; candles, IJd. ; beer, fd 1 8| Tuesday. Coals, 4|rf 4| Wednesday. Liver and bacon, 4%d. ; potatoes, Id. ; loaf, 4d. ; soap, 3d. ; soda, Id. ; blue, |d. ; candles, l%d. ; tea and sugar, 4 frf. 1 8f Carry forward . 4 5| 100 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 3. it. Brought over . 4 5| Thursday. Bacon, 3d. ; potatoes, Id. ; butter, 3d. ; tea and sugar, 4frf. . . . 11| Friday. Coke, 9d. ; potatoes, l^d. ; red herrings, 2d. ; cheese, Id 1 1% Saturday. Tea, sugar, and butter, 3%d. ; had some soup given ; going to buy in evening, coals, 4|cZ. ; meat, 6d. ; potatoes, Id. tea and sugar, 3%d. ; butter, 3d. . . . I 9k 8 4i Had three 4-lb. loaves from the parish this week. Ann Webb, aged 33 ; Henry, 1 1 ; James, 6 ; Ann, 5 ; Charles, 3. 20 Plumtre Street. Rents a kitchen, 3s. a week ; owes 18s. for rent. Does mangling ; earned 9. last week; 11s. this week. Has a boy, Edward, aged 9, in the workhouse. Expenditure. Dec. 15, 1839. *. d. Sunday. Meat, Is. ; potatoes, 2rf. . . .12 Monday. Butter, 2%d. ; tea and sugar, 3^d. ; coals, 9%d. ; candle, Id.; potatoes, 2rf. ; had soup given her . . . 1 6 Carry forward . 2 8 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 101 *. d. Brought over . 2 8 Tuesday. Butter, 2%d. ; tea and sugar, 3$d. ; candle, Id. ; potatoes, Id. . .09 Wednesday. Butter, 1\d. ; tea and sugar, 3%d. ; candle, 1 d. ; potatoes, Id. ; liver and bacon, 6d. ; loaf, 8%d. Had a girl to help her at the mangle ; gave her victuals . . 1 1 1 J Thursday. Butter, 1\d. ; tea and sugar, 3$d. ; candle, Id. ; potatoes, Id. The girl there 9 Friday. Butter, 2^d. ; tea and sugar, 3$d. ; candle, Id. ; potatoes, Id. ; bacon, 3d. . .10 Saturday. Meat, Is. ; potatoes, 4d. ; butter, 5rf. ; tea and sugar, 7d. ; candles, Id. ; loaf, 4%d. ; cheese, 2$d. ; loaf, 8$d. ; coals, 9$d. . 4 6| 11 8| Had six 4-lb. loaves this week from the parish. Elizabeth Whiting, aged 40; William, 17- at place, Is. a week, has board and lodg- ing mother washes for him ; Eliza, 9 ; Anne, 7 5 Alfred, 5 ; Susanna, 3. 6 Cottage Place, Kenton Street. Pays 3s. a week rent; owes ll. 13s. Does charing and brushmaking ; earned nothing this week ; last week, 3s. ; the week before, 5s. 8d. 102 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. Expenditure. Dec. 15, 1839. s. d. Sunday. Bought on Saturday night : Potatoes, 1 \d. ; bacon, Id. ; candle, $d. ; tea and sugar, 2d. ; soap, l%d. ; coals, 2d. ; loaf, 8|d 16 Monday. Tea and sugar, Id. ; butter, 1 ^d. ; candle, f d 04 Tuesday. Coals 02 Wednesday. Tea and sugar, Id. ; candle, ^d. ; wood, ^d. ; potatoes, Id. . . .04 Thursday. Coals . . . . . .01 Friday and Saturday 2 5 Had five 4-lb. loaves this week from the parish. The next case, detailing the expenditure of a man, a glazier, and his wife and two children, for fourteen days, and their means of living during the same period, is real, as well as can be ascertained; and is not far from the truth of many a real picture. The situation of Daniel Cole, aged 27, painter and glazier. He is sickly, and can ECONOMY OF THE POOR. 103 work but little ; wife, aged 23, hard-working, and of good character ; two children ; one aged three years, and the other suckling. Two weeks' provision, and the means of obtaining it. 1839. *. d. Nov. 23. Bought, bread . . . 4 Tea and sugar . . . .02 Coals ..... li Soap and candle . . .02 Potatoes and herring . . . 1 24. Bread . . . '. . 4j Milk, coals, and potatoes . . 2| 25. Bread, tea, and sugar . . 4 Potatoes, herring, and coals . 2| 26. Bread, milk, and potatoes . . 5| Bacon, candle, tea, and sugar . 4 27. Bread, milk, and tea . . 3 28. Bread, bacon, and potatoes . .06 Tea, sugar, milk, candle, and coals 4 29. Bread and milk . . . . 1 30. Bread and milk , . . . U Dec. 1. Went out. 2. Bread, tea, sugar, coals, and candle 7i 3. Bread, potatoes, and bacon . .04 4. Tea, sugar, bread, and milk . 3J Carry forward . 5 7i 104 ECONOMY OF THE POOR. *. d. Brought over . 5 7i Dec. 5. Milk and coals . . . . 1J 6. Tea and sugar . . . .02 5 11 Three 4-lb. loaves allowed by parish . 1 9 7 8 Nov. 25. Stopped a square of glass 10 27. Sold two chairs . .16 30. My wife earned . .10 Dec. 1. Sold a clock . . .20 4. Pledged a saw . .10 6 4 I estimate the bought victuals, chiefly potatoes, at 24 Ibs. : the bread given is also 24 Ibs. in the fortnight equal to 8 Ibs. a week to each person, or 1 Ib. 2 ounces a day ; of which nearly half is potatoes. There is a little milk besides, chiefly for the tea. Widow Humberston, aged 29 ; three children, 11, 8, and 5; and one six months. Earned last week, 2s. s. d. One and a half ounces tea . .06 Dripping l Firing 3J Rent 16 2 5 The parish allowed six 4-lb. loaves. ILLNESS. 105 I have placed all these tables of expen- diture here together, because I had entered upon the subject, and it was important and interesting that they should be seen at one view ; though some of them are more imme- diately applicable to other conditions and causes of poverty than the having a large family of children. They will all of them serve to illustrate the distresses to which those are subject whose earnings are ten shillings, five shillings, two shillings no- thing ; who have not even a settlement, to give them a claim upon any parish. ILLNESS. The frequency of illness among the work- ing classes, and the extent of the distress occasioned by it, ought to be understood. The feebleness of constitution and liability to disease consequent upon habitual defi- ciency of food among the already distressed, has been adverted to; but our concern is now with those who have sufficient employ- 106 ILLNESS. ment, and in whom illness is the immediate cause of destitution. The agricultural popu- lation, when work is plentiful, are com- paratively healthy. But the manufacturing classes in towns, and artisans of most kinds, are much more subject to disease ; and this is one among the many causes which place the working population of towns in a worse condition than the country people, and make the extent and degrees of distress among them much greater. Dr. Howard, in the treatise above quoted, says that few are aware of the usually deli- cate state of health, and enfeebled constitu- tions, of these people ; and that the mor- tality among the labouring classes is fre- quently aided by too long continued toil and exertion without adequate repose, in- sufficient clothing, exposure to cold, and other privations to which the poor are sub- jected. (f Many even of those who regu- larly receive high wages live in dark cellars in the midst of filth, by which the atmo- sphere is rendered foul, and unfit for respira- ILLNESS. 107 tion a due circulation of air being impos- sible. Their families are ill fed, scantily clothed, and badly lodged ; three or four persons being frequently crowded together in the same bed, which is often filthy and deficient of covering. Their houses are al- most destitute of furniture, comfortless, and uncleanly; too often damp, cold, and ill ventilated. They live much on innutritious and indigestible food ; and often use arti- cles of bad quality, or such as are rendered unwholesome by adulteration, or by being kept too long. These evils are frequently promoted, and much increased, by their in- temperate habits and extravagance. "Then, again, many are occupied in se- dentary employment, and pass the greater part of the day in heated, crowded, and ill- ventilated rooms ; they take no regular ex- ercise ; they never breathe the fresh and invigorating air of the country, but con- stantly, day after day, inhale the same vitiated and loaded atmosphere. The vital function of respiration is thus but imperfectly per- 108 ILLNESS. formed. Yet an uncontaminated atmosphere for the lungs is as essential to. the mainte- nance of health, as a supply of wholesome food to the stomach ; and it is impossible that the frame can continue vigorous under such a regimen. " From the heated apartments in which the people employed in manufactures work, they too frequently rush into the open air without any additional clothing, whatever the weather may be. By these sudden tran- sitions, inflammatory attacks of the lungs and stomach are continually occurring. " Other causes affecting the health of the manufacturing population are, the protracted length of time they are confined daily at their work, the want of requisite repose, and the little leisure they have for relaxation and healthful recreation. "A consideration of the foregoing facts is sufficient to shew that, at all times, even those of the greatest prosperity, a large proportion of the manufacturing classes is far from being in a state of vigorous health, ILLNESS. 109 and that many of them are on the verge of actual disease." 3 In addition to the above picture, it is an experience of the utmost consequence that children suffer much more than grown peo- ple from being crowded together in close rooms. Yet this is the fate of children in general in thickly -peopled towns, where lodging is dear, and streets are confined and narrow, and little opportunity of running into the open air is afforded. It is consi- dered a virtue to keep the children at home; and frequently the mother is forced to go out upon her business, and leave the children shut up in a room by themselves, as the only means of providing for them. In most cottages in the country there is at least a bedroom and a sitting-room. In London, and other towns, in addition to the other habits of confinement, the closeness of the rooms and alleys, and the infrequency with which they go out of them, there is rarely * Inquiry into the Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food among the Poor, pp. 3-8. L 110 ILLNESS. more than a single small apartment both for living and sleeping, on account of the ex- pense of lodging. The effect of great confinement and of unhealthy air upon children was evidenced by the investigation which preceded the pas- sing of Jonas Hanway^s act ; which requires that all workhouse children under five years of age should be sent into the country. Pre- vious to this act, not a child born and brought up in a London workhouse was ascertained to have lived to the age of two years. Very few indeed of those born now in London workhouses live long enough to be taken from the nurses and sent into the country. The great mortality among the children of working people in towns, even of such as are not sent to workhouses, is well known to persons who are in the habit of visiting them. And in many of those which survive, and grow up and become workmen, there can be no doubt that great feebleness of constitution and proneness to disease must be engendered by the same causes. ILLNESS. Ill In addition to what has been stated, there are many employments which are in them- selves unhealthy, and many diseases which are peculiar to particular trades and callings. Thus journeymen bakers are a peculiarly un- healthy class of men ; the shoemakers' arid tailors' trades are not healthy ; there is a complaint called the painter's cholic, and fever; chimney-sweepers are subject to a peculiar and distressing complaint. The dust from grinding pins is very injurious ; glass- blowing is hurtful to the lungs ; trades car- ried on in heat, from the subsequent expo- sure to cold, predispose to consumption. Add to all this, the liability to accidents among workmen in all trades ; from which the independent and middle classes are com- paratively free. b b Reports of the Mendicity Society, 1822, c. 13,767, 14,841 ; 1828, c. 21,957, fall from a scaffold ; 1829, c. 23,222, kick from a horse; 1830, c. 24,126, husband and wife both ill,; 1833, c. 27,481, millwright, lost an arm in the machinery ; 1836, c. 30,775, fallfrom scaffold ; 1838, c. 33,003, tailor, seven children, nearly all ill. 112 OLD AGE, AND WIDOWHOOD. Old age was partly the cause of distress in some of the cases above referred to ; in others it is the prevailing cause. An ordi- nary term of old age may perhaps be provided against. But when old age is protracted, and exceeds the usual limits ; and especially when it has been preceded by illness or widowhood, or other distressing circumstances ; any rea- sonable provision must be expected to fail ; and the case is similar to that of illness or accident in early life, before there has been any opportunity of saving. Old age is a more frequent cause of distress among women; especially widows. The distresses of these must be less culpable admitting poverty to be a crime since it is the husband's province to make provision ; and it has often been his crime or neglect which has occasioned the widow's want of ability. A woman has often exhausted her strength and means in bringing up a large family ; and these are, in her old age, unable or unwilling to assist her. OLD AGE, AND WIDOWHOOD. 113 Of about 100 persons relieved by a monthly allowance at St. Giles's workhouse, the average age, in January 1836, was 71 ; at present it is 69. Of these, about 6 to 1 are women. Of two of the weekly lists the average age is 67 ; of the third it is 64. In many cases, men as well as women outlive the power of providing for them- selves ; and this not unfrequently from in- firmities arising out of the nature of their trade. Watchmakers' eyes fail them ; and from the habit acquired in this delicate work, they are unfit for any other employment. Tailors also lose their eyesight, apparently from the nature of their occupation. A peculiarly distressing class of cases is that of aged Irishmen, from 70 to 80 years of age, who have been 40 or 50 years in this country ; and to whom the overseers offer only a pass to Ireland, where they have no friends surviving. 114 DESERTION BY HUSBAND. These cases differ from that of widow- hood, inasmuch as women are left widows mostly after their families are grown up, and able to provide for themselves, or even to assist their parents. But women deserted by their husbands are frequently burdened with a young and increasing family; and are brought to their distress by a more sudden and heart-breaking calamity than even death itself. Sometimes a woman so circumstanced is just about to be confined ; more frequently has an infant in arms ; or perhaps discovers that her husband has another wife, so that she has not even a legal claim upon him for maintenance. WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. The extent in which want of employment operates to create distress is better known c Reports of Mendicity Society, 1820, c. 5353; 1822, c. 14,263 ; 1825, c. 19,454, a former wife and family ; 1836,c. 30,392, 30,895. WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. 115 than any other, because it presses upon a class of persons who will make their situa- tion known; namely, the able-bodied. It, however, exists much more extensively than is at all known or believed ; and is working hourly greater and greater misery, as well as immorality, with every increase of our so-called prosperity. Much has been said about the vastly greater numbers which are employed in each trade since the introduc- tion of machinery ; but few have taken the trouble to compare the rates of wages, or the facility of getting employment, before and since the use of machines in each ma- nufactured The competition of machines with human skill in all the finer and more delicate branches of manufacture, and the d At the latter part of the 17th century, agricul- tural labour earned the price of 24 loaves a week ; in 1812 it earned the price of 12 loaves; and much less in 1813, when the price of bread was unusually high. It now earns from 1 2 to 15 loaves. This change has been regular and gradual. EDEN'S State of the Poor, v. iii. App. pp. 79, 102. Poverty, Mendicity, and Crime, p. 17. 116 WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. degradation of human labour to the lowest and most simple offices being, for the most part, such as mere children can perform, and, in many cases, little more varied or skilful than the office of a scullion watching a spit, might, on the very face of it, be supposed likely to depreciate the worth and wages of human handicraft. But this is too plain for the lovers of philosophy and fine reasoning, who would much rather be led round about and away by a subtle and intricate theory, than straight onward by experience. It is a simple fact, that want of work and distress among the poorer classes are daily becoming more urgent, with our advance in contrivance and civilisation, and the increase of riches. It is not only the idle and incapable work- men who are unemployed, but the able, the industrious, and deserving, are frequently without the means of earning sufficient to support life. But the greatest and most to be lamented depreciation is in the labour of women. A woman can scarcely support herself by WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. 117 ordinary and regular labour, much less can she maintain her children, if she be left a widow. At the more refined sorts of work, those who happen to have the skill, and the employment also, may provide for them- selves tolerably ; but the number which can obtain work of these kinds is comparatively few indeed. Formerly we might have seen the cottagers in all parts of England sitting at their doors, and engaged busily from noon to evening in plaiting straw, making lace, and spinning. Thousands and thousands of girls and women gained a cheerful and easy livelihood by these employments. But now spinning is given to a woman, ever so able and willing to work, as a positive charity; for it cannot be made profitable. Young and old women remain at home idle, from the actual valuelessness of their labour. Women's skill and strength is depreciated down to being a superfluity and a burden ; by which they are not only deprived of sup- portj but are more and more degraded. A child is as good as a grown person ; and 118 WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. in those employments which still remain to females, girls are most frequently preferred to women : perhaps because they wait more humbly and obediently upon dumb and sense- less machines. The grade of female under- standing and skill which is in requisition is so low, that the sense of children best an- swers to the standard. It is said, that there are still some parts of Buckinghamshire and Devonshire in which lace-making is practised with a lingering pertinaciousness by an industrious and po- verty-stricken population. Straw-plaiting is still used in parts of Hertfordshire, Buck- inghamshire, and Bedfordshire. Even wool- spinning is still persisted in throughout the villages in the vicinity of Lavenham in Suffolk. The young girls there are still said to be spinners to have their wheels, when the weather will allow them, out in the open air to pursue their work and their gossiping stories sociably together, occasionally beguiling their labour with a song, in the burden of which they all join WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. 119 in chorus. 6 In Blackmoor Vale, Dorsetshire, and in some parts of Devonshire, the women may still be seen sitting at their cottage- doors working gloves and making thread buttons. But the most urgent and painful of all distresses occasioned by want of employ- ment, is that of young girls, maid-servants out of place. The distresses and helplessness of this class of people exceed all that could be reckoned upon without actual experience. When young women are brought up from the country, and are far distant from their friends, who have little means of assisting them, or, what is also frequently the case, have no friends at all in the world, if they happen to lose their situations from their own folly, or necessity, or illness, or, what is quite as common, from the caprice of their mistresses, they have no resource whatever, unless they happen to get another place before the little remains of their wages e Scenes of Commerce, p. 235. 120 WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. is expended. Mistresses frequently exercise the most culpable thoughtlessness and se- verity with regard to their maid -servants. They turn them off from mere capricious- ness, or for a trivial error, and for a slight cause will refuse to give them a character ; though with the best of characters they may often be a long time out of place. Without a character, if they have not friends to sup- port them, they are almost inevitably driven to become outcasts of society, the victims of crime and disease, and all the most aggra- vated degrees of poverty and misery to which human nature can be subjected. Nothing can equal the rapid descent made by such people from character, comfort, joyousness, and delicacy, to the hungry, haggard, care- worn look, the squalid filth, to abandoned, helpless, hopeless, reckless misery ! It is no uncommon thing to see these young crea- tures, when, at the moment of poverty first staring them in the face, they make their first application for help, still retaining all their neatness and delicacy, propriety of WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. 121 manner, and sensibility. But all their other dresses are pawned, their wages are spent, their rent is in arrear, and they are threatened to be turned out of doors, and all their things to be seized. They have nothing, in fact, but the clothes they are wearing. They cannot even take them off to wash them, so as to preserve cleanliness. The friends who assisted them with needlework at first, have no more to furnish. Unless the helping hand is extended to them at this very mo- ment, in the next hour they must be ranked with the most degraded of the human race, and sustain all those lowest and most irre- trievable depths of misery which have been alluded to. It would be well that mistresses should consider this a little more deeply ; that they should have a few cases brought before them to make them more fully aware of the re- sponsibility which attaches to them, as the proper guardians of their servants, espe- cially those whom they have themselves in- duced to leave their homes for service, and M 122 WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. the dreadful precipice towards which they thrust them when they abandon them with- out protection. There is no class of persons so little capable of helping themselves as servants. They are used to, and encouraged in, every comfort and luxury, much beyond the sphere in which they were brought up ; and all this is provided for them without care or thought of any kind on their own part. They are provided for like the children of the family ; and they are as little able almost to cope with the world, to sustain its rebuffs, and to contend with its difficulties, as those very children would be. They have never had occasion to use money except for dress or amusement. They know nothing about pro- viding lodging, provisions, furniture, or other articles of household economy and necessity. Hence arises the ill success which generally attends servants who quit service, and set up in the world for themselves. But these calamities fall infinitely more readily upon young, delicate, and inexperienced maid- WANT OF TOOLS. 123 servants ; and the consequences to them are infinitely more rapid and dreadful, as may be seen from some of the examples referred to.f The number of cases in which maid- servants and others are discharged from the hospitals cured, or only partially cured, with- out any employment or provision, is very great indeed. WANT OF TOOLS. A man's tools are his livelihood. A man's tools are his stock in trade ; upon the loss of which every man is a beggar, whatever may be his employment. A lawyer's books are f Reports of Mendicity Soc. 1823, c. 15,731 ; 1831, c. 24,715 ; c. 24,716, strolling actors ; 1831, c. 24,742, a weaver; 1822, c. 12,903, girl, aged 19, had not lodged in a house for six nights, of good character; 1829, c. 23,723, discharged without a character; 1833, c. 27,289, girl 21, master a bankrupt; 1825, c. I860; 1826, c. 20,591 ; 1837, c. 31,367 ; 1838, c. 32,168. These four last are maid -servants who lost their places from illness. 124 WANT OF TOOLS. his tools of trade, a writer's wits, a banker's credit, a shopman's clothes, a clerk's hand- writing, a servant's character, a carpenter's planes and chisels, a ploughman's strength, a porter's knot, a gardener's spade, a mow- er's scythe, a reaper's sickle, the lowest stock of any man in trade is a bad voice and a song. Without these tools, each one of these several persons is at once a beggar; and those of them which cannot be taken away by sale or force, may be lost by ill- ness. A singer's voice may be taken away by a cold. Health is a man's tools in every station. But the two proper subjects of this division are, the working tools of the me- chanic, and clothes : the possession of which last is of the utmost necessity, and the want of which is the sufficient cause of many per- sons in various situations becoming beggars. A servant without clothes is wholly deprived of the means of getting a place. A writer, a clerk, a shopboy, a common porter, a charwoman, are equally unable to pursue their calling ; and are beggared. Even me- WANT OF TOOLS. 125 chanics are frequently disabled from going out to seek for employment, and needle- women to ask for work, by the single cause of want of clothing fit to shew themselves in; sometimes for want of any clothing at all. The state to which a person is reduced, when he has sunk to the condition of hav- ing but one suit of clothes, and no change whatever, is miserable beyond description. The clothes, from being constantly used, and never taken off, being worn day after day, and slept in, become filthy beyond every thing offensive, unwholesome, and filled with vermin. This is the condition in which numbers of poor creatures exist before they are driven to the workhouse ; and quantities of clothes of this sort are burnt at the work- houses to prevent infection. Their bodies are in a no less filthy state ; as is shewn by the water of the baths in which they are washed immediately upon their reception. Such people, when washed and clothed, and recovered by wholesome living to a tolerable M 2 126 WANT OF TOOLS. state of health and strength, are frequently, by this means alone, placed in a situation to gain a livelihood, and to get up again in the world. The loss of a mechanic's tools leaves a good and active workman entirely destitute.^ Sometimes these are taken for rent; some- times they are lost or stolen ; most fre- quently, through illness or the burdens of a large family, they have been sold one by one, or are in deposit at the pawnbroker's. Gene- rally this leads to, or is accompanied with, other evils. Low living has preceded it ; ill- ness attends it; then the loss of bedding, clothes, and other furniture. The regular attendance having been interrupted, the g The value of a mechanic's tools is very great. A carpenter ought to have from 101. to 151. worth of tools ; a joiner, from 20Z. to 30Z. ; a cabinet-maker, from 30/. to 50Z. The tools of superior mechanics are worth from 501. to lOO/. In the Report of the Men- dicity Society for 1836, p. 28, the case of a carpenter is mentioned, whose tools, worth 50l., were detained for the price of their conveyance to London. WANT OF TOOLS. 127 master has hired another workman; and as trade is oftener falling than rising, it is a long time before he has occasion to employ another workman. When the employment is offered, then he has no tools to execute it ; then shortly after, he has no clothes suf- ficient to enable him to go out and seek for it. At length he has no strength and health to do it, when work of some inferior de- scription and tools are offered him ; and he inevitably sinks to the lowest state of beg- gary and irrecoverable weakness, unless some one of the Christian school of alms- giving stretches out a helping hand to him in time, supports him from sinking deeper, gets him restored to health and place again, nurses him up through his gradual recovery of strength, position, and character, and sees him once more fairly launched in the world, with a freight and fair wind, and a haven before him. h h Mendicity Society's Reports, 1823, c. 15,731, an actor, who had lost his wardrobe; 1832, c. 25,722, tools sold, and work offered; 1835, c. 29,623, tools 128 COMING TO LONDON. I have already noticed that multitudes of persons come to London to make their fortunes, and that numbers of these are reduced to distress by this very means. The prizes in this lottery are the highest; therefore crowds put into it. But the num- ber of blanks is great in the same propor- tion; and this experience is not regarded. The London circle is a mine in which great fortunes are gained, and great numbers are ruined. The solitude of individuals is ex- treme in this populous desert ; a man may travel onward and backward as unobserved in the midst of this busy and selfish crowd, as if he were surrounded only by the arid rocks and shrubs of the Arabian plain. Advertisement in consequence becomes the great and important art in large and crowded stolen ; 1834, c. 27,933, maid- servant, clothes pledged ; 27,951, shoemaker; 1836, c. 26,944, a man-servant, his clothes pledged through illness ; 30,137, tools worth 50J. detained for their carriage. COMING TO LONDON. 129 towns ; and there is often more success in cleverly advertising, and the pursuit of no- toriety, than in the ability to execute any work skilfully. The expense now incurred in advertisements is enormous, and greatly enhances the price of a ticket in this lottery of trade. Every man in the country is known to his neighbours ; but this is but a small circle. A man obtains notoriety in London only through great exertion or good fortune ; but having become known, it is to a very numerous and extensive acquaint- ance. Again, this notoriety and connexion is of the most capricious character. The shop which is in vogue to-day may be out of fashion and deserted after to-morrow. A fortune must be made in the first or second season, or not at all. But in the country a shopman is earning a subsistence for his family all his life, and leaves his business as an inheritance to his children. The consequence is, that though the largest fortunes are made, and the greatest prizes are gained in London, yet the disappoint- 130 COMING TO LONDON. ments too are greater and more frequent; and though inferior strength and cleverness necessarily suffer the greatest neglect and depression, where every thing that is most clever and perfect is sought after, yet very tolerable powers may be lost and wasted in this troubled sea of competition and chi- canery, especially in persons who have not the front and energy to buffet with these noisy waves of riot and rivalry. Inequalities are ordained by God in respect of health, strength, energy, and talent, and all the powers which qualify a man to raise him- self and to provide for his family; and where, as in London, the best of every thing is in demand, and adequately paid for, and where, consequently, every thing that is excellent in talent collects itself, it arises of necessity that any inferiority of power more obviously betrays itself, and being un- equal to the high standard of every thing around it, is despised and neglected, and sinks even lower than its own naturally low level. A very extensive mass of misery and suf- COMING TO LONDON. 131 fering exists among those whose abilities are unequal to the high standard existing and required in London. Workmen of this de- scription are the first thrown out of employ- ment, during the winter months, in times of difficulty and depression, and when the fami- lies leave London. These men bear the brunt of every bad season and relaxation in trade, having earned the least when they were in work ; while the superior mechanics are kept employed, even at a loss, at their very high wages, lest their services should go elsewhere. Agood workman who earns five-and-thirty shillings a week is better worth his wages than one at twenty shillings. The superi- ority of good London workmen is so great, that a builder finds it better worth while to send London workmen into the country, and pay them a shilling a day extra, and all their expenses, than to employ country workmen. A good London bricklayer will not only do his work better, but he will lay twice as many bricks in a day as a country brick- 132 COMING TO LONDON. layer. The wages of the best workmen in London increase, and those of inferior men decrease ; while want of employment is more and more felt, and these last bear the whole burden of it. These are some of the causes of the greater extreme of misery which prevails in the me- tropolis and other large towns, and of the fail- ures of those who come to make their fortunes in them. But there are other causes to be found ; among which are, the increased sel- fishness, pride, exclusiveness, forgetfulness of duty and responsibility, arid other defects of moral character, which are engendered by the habits of society in capital towns, and the excessive hurry of life and intensity of occupation which engrosses the mind on single pursuits, and abstracts it from general objects and observation. One part are en- gaged in the pursuit of fashion, another of ambition, the most of riches ; all are so de- voted to the world and mammon, that there is no time for the every-day duties of life and personal attentions and sympathies. COMING TO LONDON. 133 Even those who devote themselves to society and a large acquaintance, are distracted by this very pursuit, and indisposed from real attachments and friendships. And least of all can the other classes of society, and the protection which is their due, obtain any thought or adequate attention. 1 SHIPWRECK. Shipwreck is one of those common ca- sualties to which all persons are subject, each in their own trade, as, falls from scaffolds, fires in manufactories, accidents from ma- chinery. Shipwreck, however, is one of the ' Reports of Mendicity Society, 1819, c. 1726, girl came from Ireland, hearing that wages were better in London, compelled to beg, of good character ; 1822, c. 13,745, girl from Dublin, penniless, taken to his home by a watchman ; c. 13,749, a joiner from Scot- land, compelled to beg; c. 14,813, boy 14, from Wor- cester, expected to find his uncle, not knowing Lon- don to be so large, forced to beg; 1825, c. 19,703, lad 17, brought his sister with him, aged 13, from Ireland, walked from Liverpool to London, had Qd. left when they arrived. N 134 WANT OF SETTLEMENT. most frequent calamities, in consequence of the extended commerce of this country, and especially the coasting trade. I mention it more particularly, because it is one of the pretences frequently set up by beggars, to shew that this misfortune really has exist- ence, and that its reality is not disproved by the frequency of these pretences. J WANT OF SETTLEMENT. The views which are held respecting the poor are brutal. These views are in a mea- sure enforced by the law, and arise out of it ; but the law represents the public opinion which occasioned the enactment. By law and general opinion the poor are a nuisance. All beggars are criminals. Because the law has provided a resource to the indigent (how far an adequate one will be noticed presently), therefore every one who presents himself in the way of a rich man to ask alms is a cri- J Mendicity Society Reports, 1819, c. 1935; 1S23, c. 15,164; 1833, p. 49- WANT OF SETTLEMENT. 135 minal. No matter how real his distress, no matter how inadequate the legal provision in his case, no matter how peculiar his cir- cumstances all beggars are impostors. The truth of the tale he tells is no criterion. Because the law of man has said there shall be no poverty, thereby endeavouring to de- feat the law of God, therefore, whether a man be living in health, and idleness, and comfort, and simulate illness, want of work and money, or whether he be sinking under illness, accident, want of work, and inevitable ruin, he is equally an impostor, if he begs equally criminal, and subject to punishment. A man is sent to prison for truly represent- ing his real poverty. Thus truth and false- hood are confounded by law and general estimation. Whether a man be blind, have no arms, or legs, it is all one and the same thing; because he begs, he is, in the lan- guage of all officials, and of more than half the richer public, a gross impostor. The effect of this upon people's hearts and minds upon their sense of right and wrong, of 136 WANT OF SETTLEMENT. truth and falsehood, is positively destruc- tive. But it goes further. Not only is the blind man or the cripple a rogue because he has a refuge and a legal resort in his parish, wherever it may be, whether a hundred miles off or twenty ; but all those who happen to have no settlement at all are clubbed toge- ther with them in the general estimation, and are equally characterised with the rest as vagrants, vagabonds, rogues, and impos- tors, without regard to the distinction in their case, and the absence even of the usual resources. Vast multitudes of Irish and Scotch, and many foreigners, are constantly in this case, being wholly without resource in parish relief, though in the greatest dis- tress, from any of the above causes ; yet they meet with no greater measure of compassion or relief, but rather with less of both. It is a common phrase and conclusion that the case of the Irish is desperate that it is hopeless to attempt to assist them. They are almost generally abandoned. Some few WANT OF SETTLEMENT. 137 exceptions are made ; and they greatly assist one another; and they are driven by this absence of all resource to much greater economy and exertions ; and thus they do in fact continue to exist, through extraordinary toil, and shifts, and perseverance, and power to bear privations, and to subsist on the lowest food, and by their natural buoyancy. The one answer of the overseers is, " we will pass you to Ireland ;" k that is, to a poorer country, a still greater destitution, and an absence from all those among whom you may have established a character which might ensure you employment when the season of occupation shall come round. The conse- quence is, that the refusal to be passed is k The following is the regulation of the Mendicity Society with respect to Irish recently arrived in Lon- don : " That this class of applicants should be dis- posed of at once, receiving at the utmost food and a single night's lodging, unless in cases of very peculiar emergency, which should be referred to the committee, who may afford relief not exceeding 10s." Mendicity Society's Report, 1833, p. 19. 138 WANT OF SETTLEMENT. almost as constant as the offer of it ; and the Irish therefore, and other unsettled poor, go on of necessity upon their own resources, without any dependence upon the legal pro- vision which is to others the last resort of misery. This state of things falls heaviest upon those Irish and Scotch who have left their own country a great many years, have lost all their connexions with it, and have lived and grown old in this country in toil and service. It is better with them to be destitute in England, than to be both desti- tute and strangers in their own country. 1 1 Mendicity Society Reports, 1820, c. 4658, a native of the East Indies, paid off in England applied to a magistrate, who told him he could do nothing for him but send him to prison, to which he consented ; 1827, c. 21,780, left Ireland long ago; 1829, c. 22,963, Irish, a good workman, ill in bed for several weeks ; 1839, c. 37,205. An aged Irishman, named Harvey, was passed to Ireland from St. Giles's, being too old to work, and re- turned because he found no friends or support for him there. He asserted his right to beg, and lived by going from house to house, and interesting many people in 139 DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING PARISH RELIEF. But it is not true that parish relief is in all cases a resource, even to those who have a settlement. In multitudes of cases it is no resource at all; for the relief which is offered, when it is not absolutely refused, is often such relief as cannot be accepted, and practically puts the applicants in the same situation as the Irish and others before men- tioned. The main object of the guardians and overseers is not to administer the law equally and impartially between the rich and poor, as if the poor had been parties to the making of it. The law was passed by the rich for themselves, and it is administered for them- his case. God had placed him in this lot, and the law had not raised him out of it ; and he was not ashamed of it. He had seen better days, and he did not feel degraded by his vocation. He kept a good Sunday coat, was constant at the early sacrament at St. Giles's, and might frequently be seen, till lately, kneeling beside the Lord Chief Justice; their two white heads present- ing together a very interesting object. 140 DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING selves and by themselves ; and the usual and almost exclusive test of the goodness of the administration is the decrease of the sum expended that is, of the amount received by the poor to aid them in their distresses. The system of the administration of relief is a defensive system ; the main contest is, to find means and excuses for refusing relief, without infringing the obligations of the law. Some cases of real and obvious distress are relieved liberally; and there is an abstract intention, perhaps, of doing justly in the mind of the officer, upon his first entrance into office. But the poor have the law as their only weapon ; and they are not skilful in the use of it. The officer has both a greater skill and experience in the law, and also the purse ; and this last gives him the entire superiority. Then, again, the officer has those over him whose purse it is, and who are concerned in the economy of it, and who do not with their own eyes witness the distress. But, more than all, the poor are the advancing party, and upon the offensive, PARISH RELIEF. 141 and naturally making the most of their own case. The relieving officer is always upon his defence ; and his mind and skill are con- stantly engaged in sifting the truth, dis- covering the false, and narrowing down and diminishing the case presented to him as much as possible. His ingenuity becomes too active and overstrained ; a habit of sus- picion is engendered ; and it becomes a prac- tice to visit all their effects upon every case and statement. This state of mind, once engendered, warrants all other expedients which can be brought in aid of it ; and every advantage which the letter of the law can afford is used as a fit instrument to defeat the claims for parish relief. Thus, the work- house is offered to one who it is known will refuse it ; a pass to another who is deter- mined against removing ; bread is offered to a third who wants a few shillings to redeem his tools. Thus each person is offered that which he will refuse ; and the rates are eco- nomised, and the claims of the poor are thwarted, at all events. This practice hav- 142 DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING PARISH RELIEF. ing become general, and been long exercised, the spirit of it has extended beyond the officials themselves to those above them and around them ; and it has become a conven- tional rule of right, a habit of thought and axiom, that the poor are continually exercis- ing all kinds of false pretences and claims to relief ; that they are generally a set of cheats and vagabonds, and are to be curtailed as much as possible. The very opposite dis- position of certain charitable people and there are more of this disposition than of the contrary who will read this statement are no answer to this exposition, and will not disprove the general existence of the feelings here described. Whatever may be the prevailing sentiments upon this subject, what has been above mentioned, and the cases referred to below, afford fair specimens of the practical working of this principle in the hands of the officials to whom the relief is entrusted. m Mendicity Society Reports, 1819, c. 242, 327, 3056, woman with two children sent off to London 143 INSUFFICIENCY OF PARISH ALLOWANCE. One of the means of defence used by the parish officers is to grant relief, but so utterly insufficient for the necessities of the case, that it is in effect no relief at all. A rough word or a threat is administered toge- ther with the relief, and a wholesome terror is inspired ; so that the person receiving it is apprehensive that if she venture a further in a wagon sixteen days after being brought to bed, found in the streets in the middle of the night in De- cember, being many miles from her husband's parish ; 1820, c. 5012, a wholesale hatter, had a recommenda- tion from sixty-seven most respectable inhabitants of the city the workhouse offered ; 1821, c. 9485 ; 1822, c. 13,767, 13,786, girl, 17, slept three nights in a watchhouse refused by overseer because not regu- larly passed; 1821, c. 7363, husband dying, offered to be passed to Ireland ; 1820, c. 3380, a brazier, wife and six children answer of overseer, that he must first sell his tools ; 4970, deserted by husband re- fused because her husband not with her. I have se- lected cases which happened long since, on account of the odiousness of the subject. 144 INSUFFICIENCY OF PARISH ALLOWANCE. application, the allowance already granted will be stopped. Whatever, therefore, her distress, and however much it may have been increased, she will never face the parish officers again, and risk the loss of the present pittance. The most difficult and distressing cases entertained by the Mendicity Society are those of persons having London parishes. Their rule is to give them only a meal and clothing, if they are receiving any thing from the parish. But these cases in general exhibit circumstances of greater urgency than any others. This topic is a branch only of the last division ; but it is of so specific a character as to require a distinct and separate notice. 11 " Mendicity Society Reports, 1820, c. 3954, wife and four children, husband paralytic allowance, three shillings per week ; 1822, c. 13,785; 1833, c. 27,316, waiter at taverns, three shillings per week, and this discontinued forced to beg. 145 VICIOUS AND WEAK CHARACTER. We come to a very different class among the causes of distress, and one which is con- fessedly but too frequent. Defect in moral character is a very prevailing cause of poverty. The treatment of such cases is another head of inquiry ; at present we are dealing with the existence of distress, its causes, and fre- quency. But it ought to be noticed, that there is a great disposition to exaggerate upon this head; and in a matter of such nicety as the discrimination of the claims and merits of the poor, even a slight bias towards any one particular view must have a vast influence, and may lead the judgment very far astray out of the proper course. It has already been observed, that drunkenness is caused by poverty, as well as being the cause of it. Other faults of character are similarly circumstanced. It is a modern theory, that poverty is the chief cause of crime. But this is only a theory. The same has been said of want of education, with an o 146 VICIOUS AND WEAK CHARACTER. equal degree of truth. In each case, as is usual, there is a partial truth, and a mon- strous exaggeration. But poverty does nurse crime, and cause those seeds of vice to spring up which are near the surface. Also, weakness of mind is more closely allied to weakness of character than is gene- rally acknowledged; and no one cause of poverty whatsoever is more pitiable. I have not entered into this cause of distress as a class, because it is incurable, like loss of limbs or blindness. But it ought to be kept in mind, that this cause peoples a vast field of misery. Infirmity of body and mind, natural inferiority and weakness, places great num- bers in a state of difficulty from their birth ; and from the competition which now exists, and is daily increasing, and the accuracy with which every man's worth is being weighed, the difficulty is also daily increas- ing of procuring a maintenance, to those whom the providence of God has placed lower in the scale of ability and strength among their fellow-creatures. But as infe- VICIOUS AND WEAK CHARACTER. 147 riority of mind is less obvious than bodily infirmity, and blends intimately with moral weakness, it requires greater attention and discrimination, and a closer observation is necessary to distinguish it. In a question of so much nicety and doubt, the judg- ment is sure to be pronounced according to the previous bias. Every one conversant with the poor will have found, that there is a large number of persons who are continually going down. They seem to be born to misery. They meet with more misfortunes, make less ad- vantage of their successes, and of the assist- ance which they must meet with, than other people. Every thing goes wrong with them. And each time you meet with them, after every interval, however much more than usual may have been the help afforded them, still they are constantly going down; and each time they are found to be at a lower stage of want and distress, till they come to abject misery. The distresses of some of these are caused by natural infirmity of 148 VICIOUS AND WEAK CHARACTER. others, by weakness of moral character a great proportion by the two together. These are most difficult cases to deal with. But let not any one harshly conclude that they are all hopeless. They are generally so. But most unexpected and satisfactory cases do occasionally arise, in which the most hopeless are retrieved effectually, even after repeated failures and most fruitless endeavours; and this in the renovation of the moral condition, as well as in the pecuniary circumstances. These cases are not hopeless; and what is of great concern in our judgment and treat- ment of the poor, the largest experience cannot determine which of the many cases before it will lead to the most satisfactory results. The cases referred to are instances in which vicious character was the prevailing cause of the distress. Mendicity Society Reports, 1823, c. 16,641 ; 1833, c. 27,691; 1836, c. 31,087; 1826, c. 20,248; 1838, c. 33,101, 32,370; 1839, c. 34,098; 1826, c. 20,444, 24,885, and 54,276, Begging- letter department. 149 SEDUCTION PROSTITUTION. Shall I hide from view the greatest of all griefs the most acute and urgent miseries ? Having begun to exhibit the distresses of human life, shall I forbear to portray them in their form of greatest depth and intensity, from an overstrained delicacy ? The misfortunes of life seem to fall hea- viest upon the female sex. It is the widow, and the deserted wife, and the weak and friendless girl, who is many times oftener the subject of compassion than the other sex. Women are formed to suffer and to en- dure ; and abundant is the suffering and the endurance to which, in all ages, they have constantly been subjected. And nobly they have endured. Some of the greatest exam- ples of fortitude, and firmness, and cheerful endurance of pain, have been afforded by women. Women are also born to be a prey. A mixture of strength and weakness, they are impregnable on one side, having the other o2 150 SEDUCTION PROSTITUTION. sex for their leader and support; on the other side, they are defenceless and power- less against the sex upon which they are destined to lean and to depend. The misery connected with this subject is appalling ; its features are hideous. My topic is compassion, not censure; to advo- cate the cause of suffering, and persuade to its relief, not to condemn or to do away with the causes of it. Perhaps, however, the ex- hibition of the real picture in its true colours may have some effect in a case where the character and motives are more concerned than in the other departments of misery. Some one, perhaps, may pause in a path of which hitherto he has known nothing of the end. Especially, it may induce some mis- tresses of families, who are thoughtless in bringing young women to London, and hasty in discharging them without protec- tion, to consider their responsibility, and the amount of crime and misery which their care or inadvertence may prevent or origi- nate. But the whole subject is an awful SEDUCTION PROSTITUTION. 151 and a mysterious one. All the ways of evil are mysterious, but this is most inscrutable. " Three things are too wonderful for me, yea, there are four which I know not : the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock ; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea ; and the way of a man with a maid." Money enticeth, wine is raging, but love is a furnace seven times heated; and it consumeth all things when extended beyond bounds. The fire is health- ful, and safe, and manageable, so long as it burns only on the domestic hearth ; but when once it has transgressed beyond those bounds, it is a destroyer and devourer, and cannot be arrested ; or, if at all, only by a very violent effort, and after great, and terrible, and irre- coverable damage, or ruin. The miseries attendant upon seduction and prostitution are awful and appalling. Disease, starvation, robbery, insanity, early and painful death, murder of children, suicide : these are among the consequences most frequently to be met 152 SKDrCTIOX PROSTITUTION". with ; and the almost certain forerunner of these is the most abject poverty. There is some hope of a man when he falls into the most vicious courses, that some circumstances may retrieve him, that some efforts of his own, or strong inducements, may enable him to take one step back, and then another, towards recovery. But what power on earth can bring back and recover a woman when she is vicious ? A man's worth is in his strength ; and this remains to him after the loss of character. A wo- man's worth is in her purity ; and when this is gone, who is there to be found who will afford her encouragement or help ? And she has no strength or foundation in herself, upon which she can make even a first effort. The women here described are outcasts, the scorned and rejected of society ; beyond the lowest profligate among men, the common thief, the common beggar, the habitual gin- drinker. Their career is mostly of from three to five months ; after which they sink SEDUCTION PROSTITUTION. 153 by rapid and resistless falls to ruin, misery, beggary, disease, and death at length, among all the horrors of moral and physical desti- tution. The ultimate stages of distress in this, as in other classes, can hardly be shewn by examples ; because, whenever extreme cases have become known, they have been partly at least arrested by public or private charity. Nevertheless, the following is the experience of the Mendicity Society upon this subject, as expressed in one of their reports : " Of all the distressing objects that present them- selves to this society for relief and assist- ance, either to rescue them from the mise- ries into which they have fallen by unavoid- able poverty, or early habits of vice (the mind being not yet wholly contaminated), perhaps there are none which deserve that attention, and act more forcibly upon the feelings of the benevolent, than those unfor- tunate girls, who, seduced by a false idea of bettering their situations by leaving their friends and coming to London, or abandoned, 154 SEDUCTION PROSTITUTION. perhaps, by their natural protectors, thus follow the dreadful path which is pointed out to them by the older sinner, and which custom rendering habitual, they sink at length into an early grave, condemned, re- jected, and scorned." f the minister, an elder of his chapel, or a neighbour, will come to pray by his bedside, and offer him the consolations of religion. Has a person met with an accident by burning his foot in the melted iron or cinder at the furnaces ? His fellow-workmen will make a subscription of two, three, or even five pounds, for his sup- port during illness. A short time ago a boy about eleven years of age lost his leg by a fall of coal ; and the colliers and others on CHRISTIAN VIRTUES. 183 the Varteg have subscribed forty pounds to put him apprentice to a trade, and to buy him a few articles to begin business with. " If, therefore, you would wish to see some of the highest virtues of the Chris- tian character exemplified, do not enter into princes' palaces, but seek admittance to the lowly cottage of the industrious collier or artisan. There you will see simplicity, self- respect, intelligence, a willingness to oblige, with generosity, contentment, and a reliance upon Providence." At the time of the severe distress in Spi- talfields in 1816, an examination took place ; and it was found, that in the schools of Spi- talfields and its neighbourhood there were more than 70 orphans, who, upon the death of their parents, had been taken into their houses by the poor, and had been supported by them. d In Mr. Buxton's work on prisons a striking example is given. In the prison d Dr. Chalmers' Works, Christian Polity of a Nation, vol. xvi. p. 377. 184 HEROISM OF THE POOR. in Bristol the criminals had a very scanty allowance, and the debtors none at all, but were wholly dependent upon their relations and casual charity. It happened that both these resources failed to the debtors ; but no instance of starvation occurred amongst them, because the criminals, compassionat- ing their destitution, shared their own in- sufficient allowances with them. 6 There is a spirit frequently to be found among the poor which amounts to heroism. I should not have ventured this assertion upon my own authority. The question was proposed, by one who asserted it, to a party of three clergymen. They all admitted at once, that there was a resignation and pa- tience among the poor under suffering, a self- sacrifice and generosity, a confidence and faith, in giving their last morsel, that Providence would supply it again to them, which in any other class, and upon other subjects, would be called heroism. One of them said, that the thing was so common e Chalmers' Works, vol. xvi. p. 391. IMPOSTORS. 185 and notorious among the poor, that one would hardly notice it. And yet I shall have occasion to give a more admirable picture than this, and to shew that these features are still more pro- minent among the poor in other countries ; and that they would doubtless prevail in this country in a greater degree and extent, but for the deadening operation of a poor-law and compulsory charity. I have not thought it necessary to depict the faults and vices of the poor. Of course they have them, and in abundance. Enough, however, has been written upon this topic, during the present generation, to render all addition under this head absolutely unneces- sary. SECTION II. Impostors. ONE of the chief topics upon which political economists and others who make war with the poor, delight to write, and R2 186 IMPOSTURE. upon which domestic economists delight to dwell, is the frequency of frauds and im- positions which are practised upon the cha- ritable. A vast many are ready to follow after this palatable but unchristian philo- sophy. It is so clever and manly to detect impositions, it is so ignoble to be cheated, above all, it is so very economical, and makes a convenient amount of charity go so far, to give only to those who are proved to be starving without any fault or weakness of their own, that many are eager to accept, and greedy to swallow down this philosophy of antichrist. Before making remarks upon the subject of imposture, I will first enumerate some of its principal and most ordinary forms ; in order that I may shew myself not entirely ignorant of the subject, or of the extent of the difficulty which I have to grapple with, when I contend that we ought not to suffer our minds to be too deeply occupied, or our conduct to be too much influenced, by the knowledge of these frauds and practices. I FORMS OF IMPOSTURE. 187 have been subjected to most of these prac- tices, in their turn ; but I have resisted the conclusion, which we hear daily in the mouths of seemingly charitable people, " Really there are so many professed beggars about, and I have been so frequently imposed upon, that I have come to a resolution to listen to no more applications." The following are some of the most com- mon and successful forms of imposture in London and elsewhere. 1. Sometimes persons sit upon steps, holding a paper before them with these words upon it, " half starved/' " a poor mechanic," and other such notices. 2. A woman sits or lies upon a step, ex- hausted and fainting, while her husband or companion watches over her in apparent dis- tress and bewilderment ; as if they were tra- vellers just arrived from the country, and the companion were quite shocked and in despair at the sudden and inextricable calamity which has come upon them. 3. Another woman says, she is going 188 IMPOSTURE. back to her friends in the country, or is about to be passed, that her place is taken in the wagon ; but her clothes are in pawn, and she wants a few shillings to enable her to redeem them. 4. Others come for an order for a lying- in hospital ; and while they are waiting in the passage or hall, pretend they are suddenly taken with a pain in the back. This is a frequent form of application to young mar- ried women. 5. Others having got an order for an hospital, or the Margate infirmary, make use of it to obtain a few shillings from a dozen different people, to enable them to get linen, or tea and sugar, to be used while in the hospital, or to fulfil the other requisites of such institutions. 6. Persons having a ticket for a bushel of coals upon the payment of sixpence, will beg sixpences from door to door, shewing the ticket, and pleading that they are penni- less. 7. Some beggars living in comparative FORMS OF IMPOSTURE. 189 comfort, will keep a miserable room without fire or furniture, to which they may direct any one who is so zealous as to visit them and examine into their distress. 6 8. The next is an imposition of a most convincing character. The applicant obtains local information respecting your residence in the country. He learns all the names of your neighbours, your family, and servants. He has such an accurate and detailed know- ledge of all your circumstances, that you cannot but feel convinced that the story he tells is a true one, that he really came from that country, that he was really the son or servant of some very respectable neighbour, and that he ought to be saved by a liberal contribution from the degradation of making his poverty known any farther. 9. Obtaining the same accurate informa- tion, a person assumes the name of some nobleman or gentleman of fortune, and pre- tends either that he is descended from some e Such things are done ; but I never myself met with an instance, or heard it well substantiated. 190 IMPOSTURES. distant branch, or that he is the illicit offspring of some deceased member of the family, hitherto kept concealed. This, of course, is a matter which must be hushed up ; and vast sums are sometimes levied upon noblemen and others by these pre- tences, to save the honour of the family. 10. When a pressure and distress takes place in any particular trade, the professed beggars acquaint themselves with it, and adapt their pretences accordingly. If the weavers are in distress in Spital- fields or at Manchester, the beggars assume the character of weavers, and carry a little model -loom to indicate their calling, and pull the strings, as if they were in the habit of working the machinery. So would-be sailors go about with a ship. 11. If a dreadful storm has taken place, the number of shipwrecked mariners is im- mediately increased by the professed beggars, who refer their sufferings to this cause of distress. By an act of parliament, the magistrates on the coast are directed to FORMS OF IMPOSTURE. 191 give certificates of shipwreck; and forged certificates of this kind are carried by those who beg in this character. 12. As the hay-season approaches, some beggars dress themselves in a smock frock, and pretend to have arrived too soon for the hay-making, and to be consequently destitute. 13. When a severe frost comes, they put a cabbage upon a pole, and become poor gardeners. 14. After the revolution in Poland, there were many who fictitiously assumed the character of Polish emigrants. 15. During the Spanish civil war, many assumed the uniform of the British Legion. It was the same after the battle of Wa- terloo. 16. Some beggars adopt the worst and the most scanty clothing, to exhibit their extreme poverty. Others dress themselves in the neatest and the cleanliest manner, know- ing that the sums given them will be larger, as to persons who have seen better days, and sustained a great and pitiable fall in life. 192 IMPOSTURES. 17. Foreigners, and pretended foreigners, hold out a card of address, with the simple question, " Parlez-vous Fran9ais ?" The pretence is, that they are just arrived in London, having nothing but this card of address to some correspondent, whom they are unable to find, from a total ignorance of the town and of our language. Having once obtained the answer, " Oui, monsieur, un peu," and engaged a likely person, espe- cially one who is a little proud of his French, in conversation, their point is more than half gained. They pass, with the most dex- terous promptitude and rapidity, to the tale of their distress ; and then their pertinacity and perseverance is only equalled by their ingenuity and volubility. 18. A man having purchased a little crazy cart and a worn-out horse, which shortly after dies, he makes it a pretence for going about with a petition, and certificate of his loss, to get subscriptions for a fresh horse, to a large amount. 19. There was an extensive practice at FORMS OF IMPOSTURE. 193 one time of travelling the country with forged military and war-office passes, by women pretending to be soldiers' wives journeying to join their husbands' regiments ; the over- seers being bound to allow \^d. per mile to persons carrying these passes. An account is given in the Seventh Report of the Men- dicity Society, for the year 1825 (p. 51), of the practices and conviction of a party for this pretence. 20. Carrying a basket of wares, or a few tapes or boxes, is sometimes a mere excuse for begging. 21. A handkerchief is tied over the fore- head to give an appearance of illness ; and sometimes the face is whitened artificially, but more frequently by the habit of drinking gin. 22. Women carry two or three children in their arms, sometimes borrowed; and either put them to sleep with gin, to make them look interesting, or pinch them to make them cry, as if from hunger. These are only some of the most usual s 194 IMPOSTURES. forms adopted by professed beggars. Of course there are many others, as various almost as the accidents of life ; and whenever any novel and unprecedented calamity has reduced a certain class of persons to ruin, and awakened compassion in the public mind, there are always some persons ready to take advantage of this general feeling, and to clothe themselves with the character which has excited so much interest. These usual forms, also, are continually varied in their particular features and circumstances. Besides this, there is the whole class of writers of fictitious begging-letters, which are stuffed in turn with all the various bitter calamities and trials of which human life furnishes the examples. The above are only the outward and ostensible appearances put forward by street-beggars for the sake of advertisement, and with the hope of drawing upon them attention and compassion. The first question is, how far these cases are numerous, and what proportion they bear to the number of applicants who are really FREQUENCY OF IMPOSITION. 195 distressed. The next is, how far these false- hoods are apt to be mixed up with truth ; and what is the conclusion which ought to be drawn from a thorough knowledge of all the classes which are the subject of relief. To those who are inclined to give ear to the charges heaped of late years upon the poor, and who are ready to conclude, from the many instances of imposture brought to their notice, that all beggars are impostors, I would address the few following observa- tions. Falsehood is always the imitator of truth. Every imposture proves a reality; and is ever the representative of a real calamity which has afflicted some of our fellow-tra- vellers in the journey of life. The human mind is not so inventive as to create for itself new scenes and images, which have never had existence. No man ever yet invented an entirely new thing, especially in life or morals. All beggars are no more proved to be impostors by the frequency of imposition, than all religion is proved to be false by the 19C IMPOSTURES. multitude of false religions which are preva- lent in the world. The basis of all these heresies is truth ; and so is the groundwork of the numerous frauds and false appearances which are assumed by beggars. It is like painting, where nature is the whole foun- dation and study, and where art can add only a novel combination, or a somewhat higher colouring. It is acting, where the parts and passions are real, and the substance of real incidents ; but the time and action is condensed, and the tone exaggerated. Of most of the above-mentioned forms of imposition real examples have already been given in the former chapters. Of poor and deserving persons holding out a paper before them signifying their distress, an instance was referred to at page 45. Another in- stance may be found in the Report of the Mendicity Society for 1820, p. 49, of a paper praying relief for a family of seven children ; which proved to be a true and very distressing case. There are two more cases at pp. 38 and 39 of the Report of 1830. FREQUENCY OF IMPOSTURE. 197 Several examples have been given of persons sinking exhausted in the streets. Of those distresses which arise tempo- rarily and periodically, as among weavers, hay-makers, shipwrecked sailors, gardeners, there can be no doubt of the existence of real distress in each of those forms ; since its known existence is the origin of the pre- tence. Even the gardeners who go about in winter, and the chimney-sweepers who go about on May-day, are most of them what they profess to be, though many others ficti- tiously assume the character. The evidence afforded by local know- ledge and the names of persons, though sometimes fictitious, is more often real ; and many urgent and interesting cases obtain notice entirely upon such evidence. Indeed, it is the obvious and natural test which must generally be applied; and many true and distressing cases are effectually relieved upon the sole ground of this species of confirma- tion. Shipwreck -certificates must sometimes s2 198 IMPOSTURES. be real, for there is a legal provision made with respect to them. The same is the case with regard to military passes. The loss of a poor miserable horse out of a vegetable-cart is sometimes a plea of little merit ; but a case was referred to above of a man who had sold his donkey and cart during a time of illness, which was a very deserving case. An instance occurred lately, in which a poor man's horse was killed by an omnibus, and his cart broken. He was reinstated at an expense of 5/., without which he must have become a beggar, and might have remained so for life. Many cases occur in which a poor man's horse, his only pro- perty, dies suddenly. A short time ago, a hackney -cabman, who drove on his own account, had his horse thrown down and wounded by an iron plug, which improperly projected above the pavement. The horse died afterwards of a locked jaw. The paving- board of the parish made good the loss to him, otherwise he might have been ruined. The number of impostors has been greatly FREQUENCY OF IMPOSITION. 199 exaggerated. The vast attention which has been paid to the subject, and the welcome which has been given to every information under this head, has almost possessed the public mind with the image and imitation, and made it forget the substance from which it is reflected. In the Constabulary Force Report (1839), which is far from being disposed to give a favourable view of the state of the lowest classes, it is reckoned that, out of 16,901 delinquents, 50 only were begging-letter writers ; that 86 were bearers of begging letters ; that there were in London 221 men- dicants' lodging-houses, containing on an average 11 in each (p. 13). This in a popu- lation of 1,500,000, and in a city which must consist of more than 100,000 houses. There are not much above half-a-dozen professed and notorious begging-letter im- postors practising at one time ; the rest are mostly habitual exaggerators of their real distresses, not going much farther from the truth than a wit is apt to think lawful in telling 200 IMPOSTURES a good story ; and nearly persuaded of the truth of what they assert by continual repe- tition. Even the professed letter-writers make use of occurrences drawn from real life ; and many of them only assist others in making known their misfortunes, sharing with them in the contributions. Those who are called impostors are much the most fre- quently persons who are in real distress ; but they have found their tale of misery so far productive, that it has tempted them to live on rather in an idle misery, than to make the exertion which they might have done to restore themselves by labour to a competency. So they go on repeating their story of dis- tress, omitting to mention the date, and sometimes adding additional facts, most of them founded in truth, but greatly exagger- ated. These characters are almost all of them in distress. The supposed number of impostors is increased from another circumstance. The poor are very little capable of observation, or given to accuracy. They wrongly de- EXAGGERATED. 201 scribe their residence, or the residence of those they refer to ; and this they do con- stantly. The consequence is, that when vi- sited, no such person is found at that place ; and whether we inquire ourselves, or send an overseer or other officer, we conclude at once that it is a case of imposition. This is more frequently the case when paid offi- cers are the visiters, who must do their duty as a matter of business ; and when once they have arrived at one apparently conclusive fact and evidence against the party, they are happy to return with this conclusion to their employers. I have frequently found that, by a little perseverance, the worst ap- pearances subsequently vanish, and that the most obvious symptoms of fraud become explained by a little patience and tender- ness ; so much so, that I have found reason to conclude that fictitious tales of distress are not nearly so common as they are gene- rally supposed to be, even by those profes- sionally engaged in visiting and relieving the poor ; and that a willingness to believe 202 IMPOSTURES the truth of the tale, and a belief that there may be a mistake and misdescription, is much more likely to lead us to discover the real truth, than a readiness to conclude from the first contradiction that the case is an impos- ture. It is constantly the case that poor people do not know the number of their house or lodging; they very frequently do not know the name of the street. It is still more common, in the small streets and alleys, that there should be two or three houses hav- ing the same number, in different parts of it. Many times they call the street by a wrong name; as saying lane for street, and street for place, yard, &c. No one without expe- rience could believe how frequently these things happen. There are numerous other mistakes and misapprehensions, which persons can and do take advantage of, who are ready to look on the harsh side, and are willing to detect imposture. Persons who are willing to be- lieve and charitable, are also liable to be deceived by first appearances. Upon the EXAGGERATED. 203 whole, it is wonderful how much the result of investigation is subject to the inclinations of the inquirers, and of how much import- ance it is, therefore, that a really right view and Christian feeling should be entertained in regard to the condition, and practices, and dispositions of the poor, and of the duties which are incumbent upon us in rela- tion to them. I shall proceed to observe upon these duties, and the manner in which they are generally fulfilled. But, first, it will be re- quisite, in order to our forming a right esti- mate of these our obligations and perform- ances, that we should divest ourselves of the false notion that the poor-laws furnish a suf- ficient provision for the poor, and supersede our own private and natural duties towards them. There is no opinion which bears more hardly and cruelly upon the necessi- tous. Independent of the harsh and imper- fect administration, there are essential prin- ciples which occasion a compulsory and public provision to be inadequate. I pro- 204 IMPOSTURES. ceed, therefore, to discuss this question of the sufficiency of a poor-law provision, and how far it supersedes our own private rela- tions and duties towards the poor and needy, and ought to vary our conduct towards them. We shall then come better prepared to the consideration of our actual treatment of the poor, and the sufficiency of our charity, as compared with what it ought to be upon the real grounds of duty and policy. CHAPTER V. anQ 13oor=i.ato ivflirf. PRIVATE CHARITY OUGHT TO SUPERSEDE THE PUBLIC PROVISION - THE PUBLIC PROVISION INADEQUATE IN AMOUNT - DEFECTIVE IN PRINCIPLE - EX- AMPLES OF THIS - A POOR-LAW NECESSARY, BUT SUBSIDIARY - CONNEXION BETWEEN THE POOR- LAW AND POLICE POOR-LAW INJURIOUS TO RICH AND POOR - RELATION BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CHARITY - REMEDY PROPOSED - THE NEW POOR-LAW - THE WORKHOUSE TEST - AD- VANTAGES OF LOCAL ADMINISTRATION AND SMALL DISTRICTS - EXAMPLES IN PRUSSIA - GOOD EF- FECTS OF VOLUNTARY SYSTEM IN FOREIGN COUN- TRIES IN FRANCE - IN PIEDMONT - IN SAVOY - IN VENICE - THE AZORES - THE CANARIES - GREECE - SCOTLAND IRELAND - MUTUAL CHA- RITIES OF THE IRISH POOR CONCLUSION - ALMS OF THE CHURCH. THERE can be no stronger symptom of the growing harshness and unchristian state of feeling towards the poor, than the opinion now affirmed, that the legal provision for the poor ought to be a substitute for private charity; that the one interferes with the other. There is none more erroneous. In 206 proportion as this opinion shall spread, and this principle be acted upon, the country will have lost its character, its moral strength, and its safety. I venture to assert the exactly opposite principle. I maintain that private charity ought to supersede the public provision ; and that the vitality of our alms, and the healthi- ness of our system of poor-relief, are in pro- portion as it does so. Not because the two things are inconsistent or incompatible one with the other ; but that the one is a mere aid and make-weight, a substitute and as- sistant to the other, and that voluntary charity alone contains all the essentials, as the intelligent and master principle. There is one thing which strikes us at the outset in this inquiry, as indicative, if not conclusive, of the motive which gives birth to this opinion ; namely, that inva- riably those very persons who would say to every beggar, " You must go to the parish," and that ff in a country with such an ample machinery and provision, it is a crime even A PUBLIC PROVISION. 207 for a cripple to beg," are the same per- sons who would narrow down the parish- relief to the lowest scale, and be most severe in applying the test-standard. I do not desire to enter particularly upon the existing poor-law system, though it is very difficult to keep our observation dis- tinct from this point ; because the Poor-Law Commissioners have mixed themselves up with this question; and, while boasting of having already saved two millions annually to the country in poor-rates, complain bit- terly, and with little moderation of language, of the interference which their systems and theories have met with from voluntary and private charity. 3 They avow openly that, " One principal object of a compulsory pro- vision for the relief of destitution, is the pre- vention of almsgiving." b There could not be * Report of Poor-Law Commissioners on Continu- ance of Commission, 1840. 8vo, pp. 11, 62, 63 ; ante, pp. 20, 21. b Official Circular of the Poor-Law Commissioners, No. 5. 208 THE PUBLIC PROVISION afforded a more direct or convincing proof of the assertion, that it is those who narrow the public relief most who would limit all charity to the legal provision. The proposition that the poor-law may be a substitute for voluntary charity, is false in fact and in principle. I will confine my- self at first to the facts which exhibit its in- justice and impracticability. In the first place, What is the amount of the poor-rates in comparison with the rights and necessities of the poor? What is the amount of the poor-rates in this country in comparison with its wealth ? For this is the means of ascertaining what ought to be the amount of the poor man's inheritance. The Jews were commanded to give a tenth to the priesthood, and another tenth to the poor and in hospitality. So say Lowman and Selden, and their own interpreters. 1 * And this was b The provision for the poor among the Jews con- sisted expressly only of a tithe every third year, which was emphatically called the poor man's tithe. But in the other two years, a tithe was to be spent in hospi- INADEQUATE IN AMOUNT. 209 adjudged necessary in an agricultural coun- try; where there were, moreover, especial guards against the increase of poverty by the equal division of land, and its periodical return to the original owners. But the ne- cessities of the poor increase greatly with tality, which must have been intended especially to include the poor (LOWMAN'S Hebrew Government, pp. 117, 118 ; Luke xiv. 12, 13). The poor were also to have the natural productions of the sabbatical year. Public tables were also kept in principal towns, at which all classes and ranks feasted together (MILMAN'S History of the Jews) . The very numerous sacrifices also were dispensed in hospitality and to the poor (1 Kings xix. 21) ; and portions were distributed to them at public and private festivals (Neh. viii. 10 ; Esth. ix. 22 ; Tobit ii. 2). The Israelites were, besides all this, expressly and repeatedly commanded to be liberal in private and personal charity, and to open wide their hand on all occasions to the poor, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow (Lev. xxv. 35 ; Deut. xv. 7, 8). So that a simple tithe cannot be supposed to more than barely represent the real amount of the provision for the poor among the Jews, according to the Mosaic enactments. (See ROBINSON'S Ancient Poor- Laws, pp. 2-4). T2 210 THE PUBLIC PROVISION the accumulation of wealth, and the advance of luxury and civilisation. This may be seen conspicuously in commercial towns, and in every metropolis. We must conclude, there- fore, that one-tenth would be but an insuffi- cient provision in this country, so much advanced beyond any other in this half of the globe, in wealth, luxury, and civilisa- tion. The income of Great Britain alone is credibly supposed greatly to exceed five hun- dred millions. The poor-rates, which were at one time seven millions, and were then thought ruinous, are now reduced to about five millions. A magnificent contribution this an ample provision truly, in propor- tion to our wealth and our means, and to the poor's necessities ! And at the same time, our voluntary and private charities are by no means so abun- dant as we are apt to boast and congratu- late ourselves. If the whole amount were to be added to the poor-rates, they would make together but a sorry comparison with INADEQUATE IN AMOUNT. 211 our means and income a sorry comparison with the bounty of any other nation. And yet our public national charities are our daily boast ; and the amount of the poor-rates is complained of; and the burden of the poor is said to be intolerable ; and the too large amount given is lamented as en- couraging and increasing without limit the numbers of the poor, and threatening us with the flood of a national pauperism. Let us first begin with the experiment of giving something more than a very small fraction of what we owe to the poor as a divine right and inheritance; and then let us begin to speculate as to whether our liberality and our obedience to our duty is swamping and overwhelming us ; and w r hether our belief in, and obedience to God's law, is bringing upon us a curse or a blessing. d ' Some comparison between the English and the foreign public charities will be made in the next chapter. d When the Jews were being punished for their disobedience and idolatry, then they said that their 212 THE PUBLIC PROVISION The legal provision for the poor being thus inadequate, let us turn to its practical application, and weigh its sufficiency and adaptation in fact to particular classes of cases. The first principle of poor-law relief is simplicity and uniformity. It cannot care- fully adapt itself to occasions and circum- stances. Whether the workhouse be the only method of relief, or whether the rule be more liberal and bending, still there is one rule which must be acknowledged uni- form and strict, that no one shall be en- titled to parish-relief who has any thing of his own remaining. Therefore a mechanic with a starving family, who can have work in a week, must sell his tools before the miseries were caused by their serving God too closely ; and that their only safety was in going more deeply into idolatry (Jer. xlhr. 17, 18). So it ever wiD be. The further we go in sin and disobedience, and the more we are suffering the punishment and consequences of it, the more we feel persuaded that oar only hope and happiness is in going deeper in our selfish courses; and that God's word and wisdom are our greatest bane and enomv. INADEQUATE. 2J3 guardians will relieve him. Another, broken with temporary loss or sickness, must part with his cottage. The man who has a good character and connexion in the place where he is known, must be removed to his parish, which he never saw, and where he must be on a level with the lowest pauper. The hawker, having lost his horse by accident, must sell his cart too, and sink through every other step to the lowest stage of pauperism. The reports of the Mendicity Society are full of such cases ; and they conclude the case of a lad of fifteen, who had been enticed to London, and was restored by them to his friends, with the following observation : " This case strongly exemplifies one of the advantages of the society, that of in- quiring into and relieving cases rejected by parish authorities, in consequence of not being parishioners. This boy was sleeping in a neighbourhood notorious for bad characters, and under their influence and example would probably have soon added one to the already large number of juvenile delinquents. With- 214 CASES FOR WHICH out employment or means of support, no other prospect awaited him, had he not been providentially met with by the gentleman who brought him to the office, and who at- tended to the case until it was so satisfac- torily disposed of/' e The reports of the Mendicity Society contain numerous cases of veteran soldiers and sailors, for some of whom they have ob- tained pensions, for others prize-money, for some persons legacies, or claims of a similar description. In many cases where a ship was not about to sail for a certain time, they have supported passengers returning to their friends, or seamen, during the interval. Mul- titudes have been set up by loans. And here it may be remarked, that though the Poor - Law Amendment Act enables the guardians to give relief by way of loan, this is not a benefit, but a restriction. This is not applicable to a loan for advancing a man in his business ; but is a power only of re- e Report 1830, p. 33. THE POOR-LAW CANNOT PROVIDE. 215 covering the value of his victuals and lodging back from him again. But there are cases which are wholly beyond the sphere of the parish-officers, and for which the legal provision never can fitly provide. In the case of master-tradesmen, of reduced officers, men of the learned pro- fessions and of superior education, is it fit that such persons should be consigned to a workhouse ? Yet such cases are very nume- rous. A keeper of one of the large taverns in London is now reduced to writing beg- ging-letters. Most persons reputed to be charitable, who have been educated at the first public schools, have received applica- tions on behalf of some of their former school- fellows now reduced to misfortune some of them to abject penury. The Report of the Mendicity Society for 1835 mentions the son of a lord mayor. But I have enume- rated cases enough for example. Can any of these cases be fit for parish- relief ? and can the poor-law be applied to them as an adequate provision ? Are the 216 CASES FOR WHICH sufferings of all persons alike under the same degradation ? And are the feelings of the mind never to be considered or relieved, as well as the body and the appetite, but to be reduced to a uniform measure and standard, as the belly by a dietary ? But, "oh," it will be said, "these are mere exceptions, not fit to disturb a rule, or to form a ground for any provision specially applicable to them." All cases are exceptions. There is no case in life that has not its spe- cial circumstances, and whose circumstances are not fit to be inquired into and must be inquired into and considered before right and justice can be done to the person con- cerned, which is the real equality. I would go further, and say, that, to con- sign the cripple, the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the paralytic, to a workhouse and an exact diet, and the same rule as the sturdy and idle beggar, the drunkard and profligate, is not an equal and uniform sys- tem ; but the most downright injustice and inequality. Because God has afflicted them POOR-LAW CANNOT PROVIDE. 217 with one sore evil, are we bound to inflict another, and make their affliction still sorer ? This can never be equality. Ought we not to raise them as much as we can out of their depth of misery, and endeavour to compen- sate and make up to them their loss and inferiority ? And must we not let them even try to raise themselves ? And must they not themselves be allowed to ask, nor we to give to them, an occasional and liberal alms, which is dictated by all our natural good feelings, because, forsooth, they may some- times get more by it than a hale man by his work, and because the poor-law has pro- vided just enough to keep them from starving? Can all that we can do raise them to the same happy position with ourselves ? and can all that we can bestow compensate them for the loss of limb, of eyesight, or motion ? and is this, I ask, liberty or equality ? I say, then, that private alms may super- sede the legal provision for the poor; but the poor-law can never be a substitute for private charity. u 218 A POOR-LAW NECESSARY, A legal provision for the poor is in its principle also inadequate to the necessities and the rights of the poor, and ought never to supersede private charity. It is an infe- rior instrument and obligation a mechani- cal and imperfect expedient a prop to a falling house, which never can fulfil the uses of the original design and construction, and preserve its symmetry and safety. I do not mean to say that a poor-law is bad under the circumstances; but I regret the circumstances which make it good and necessary ; and would desire that they should never have existed, or that we might remove them. I do not say that a poor-rate is not charity, or that the poor-law is not an act of public virtue, and, so far at least as its objects and provisions have the comfort of the poor for their motive, is not entitled to great respect and praise. Believing firmly, as I do, that the state has a conscience, and that the country must answer for the acts and sins of its government especially this country, where we effectually choose our BUT INSUFFICIENT. 219 own rulers, I consider that public alms are a public virtue, warding off a judgment and a curse, or bringing down a blessing, according to its measure and its motive ; or else, upon what grounds ought we to have paid twenty millions out of the public purse for the redemption of slaves ? But it is inferior to the rule and practice of voluntary almsgiving ; which practice is a law imposed by the people upon themelves. And so completely are the minds and con- sciences of the people, of this country espe- cially, bound up and identified with the con- science of the government, that, as they must inherit a reward for obliging themselves to a liberal and voluntary almsgiving, which law they carry into execution with their own hand ; so must they also inherit a curse or a diminished blessing for putting the distri- bution of their alms out of their own hands into the hands of public officers, and in pro- portion to the scantiness or the liberality of the funds which they give them to distribute. 220 A POOR-LAW NECESSARY, It is the same thing, one step further removed, as the supporting an hospital by subscription, and leaving the whole care and management to a committee of directors ; only there is a wide difference as to the kindness and mo- tive in consigning a sick or wounded man to an hospital, which is better to him than his own home under the circumstances, and a man wanting food and clothing, to a work- house, which he abominates. Every law of man is a part of the law of God, and operative as a substitute, and in aid of it. It enforces its obligations by infe- rior motives by inferior but more imme- diate punishments; and the rule which it adopts and enforces is, in the same propor- tion, inferior and imperfect. The people are bound in conscience to obey this law, and must incur guilt or praise for disobeying or breaking it ; for the law of man is a part of God's law; and obedience to law is obe- dience to God ; and in obeying the laws of human government, they are obeying the law BUT INSUFFICIENT. 221 and command of God, who both ordained the law and established the government. Every law, then, is in its nature an im- perfect substitute for a more perfect code, in consequence of irreligion and degeneracy; " it is added because of transgressions/' The poor-law comes later than the rest in the history of legislation, because it is ren- dered needful by a more advanced stage of selfishness and degeneracy. But though it exists, and is binding in conscience, and is a part of the character and virtue, or vice, of the country, yet the higher and more perfect duty of private and voluntary alms- giving still exists in all its force, and is bind- ing upon the conscience ; and its neglect or fulfilment is closely bound up with the sin or the virtue, the prosperity or the punish- ment of the nation. The poor-law is a subsidiary and an im- perfect law; and these are its character- istics. It can only operate upon the objects of it, and provide for them in masses by broad u2 222 A POOR-LAW SUBSIDIARY, unbending rules, coarsely graduated, suited to the general state of those large classes and masses of people, upon which alone it can exercise a discernment. Nice discrimination cannot enter into the operations and prac- tice of officials, or into accounts which must be kept with rigid strictness and wholesale uniformity; nor that fine elastic touch be applied of sympathy and vital charity, which discriminates the pulse of misery in its infi- nite variety, discerns the real seat of the wound, and applies the oil and the balm with a truth and touch as exact, as tender, and as delicate. But all stomachs must be of the same size; all appetites must relish the same food on the same days of the week ; all maladies, and sores, and accidents of life, must be healed by the same medicine. A poor-law can hardly be administered any where except in connexion with police regulations; and this of necessity places misery and misfortune in close contact with crime and punishment. At least this is emi- nently the case in England. Thieves, able- AND IMPERFECT. 223 bodied sturdy beggars, persons travelling to seek for work or returning to their homes, cripples, blind, infirm, children, persons sick from the visitation of God, from accident, or intemperance, all are classed and clubbed together, and are placed in the same cate- gory by the receipt of a penny, and are liable to be dealt with according to law, under the condemned title of vagrants. A poor and very decent woman, formerly a maid-servant, was taken up on the 19th of last May, for carrying round a petition signed by several ladies who knew her, and who testified to the truth of the statement of her misfortune, and had put themselves down for subscrip- tions. She was much astonished on being told, by a paid officer, that she was infringing the law. The government, it is true, cannot do better than keep up a vigilant system of police to detect real imposture, or rather enact severe punishments for obtaining, and attempting to obtain money under false pre- tences of misfortune. But this is far differ- 224 SPIRIT OF A POOR-LAW. ent from making every act of begging a crime, and the receipt of money offered an evidence of it, however the case stated may be founded in truth, and however urgent the necessity. Our law might improve its spirit from the code of Sancho Panza, who, know- ing from his own experience that paid offi- cials too can yield to bold importunity and imposture, and browbeat the timid and really deserving, ' ( appointed an officer of the poor, not to persecute, but to examine them, and know whether they were truly such; for under pretence of counterfeit lameness and artificial sores, many canting vagabonds do impudently rob the true poor of charity, to spend it in riot and drunkenness." The provisions of our poor-law system go upon a different principle. Being based in luxury and disdain, and a selfish sensi- bility, we persecute the whole herd of beg- gars, not to distinguish and punish the im- postors, but to get rid of an annoyance and nuisance which vexes us ; and this is evi- denced by the indiscriminate way in which SPIRIT OF A POOR-LAW. 225 the law drives beggars and vendors of small wares from the pavements, and our sweeping condemnation of all who beg whether their tale be true or false whether they be maimed, or blind, or able-bodied, as im- postors. Pauperies immunda : poverty is filthy. We must relieve ourselves from the sight of it ; and if poverty really exists, why, it must be provided for in secret, and apart from the haunts of business and civilisation. And if, after having expelled all these strong natural excitements from our eyes and senses, there should still lurk behind some appetite for pity and sympathy, from the necessity of our nature, and the rebound of better and of kinder feelings, why, then these must be satiated in a novel or a theatre, by " The sluggard pity's vision-weaving tribe, Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched." The necessary connexion between a poor- law and these severe police-regulations, is evi- denced by the tendency towards them in every country in Europe in which a legal provision for the poor is made the basis of their relief. 226 POOR-LAWS AND POLICE. In England, the poor-laws and vagrant-laws began, and have always gone hand in hand together. Provisions for the support of the poor, and for the punishment of beggars and vagrants, are constantly found in the same statute. d The statutes which preceded d 22d Henry VIII. c. 12 : " An act directing how aged, poor, and impotent persons, compelled to live by alms, shall be ordered ; and how vagabonds and beggars shall be punished." (This statute is the effectual foun- dation both of our poor-laws and vagrant-laws.) 2/th Henry VIII. c. 25 : both subjects are treated together, as in the last act. 1st Edward VI. c. 3 : " An act for the punishment of vagabonds, and for the reliefe of the poore and impotent persons." 3d and 4th Edward VI. c. 16 ; 14th Eliz. c. 5 : "An act for the punish- ment of vagabonds, and for relief of the poor and im- potent." This is the groundwork of the famous 43d of Elizabeth ; and in sect. 20, as that statute in sect. 4, provides for the whipping, stocking, imprisonment, &c. of aged and impotent people partly disabled, who would not work. The punishment of vagrants, by 22d and 27th Hen. VIII., was whipping, stocking for three days and three nights with bread and water, and cutting off the gristle of the right ear ; by 1st Edward VI., it was slavery for POOR-LAW INJURIOUS. 227 and formed the groundwork of the famous act of the 43d of Elizabeth, were passed full as much for the purpose of removing the nuisance of beggars, as for the relief of the necessitous, as their preambles testify. The establishment of a legal provision was neces- sary to justify the condemnation of beggary, and to render it practicable. The poor-law system is bad in principle, it is a mere expedient ; and it ought never to supersede the more free and active distri- bution of relief by voluntary and personal charity. A resort to a compulsory provision for the poor is the symptom of a low state of religion in a country, and of public prin- ciple. A disposition to place a chief reliance upon such a provision is the sign of a dis- eased and morbid constitution, and an ener- vation almost desperate ; and there is no hope of restitution to vigour and health in such cases, but by waking up again the dormant two years; by 14th Elizabeth, it was burning through the gristle of the ear with a hot iron an inch in com- pass. 228 POOR-LAW INJURIOUS principles and energies of nature, and re- turning as fast as possible to sober and rational habits, by voluntary almsgiving superseding the compulsory provision. Compulsory relief is destitute of almost all the virtues of charity. It is equally inju- rious to the rich and to the poor; and for every virtue which it excludes, it introduces at least two vices. It is not charity, but a tax ; arid as being a tax, it is considered that it may be lawfully economised as much as possible nay, that it is a virtue to econo- mise it. The collector represents the poor ; but he carries about with him none of those claims to compassion and sympathy which might move the heart, and enlist the feel- ings, and make the impulse to give stronger than to withhold; for I cannot be one of those who think that the feelings and affec- tions, the half of ourselves, and the better half, if rightly governed and directed, were given only to pervert and misguide us, and to lead aside our judgments. The collector represents the poor; and we always feel TO THE RICH. 229 bound to dispute his account, and to reduce it as much as possible. So the motive and the habit are always present to dispose us to make our contribution small and niggardly ; the tale of misery and calamity the visita- tion of God to try us as well as them the loss of sight or limb, the pallid look, the depressed and anxious countenance, are not present, which might make our contribution a pleasure instead of an exaction, and dis- pose us to increase it. I have seen a plump and pretty young girl turned into an old woman, in appearance, by the distresses of the three first years of her marriage. But this was not seen or known by the rate- payers of her parish. Thus we are at war with the poor ; and grudge every shilling that is taxed upon us by the poor-rate. And we are not anxious or careful to make a distinction, when the same persons plead to us for a voluntary gratuity. It is the business and merit of officials to economise the funds, and to dis- cover all imposture and deceit; and their x 230 POOR-LAW INJURIOUS report of as many such detections as possible is the warrant of their fitness and services. Thus our minds are fed and filled with such facts by persons officially employed to dis- cover, and interested in the report of them. But there is no such poor man's officer, paid or voluntary, to discover and make known the opposite facts; except it be sometimes the public journals, which give some few of them circulation, when occasion offers, as matters of interest and excitement. Count Holstein,in answer to the inquiries of our Foreign Secretary of State in 1833, respecting the working of the poor-law in Denmark, states, " The morality of the rich man suffers ; for the natural moral relation between him and the poor man has become completely severed. There is no place left for the exer- cise of his benevolence. Being obliged to give, he does it with reluctance ; and thus is the highest principle of charitable action, Christian love, exposed to great danger of destruction." TO THE RICH. 231 Mr. Browne, in his report from the same country, adds, ' e What is given is afforded with dislike and reluctance. The higher orders have be- come cold and uncharitable; and, in short, ere long, unless some strenuous steps are taken, Denmark will drink deep of the bitter cup of which England, by a similar system, has been so long drinking to her grievous cost." f The poor-law had been introduced into Denmark at that time only thirty-five years. The following case exemplifies the rela- tive sympathies and liberality of the rich towards the poor, and of the poor towards each other, under the operation of our com- pulsory system. A bricklayer named Ho- gan, in May 1840, met with an accident, and died the same night at eleven o'clock. His only child died of a fever at seven the same evening. Several gentlefolks who were consulted, and took an interest in the case, agreed that it would be right, by all means, ' Senior's Foreign Poor-Law, pp. 42, 44. 232 POOR-LAW INJURES THE to let the parish bury them, and limit all charity to the relief of the widow. His fel- low-workmen subscribed among themselves, and buried both the child arid the husband. % But the operation of a legal and compul- sory provision is almost as injurious upon the minds and habits of the poor them- selves as upon those of the rich. It places the poor man in a state of war with the rich ; from whom he receives all that he can exact as a right, and as given, not from favour and kindness, as indeed it is not, B The decent burying of the dead seems to be in a peculiar manner a proper subject of charity. The alms-deeds of Tobit, in this particular, are highly com- mended by St. Ambrose. But there is a peculiar sanc- tity and solemnity in the act. The universal consent of all nations to the importance of this rite, and espe- cially the ancient belief, that unless a little earth were thrown upon the dead bones (the same ceremony which is now used together with the words " ashes to ashes, dust to dust"), the deceased could not pass into Elysium, seem to point from the earliest time to the revelation of the great mystery, that the corn of wheat must be sown into the earth ere it could sprout CHARACTER OF THE POOR. 233 but by necessity and compulsion. He natu- rally thinks it too little, and therefore he feels that all trick and exaggeration are justifiable ; and, as in all other cases of hostilities once commenced, he is not nice as to the means which he devises and adopts to obtain what he has in his own cause judged to be his rights ; and if he finds that his energies and strength are increased by a misapprehension of his enemy's character again ; that the body must be actually and spiritually dead and buried, ere it can rise again and partake of the resurrection. One of the most constant and highly esteemed ob- jects of the religious gilds or fraternities in Roman Catholic countries, and of the friendly societies in England, is the burying and attendance upon the fune- rals of the dead. It has been religiously questioned also, whether that earthly tabernacle, which has once been the temple of the Holy Ghost, ought ever to be desecrated. When the statute authorising the dissection of the bodies of unclaimed paupers at the workhouses came into force, the then governor of the workhouse in St. Giles's resigned his situation, rather than carry the act into operation. x2 234 POOR-LAW INJURES THE and circumstances, why, he fosters the feel- ing, and delights to contemplate him as a fiend or a tyrant. The principle and feeling of gratitude is extinct. The frugality, and force of character, and independence of the labouring man, are weakened, if not destroyed, by this miser- able dependence. The amount given always creates a greater expectation than it realises. The poor man, feeling that he has a resource and a claim, is always made more idle than the money's worth, by every shilling that he has received without working for it; and the rich man, seeing this effect, narrows down the allowance more and more, to the exact limit between existence and starva- tion ; though he cannot ever restore thereby the just equilibrium between wages and la- bour, between giving and receiving, which nature has fixed, in the case of wages, by generosity on the one hand, and honesty and independence of feeling on the other, in the case of alms, by kindness and gratitude. The mutual dependence of parents and CHARACTER OF THE POOH. 235 children, and other relations, is also im- paired, and their natural affection diminished. Being comparatively independent of each other, the affections become blunted. I shall presently bring to notice the existence and exuberance of these feelings, in all their depth and freshness, in those countries of Europe in which they are yet uninvaded by a poor-law. In the meantime, the testi- monies are abundant to the destructive effect in this and other countries where our system of poor-laws exists. As early as the act 7 Jac. 1, c. 4, the statute of Elizabeth was represented as having a tendency to produce improvidence, and to weaken the ties of natural affection. And these effects have been growing into ripeness ever since. Mr. Browne, in the report before men- tioned, says of Denmark, " The poor-law greatly weakens the fru- gal principle." "It tends to harden the heart of the poor man, who demands with all that authority with which the legal right 236 RELATION BETWEEN to provision invests him. There is no thank- fulness for what is gotten, and what is given is afforded with dislike and reluctance." " Poverty has been greatly increased by weakening the springs of individual effort, and destroying independence of character. The lower orders have become tricky, sturdy, and unobliging ; the higher orders, cold and uncharitable." " It disturbs the natural de- pendence and affection of parent and child. The latter feels his parent comparatively needless to him; he obtains support else- where ; and the former feels the obligation to support the latter greatly diminished. In short, being comparatively independent of each other, the affections must inevitably become blunted." h What has been said is independent of the religious obligation (f to visit the fatherless and poor in their affliction/' and of the pro- mise made to those who visit the sick by Him who himself spent his whole time in going about doing good. This obligation h Senior's Foreign Poor-Law, pp. 42, 43. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ALMS. 237 ought of itself to render all arguments need- less. 1 While shewing the harshness and heart- lessness of the poor-law system, I am not recommending its abolition. When a people will not obey of themselves the perfect laws of God, they must ever be constrained by human imperfection. I am addressing my- self chiefly to men in their private duties, and within their own sphere and capacities ; and I say that it rests with them to remedy the existing evils in a great measure at least. The true and requisite principle is, that private charity should outstrip the pub- lic provision ; being so abundant and suffi- cient as to render the law unnecessary. This is done in several countries in Europe where a public law exists, but lies dormant, because the backwardness of the people is never such as to call it into action. This was the case in Scotland generally till of late years, and is still so there to a very great extent. 1 See the Dignity and Claims of the Christian Poor. Two Sermons, by Frederick Oakeley, M.A. Serm. ii. 238 PROPOSED REMEDY. We cannot get rid of the compulsory provision, or attempt to do so at present; but we ought to use every means and endea- vour, by private bounty and attention to the poor, by public encouragement of such endeavours, upon every ground of religion and policy, of private and public duty, to arrest the mischief, to introduce a better principle ; and if we cannot supersede the system of law-forced charity, with its attend- ant evils, at least to narrow and limit its operation, and prevent its increase. Every effort made towards this end should be admired as an act of sound patriotism ; every step gained should be made good and promoted ; and the Poor-law Commissioners, if haply they have the good of their country at heart, ought to rejoice in it. But while the evils of the present poor- law system are thus abundantly apparent, and the increasing numbers and miseries of the poor are such as to threaten us with a repetition of that national pauperism which infected Rome and Athens, when they were PROPOSED REMEDY. 239 verging towards their ruin, the difficulty of devising a remedy is full as generally seen and confessed. I have endeavoured to prove the necessity of returning back again to the true principles of charity, and the primitive form and practice of poor-relief; and to shew what individuals ought to do, and must be exhorted and encouraged to do, both by the clergy and government, in their private sphere and duties: but this is an operation of great magnitude, and the work of much time and gradual development, and supposes a vast change in the usages of society. What ought the law and the government to do in furtherance of this operation, or independent of it ? This great change cannot be made at once. What is the first step ? This question, then, I will endeavour to solve. A practical proposition is required ; and I will make suggestion of a practical and definite measure. Let the relief of the out-door poor by the guardians of unions be given up, and let it be restored to the 240 THE NEW POOR-LAW. parishes. Let the board of Poor-Law Com- missioners remain, for the purposes of ad- vice and superintendence, but not of man- agement; and let them communicate with the parishes direct. My reasons for this proposition are in accordance with the opi- nion expressed as to the ultimate end to be attained, and the proper form and principles of relief. All the evils that have been pointed out as resulting from law-forced charity and a system of official relief, enter still more in- tensely into our present system under the changes introduced by the Poor-Law Amend- ment Act. The instruments applied are me- chanical. The machinery used is adapted to wholesale manufacture to reducing all articles to procrustian uniformity to turn- ing out pieces of goods of the same exact size, and pattern, and length. It is a steam- engine system, well worthy of this age of physical invention and mechanical contri- vance ; and well fitted to bring its wares into a marketable fashion and appearance, THE NEW POOR-LAW. 241 sufficient for the current discernment of customers, at the lowest cost, and with the utmost despatch and regularity. Discrimi- nation cannot enter into the system. The very term " classification," the beau-ideal of poor-law-commissioner management, ex- cludes the notion of it. The very words " general rules and regulations 5 ' exclude the possibility of it. Only think of reducing all stomachs to one calibre by a strict and rigid dietary, and that dietary somewhat below the lowest scale of subsistence in the neighbourhood ! But the habits, and occupations, and feelings, must be pressed in like manner into one uniform mould. If the fall has been from wealth and high station, and habits of com- fort, and good society, and education, the rules and orders, and the classification, have no mould to fit such cases ; if a loan is re- quired, or advice, or assistance in recover- ing a debt, or tools or clothes require to be redeemed, to restore a man or woman to use- ful employment, there is no rule to warrant Y 242 THE WORKHOUSE-TEST. such expenses before the auditor, no column for such an item of account. Very far dif- ferent this from the Mosaic code, as explained by the Jewish doctors, which required that endeavours should be made to restore the unfortunate to their station in society, and that garments and other things should be provided them corresponding with their rank. It may be assumed that Christians ought not to be less liberal in their alms-giving, and less compassionate towards the fallen and suffering, than the Jews were com- manded to be. But these features are common to poor- laws in general. The peculiar character- istics of our present amended system, in- dependent of the superintendence of the commissioners, are the workhouse-plan, and the union of parishes into districts. This plan of the workhouse-test, and the enlarge- ment of districts for the management of the poor, are essentially connected. I abhor both of them. It is an iron-bound, unexpan- sive system. It multiplies and aggravates THE WORKHOTJSK-TKST. 248 all the evils which have been attributed to legal and forced provisions for the poor in general ; and it forcibly opposes itself to a return, even to the experiment of a return, to the plan of voluntary alms-giving. To reduce all stomachs of the same sex and age to one calibre, to reduce all habits and skill and tastes to a few fixed occupa- tions, is abhorrent enough to the variety of human nature ; but to test all shapes and habits of the body and mind, all tastes and desires and feelings, by the workhouse, to try all claims to relief by this assay, the measure of actual endurance from poverty by the capacity to bear this other endurance in the alternative, this is certainly one of the boldest and most fallacious attempts to enforce mechanical rule and contrivance upon human minds and motives that has ever been ventured upon by town-made politicians. While this deformed and rigid mask, without all play of feature and countenance, 244 THE EVIL OF UNIONS. incapable of motion or expression, is thus placed before the face of real charity by the veiy use and nature of official relief, its deformities are still more characteristic, and become more essential, in proportion as the districts are enlarged over which one ma- chine and system stretches its operations. In proportion as the sphere is extended, and the ramifications become more numerous, the forms and rules must be more general and wholesale, and there must be less ob- servance of the more distant parts, and less attention to particular varieties. Personal communication between the hand that gives and the hand that asks and receives, cannot be maintained. Personal knowledge cannot assay the genuineness, or the depth, or shades, or specific wants, of each case of alleged necessity ; neither can the relief be apportioned and applied with any truth and nicety. But the test-system must needs be resorted to ; and this test must become coarser and coarser, and less and less dis- THE EVIL OF UNIONS. 245 criminative, in proportion as the machine is enlarged, and made more powerful, and its operations are extended. In this spirit the workhouse -test has been devised, and more and more com- mended. It is a substitute for inquiry. In this spirit the rules of the commissioners have been framed and an endeavour has been made, but hitherto without success, to confirm them by parliament which narrow and restrict the test-system down to a greater exactness and severity, and the forms of re- lief to a more rigid uniformity. The most essential ingredient in poor- relief is personal communication, and know- ledge of the exact condition of the objects of it. This communication can be kept up, can be even attempted, only in small divi- sions and districts; and this creation and extension of large districts, by unions of parishes, and unions of unions, is the most essential evil in the new system of poor-law administration. What is to be gained by this system ? What is the professed object 246 THE EVIL OF UNIONS. of it? Economy, economy; the saving of expenses ; money ! money ! We abhor the sordid and selfish idea. Get thee hence, Mammon ! This is then the end of our prosperity and riches, that out of a meagre and miserable pittance doled out by us to the poor a pittance less considerable than the duty paid upon ardent spirits we must save some per centage ; and this per centage must be placed in competition with a know- ledge and relief of the particular wants and sufferings of a class of our fellow-country- men, bearing a much larger per centage to the whole population of the country ! But I most of all object to this plan of extensive districts, because it prevents the experiment of returning in any degree to that wholesome system and condition, in which private and voluntary alms - giving supersedes the public compulsory provision, and renders the law of forced charity dor- mant and obsolete. No one parish can be encouraged to attempt such a system, while it is bound up in interests and expenses THE EVIL OF UNIONS. 247 with other parishes in a union, the whole machinery of which is connected and moves together. If a parish were to relieve the union from all burden in respect of it, and were to maintain its whole poor by private liberality, yet the contributions to the union workhouses would still be demanded, and the share of wages to the union officers must be paid. Nevertheless, it is the duty of parishes to make this experiment. As it is the duty of individuals to make this endea- vour in a single parish though the charitable few must be additionally burdened by such a measure, and the selfish majority relieved by it, so it is the duty of parishes to agree within themselves, and attempt a like reno- vation, and to despise the paltry addition of expense which the demands of the union may impose upon them. But a few such successful attempts would bring about a general change, by shewing the advantages of it. Whenever the public mind shall be prepared by experimental conviction, and its heart restored to healthy action by 248 USE OF SMALL DISTRICTS the use and habit of genuine Christian cha- rity, the law must follow this impulse, and be adapted to it. In the meantime, the impediment which is created by the union- system is greatly to be lamented. But I must pursue this subject further, of the advantages of managing and relieving the poor in small districts. One chief ad- vantage is, as we have just seen, that the inhabitants of small districts would be en- abled to make trial of restoring that only true system of poor-relief, the providing for the indigent and sick by voluntary charity ; and thus superseding the compulsory pro- vision. (f From the beginning/ ' observes Mr. Wilberforce, " the Church relieved her own poor; and in parishes of due dimen- sions she might do so again."J But the best feature of this arrangement, in respect of which it is equally beneficial as promoting the good working' of the compul- sory and the voluntary systems, is, that it enables the distributors to have perfect know- J Parochial System, p. 40. AND LOCAL ADMINISTRATION. . 249 ledge of the deserts and wants of the parties benefiting by the distribution. This is quite essential to the right employment of all funds distributed by way of relief, upon grounds both of economy and justice. Within small rural districts people know one another. The wants and accidents of every near neigh- bour are the topic of interest and gossip between every two persons who meet, even without the additional attention that would be drawn by the probable need of assistance which might arise out of them. If town- made politicians suppose that the truth is better arrived at through the official visit of a relieving officer than by means of the village- gossip, and the collision and correction of idle and overstrained reports, I say they are mistaken. This is not a parliamentary means, but it is a practical means of arriving at truth ; not the mere knowledge of one single quae- situm or datum, as the degree of the pulse or of inanition, but of a fact and a truth ; being all the shades, and merits, and circum- 250 USE OF SMALL DISTRICTS stances, of a particular case. And this can only be effected in small districts. This it is that causes the good working of the Friendly Society system ; that the parties live in the same small neighbourhood, and are all known to one another. There have been some difficulties as to the funds ; to remedy which, political economists have recommended the members to join them- selves into larger societies, occupying very extensive districts. And this is one instance in which the money-consideration, and the ledger-and-account question, has been made the sole mainspring of action, to the neglect of all other considerations, moral and social. The Provident Society plan, which is that of embracing large and comprehensive districts under one official superintendence, and paid management, has led in some places already to great abuse, and imposition upon the funds of the society, for want of proper information and knowledge of the parties receiving benefit, through the salaried officer. AND LOCAL ADMINISTRATION. 251 The same evil exists under the union- system of poor-relief. The relieving officers are grossly ignorant of the real condition of the parties claiming assistance, and often more dependence is to be placed by the union -board of guardians upon the local and personal knowledge of the unpaid guard- ian of the particular parish, whose business it is not, than upon that of the relieving officer, whose business it is, and who re- ceives his eighty or a hundred pounds a year for his services. Human life does not admit of extensive friendships, and wide circles of intimacies and interests. Truth and reality all lie in particulars, and all interest is in details; and the more we deal in generals, and vast circles of information, and great numbers of people, the more our knowledge becomes superficial, and heartless and inanimate, and our intercourse degenerates into mere ac- quaintance. No Briton can lightly regard the institu- tions of our Numa, the great founder of our 252 USE OF SMALL DISTRICTS constitution ; unrivalled in modern times, and so full of vitality, of health and vigour, in its maturity of growth and manhood. Alfred, in establishing the hundreds and tithings, in addition to the larger divisions of counties then already existing, had espe- cial regard to the intimacy and personal interest which exists between all the inha- bitants of such small districts ; which enabled and obliged them to watch over and assist, and become responsible for one another. Let it ever be remembered that it is recorded of him and it is more intimately connected with this institution than might appear at first sight that " he was a patient and minute arbiter in judicial investigations ; and this chiefly for the sake of the poor, to whose affairs, amongst his other duties, he day and night earnestly applied himself." And again, continues Asser, " In all his kingdom the poor had no helpers, or very few, besides him." k No bond of interest, economy, and sel- k Asser, 69. Turner's Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii. p. 156. AND LOCAL ADMINISTRATION. 253 fishness, can be a substitute for the ties of family union, through which the interests of each member and individual are the interest of every other member and of the whole; and the giver and receiver have both one common purpose, the general advantage, and no one is bent on oppressing or defrauding the rest. The nearer we approach to the habits and motives of family union, the more true and just, amicable and liberal, will be our conduct and communications; though not more economical and enriching. Charity begins at home ; and our first du- ties and obligations are to our own family and neighbourhood. But a citizen of the wide world has no home; and the man of great and general interests has no family; and a man in a crowded city has no neigh- bourhood. To be vital and warm, the inte- rest must be individual and personal. It was the animating principle of the Jewish settlement in Canaan, that the whole land should be occupied by distinct families, living together under common interests, and in z 254 USE OF SMALL DISTRICTS. close and intimate connexion ; which proved favourable to the exercise of all good moral qualities and motives, and the enjoyment of perfect happiness, when every one dwelt under his own vine and under his fig-tree ; but was not consistent with the desires, and objects, and economy, of accumulating riches. The economy of the poor-relief in Prus- sia, as described by the returns of Mr. Gib- sone and Mr. Abercrombie, confirms these views in every particular. The whole of that country is divided into small districts, each comprising a mo- derate population. Even in the largest towns these districts never contain more than 1500 inhabitants, and in the smaller towns they contain from 400 to 1000. In villages, the management of the funds for relief of the poor is entrusted to the mayor and some of the principal inhabitants ; in the towns, they are under a board of directors. These individuals are required to find out and verify the condition of the poor of their own EXAMPLE IN PRUSSIA. 255 district. Each township is governed by its own particular laws and customs with regard to the management of the poor; and the whole is under the inspection of the first section of the home-department. 188. IN SAVOY. 271 pathy are bound down by rules and tables, and the half, the better half of human na- ture is extinct ! What poor-law rules and orders, or official examinations, or work- house-test, or tables, or dietary, can come in competition with this natural and living agency of the heart the Christianised heart ? Oh ! but these are the perfection and tri- umph, and ultimatum of refined reason, of concentrated mind, of solitary, despotic in- tellect ! The return proceeds " The resources of the dames de charite consist only of one-tenth of the prices of the theatrical tickets, of the great public collec- tions made at Easter and Christmas, and of some secret gifts from individuals. If this establishment were rich enough to provide employment for indigent families at their homes, it would be far superior to all other charitable institutions." However, even this suggested deficiency does not seem to be felt ; for the report pro- ceeds thus 272 VOLUNTARY RELIEF " The poor never apply for relief to the authorities, but always to private charity; and it is inexhaustible, for (except during the famine of the year 181J) no one has ever perished from want."'! In Venice, the funds are supplied by pri- vate and government contributions. There is no compulsory legal provision. The num- ber of poor is immense, owing to the fall of the republic, and the great decay of the place. However, the return informs us that " Cases of death by starvation never oc- cur. Even during the great distress caused by the blockade in 1813, and the famine in 1817* no occurrence of this kind was known. In fact, the more urgent the circumstances are, the more abundant are the subscriptions and donations." " The poorer classes are remarkable for their kindness to each other in times of sick- ness and need. Many instances of this have fallen under my own observation." q Senior's Foreign Poor-laws, pp. 188, 189- IN THE AZORES. 273 "There is much family affection in all classes of the Venetians ; and in sickness, distress, and old age, among the poorer classes, they shew every disposition to assist and relieve each other." "The clergy, who have great influence over the lower classes, exert themselves much to cultivate the good feeling which subsists among them towards one another." 1 " The account from the Azores is, that " Mendicity is limited to the aged and infirm, the crippled, and the blind ; for whom there is no legal provision. They are there- fore dependent on the charity of the wealthy ; to whom they make a weekly application, and receive alms. "The poorest able-bodied labourer ab- hors begging. His utmost exertions are therefore employed to support himself and family. It is only in cases of sickness, or other corporeal impediment, that he ever has recourse to alms. r Senior's Foreign Poor-laws, pp. 190-192. 274 VOLUNTARY RELIEF " In general there prevails much love and affection between parents and children, and from the children much obedience and respect towards their parents ; to which they are exhorted by the clergy, who inculcate great subjection to their parents on all oc- casions." 8 Of the Canary Islands the description is similar : " Mendicity prevails to a considerable extent. There is no legal provision what- ever. Casual charity is the only resource ; but as the natives for the most part remain in the places where they were born, there are very few who have not some relations and acquaintances from whom they receive occasional assistance. " Cripples, deaf, dumb, and blind, live with their parents or relations, or subsist by casual charity. There is no provision for them. " The peasantry are a robust and hardy 8 Senior's Foreign Poor-laws, pp. 196-198. IN GREKCE. 275 race, laborious and frugal. There is a great deal of family affection among them."* In Greece there exists no public institu- tion or decree organising the relief to the poor. There are scarcely any charitable institutions, it having been feared that the Ottoman authorities would appropriate to themselves any resources which might be set apart for the poor. Charitable subscrip- tions are therefore the only means by which the poor, sick, &c., obtain relief. The effects of this system upon the con- duct and character of the people themselves is thus described : " The nearest relations of orphans gene- rally consider it to be a religious duty to take care of them ; so that, in consequence of this praiseworthy feeling, they are seldom left entirely destitute, unless they have no relations, or unless the latter have no means of assistance at their disposal. Moreover, there are numerous benevolent persons who are in the habit of taking orphans into their ' Senior's Foreign Poor-laws, pp. 199-201. 276 VOLUNTARY RELIEF houses, and bringing them up at their own expense/' "The labourers are industrious, frugal, and attached to their relations." 11 The concurrent testimony of a friend who lately visited Greece, is entirely confirma- tory of this statement. He describes the character of the people as most amiable, and their conduct towards each other as most exemplary ; relations constantly assist- ing one another with the greatest affection, disinterestedness, and liberality. The labours and inquiries of Dr. Chal- mers have furnished abundant corroboration of the position which I am supporting, from those parts and parishes in Scotland where the Christian system of poor-relief prevails, as compared with the compulsory system. I shall reserve the details of his information for an appendix to this chapter, because they are too numerous to be inserted here, and too important to be dismissed hastily ; and because it will be necessary to explain, u Senior's Foreign Poor-laws, pp. 202, 208. IN SCOTLAND. 277 at some length, the experiments which he has originated in promotion of this very system of relief, and their results ; and to make some observations upon them. I will only quote one general description here, which expresses the result of his observa- tions. " My impression certainly is, that in the unassessed county of Fife, where I was after- wards a clergyman for twelve years, the standard of enjoyment is fully as high as in Roxburgshire ; and the relative affections seem to be in much more powerful exercise in the unassessed than in the assessed pa- rishes ; as also the kindness of neighbours to each other, and the spontaneous gene- rosity of the rich to the poor. There is a great deal of relief going on in the unas- sessed parishes, perhaps as much in point of materiel as in the assessed; though not so much needed, from the unbroken habits of economy and industry among the people. The morale which accompanies the volun- tary mode of relief, tends to sweeten and B B 278 VOLUNTARY RELIEF cement the parochial society in the unas- sessed parishes. " v I cannot refrain from adding some pas- sages from the evidence taken by the Com- missioners of Inquiry respecting the condi- tion of the poor in Ireland, and their feel- ings and opinions in regard to charitable relief, previous to the enactment which re- cently gave to the poor of that country a legal resource and establishment. Much contradictory evidence was sought after and eagerly received, and will be found in the report. The report itself admits the greater mutual charity of the Irish poor, as com- pared with the English, and expressly attri- butes it to the non-existence of poor-laws. w T Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons, on the subject of a Poor-law for Ireland, 1830. Question 36. Chalmers' Works, vol. xvi. p. 296. w Poor-Inquiry (Ireland), appendix G. Report on the state of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, pp. 25, 26. Dr. Chalmers' Evidence. Question 271. Works, vol. xvi. p. 388. IN IRELAND. 279 But whether the following extracts may be considered faithful as a general description or not, they are full of instruction ; and whencesoever drawn, ought to be noticed, and must give rise to serious thought and reflection. I believe them to present a faith- ful picture ; at least, the recurrence of such evidence is frequent and constant in that part of the report which is entitled "Va- grancy," that is, mendicity, and is especially devoted to the subject of beggary and alms- giving; and many more quotations might have been added to the same purpose. It is also wonderfully corroborative of the de- scription of the poorer classes given in the last chapter. Province of Connaught, County Galway. " The support of the vagrant falls princi- pally on the small farmer and shopkeeper, though all classes contribute something. The farmer and shopkeeper are more open to the vagrant than the richer classes are. Mameragh St. George, Esq., Headford Cas- tle. The beggar calls oftener at the poor 280 VOLUNTARY RELIEF man's house than at the rich man's, and is oftener sent away empty by the rich. Wil- liam King. The rich give rather to certain known objects than to common vagrants. Dr. Kelly. The poorer classes give away more, in proportion to their means, than the rich do. The charity of the richer classes is exerted more in employing more workmen than they require, than in giving alms. Mr. St. George. The poor give ten times as much as the rich in proportion to their means. Dr. Kelly. Persons renting only one acre, and even day-labourers, give relief to the poor, if they have it." Mr. St. George. " Persons have, I believe, often given away in the earlier part of the year so much as to leave themselves afterwards in want. Mr. St. George. I have known poor per- sons who were buying provisions to give more away than the persons from whom they bought." Mr. J. Lynch, postmaster. " I consider that I would be in greater want if I gave none away, than if I gave a IN IRELAND. 281 great deal away; for / think that charity never shortens the quantity. William King. If a meal was going on, and a beggar called, you would never miss what you would give away. I gave away myself part of the cake made of a quart of meal to a beggarman, and at the time I had no more victuals in my house, nor the hope of getting it to earn the next day ; but I hoped that as God gave it to me that day. He would give me some more the next day." William King.* County Roscommon. " Considering what they endure from privations and want, it can scarcely be believed that any beg, unless when forced to it by downright necessity. The people feel a spirit in themselves that keeps them from asking alms, and the poor housekeeper is poorer than the beggar." William Murray, miller J " I saw a very poor creature, who hap- pened to have collected more food than she x Selections from Evidence given on the Irish- Poor Inquiry, pp. 283, 284. Ibid. p. 299. B B2 282 CHARACTER OF actually wanted for the day's subsistence, give away to another, who seemed, if pos- sible, more wretched than herself, as much potatoes as is usually given at a time at a farmer's house to a beggar; but I believe such cases to be very rare indeed." Macna- mara, weaver? e( The fear of imprecations may possibly have some effect upon old and superstitious people, but certainly has no influence on the great mass of the people, who are disposed to give without such motives." J. Kelly, farmer.* Province of Munster, County Clare. " The country people generally give lodgings for nothing to those going to England for work. But in the villages they are obliged to pay twopence for their beds." b (f Being asked, if they would agree, in- stead of giving potatoes to beggars, to throw the same quantity aside every day into a vessel, and send the whole, at the end of the z Evidence on Irish-Poor Inquiry, p. 302. 8 Ibid. p. 306. b Ibid. p. 355. THE IRISH POOR. 283 quarter, to an institution where those beg- gars would be supported, they objected to this also. One says, ' I would rather have the gratification of giving them to the poor myself.' Another says, f The wife would never come in to it, or any woman in the parish.' " Religion has a great influence in pro- ducing the habits of giving charity. Even if a house of industry were established, some persons would continue to relieve beggars as they do now, but the practice would be gradually discontinued. Daniel Sullivan says, f If there were a poor-house, they would not give as they do now ; we would say more against it, because they would have something else to depend on. We do it for the good of our soul, but it would not be so great a charity then/ Being asked, whether he might not be induced to give charity for fear of the beggar's curse, the same witness observes, * It is not for their cursing I would give it. If I knew myself I was doing right, I would not care what 284 CHARACTER OF they said. But they do not curse or scold, poor creatures, excepting the buccoughs.'" c County Limerick. " Mr. Furlong re- marked, that people look out for beggars to give them alms, for the benefit of their own souls, on the principle, that ' giving to the poor is lending to the Lord.' Almsgiving from a religious feeling, he thought, would not be checked by a poor-law ; but almsgiv- ing from a desire to relieve want, he thought, would." d County Donegal. " Frequent cases have been known of vagrants giving or lending provisions to the housekeepers with whom they have lodged. Mr. M'Guirly, R. C. C., gives a striking instance, which came under his own observation, of the family of a poor labourer, who died of consumption, having been supported, without going out, during the greater part of the summer, by a beggar- man with three children, who used to lodge with him. c Evidence on Irish-Poor Inquiry, p. 375. d Ibid. p. 389- THE IRISH POOR. 285 " To relieve the wandering beggar is considered, by the poorest class, as one of the first religious duties. They never inquire into the causes of his being so; and they have a feeling that before long it may be their own case. " Susan M f Lafferty, a blind beggarwo- man, says, ' that the middling houses are as good as the rich ones ; and often much bet- ter. A good gouping (three to six potatoes, or a handful of meal, &c.) is always sure to the beggar from the poorest farmer.' And Kitty Hegarthy, a poor widow beggarwoman, states, ' I always find the poor man's door open ; and his hand is never backward, when there is aught in the creel/" (f John Boyd, Esq., says, f I am not favourable to poor-laws. I think the inter- course at present subsisting between the poor and those who assist and relieve them, is calculated to promote a kindly feeling, and further the objects of religion and mo- rality, and a spirit of charity." 6 e Evidence on Irish-Poor Inquiry, pp. 411, 412. 286 ALMS IN IRELAND. " Mr. Robert Ramsay, farmer, says, ' I think the poor-laws would make paupers of us all.'" s In the opinion of the Rev. William Spratt, a dissenting minister, " The predominating feeling which induces the small farmers to give alms, is a belief that charity is a duty, the neglect of which would entail misfor- tunes both here and hereafter. It is even believed, that the feeling among that class of persons is so strong on the point, that they would not consider themselves relieved from the claims of charity by the establish- ment of places of refuge for the poor." h The most striking feature which presents itself throughout the whole of this evidence, both from foreign countries, and from Scot- land and Ireland, is the exuberance of kind, and affectionate, and disinterested feeling among relations, and between the poor and rich, and among the poor themselves, which wells forth from, and fertilises the soil in B Evidence on Irish-Poor Inquiry, p. 413. h Ibid. p. 414. CONCLUSIONS. 287 every country which is not sterilised and rendered unfruitful of charity by the exist- ence of poor-laws, or that which gives occa- sion for them. The next striking point is, the possibi- lity of the existence of warm and liberal feelings, and the unrestrained fruits of them, without their becoming wasteful and exces- sive ; and consistently with the non-increase, and even with the diminution, of mendi- cancy. Another most important conclusion is, that all this freedom in giving, and exube- rance of feeling, is altogether compatible with order and arrangement in the adminis- tration; and this appetite for giving and searching out of objects, with the most per- fect adaptation, the wisest and most cau- tious application, and the finest, truest, and most experienced touch of tenderness and sympathy. The most important point of all is the prominent part which religion acts in giving motives to and directing the liberality which 288 ALMS OF THE CHURCH. we have exhibited in these instances. The clergy are a chief instrument in drawing forth the funds, and in giving a proper ap- plication to them. It is evident that the Church is the best and most efficient power to give effect and direction to charity in general to become the mainspring and regulator of almsgiving and receiving. I do not enter at present into particulars, or the distinction between public collections and contributions, and private, and individual, and personal kind- nesses and benefactions. These must have their different modes and operations. But they may be one in spirit and principle. They must both exist together; and they may well concur and co-operate together. The spirit and counsel of the Church may direct both. The clergy alone can hold that communication, and have that influ- ence with all the parts of society concerned in the great work and business of alms- giving, which can enable them to direct each in the due performance of their respec- ALMS OF THE CHURCH. 289 tive parts. Whether they administer or not any considerable part of the funds with their own hands, they alone can most effectually open the fountains of benevolence, and make them flow more abundantly when occasion calls for it ; they alone can best instil the principle which should guide these over- flowing streams into their proper channels ; they alone, from making it their business, and by their experience, can best point out in practice the ultimate objects and destina- tion ; they alone can prepare the recipients to ask and to accept the proffered alms upon the right motives and principle, and not to ask and to refuse them when the necessity does not justify it. Under the hand and guidance of the Church all is liberal, all is well applied, all is well arranged, orderly, and suitable. In the language of Mr. Wil- berforce, in his Essay on the Parochial System, 1 " The benevolence of Christians should be wise, well-ordered, discrimina- ting, and bountiful. Such are the alms of ' Parochial System, p. 41. C C 290 ALMS OF THE CHURCH. the Church : ennobling to the giver, but not debasing to the receiver; because the love of Christ towards men becomes the effectual source and motive, the model and example of the love of men towards their brethren."J See the appendix to this chapter. CHAPTER VI. Srratmmt of tfjr $oor. MODERN MAXIMS OF CHARITY THEIR FAILURE LITTLE CHARITY IN ENGLAND FOREIGN HOSPI- TALS ENGLISH CHARITY ITS AMOUNT ITS CHARACTERISTICS ITS SEVERITY ITS FALLACY ITS REMEDIES DIVINE AND HUMAN WISDOM FALSE PRINCIPLES, AND CONSEQUENT EVILS CHRISTIAN CHARITY THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS JOHN HALES LAW SIR THOMAS BROWN THE JEWS MAIMONIDES CHARITY IN FRANCE OUT-DOOR 'RELIEF IN FRANCE THE PRINCIPLE AND MOTIVE CHIEFLY IMPORTANT THE POOR WANT ATTENTION AND A FRIEND CLASSES ARE DISUNITED SOCIETY DISJOINTED SYMPTOMS OF OLD AGE IRRESPONSIBLE PROPERTY THE DISEASE DESPERATE THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN THE OLD SQUIRE. (f WHAT is your rule for giving charity ? " " The word of God says, e Give to every* one that asketh thee ; ' and I know no other law/' " No, sir, I cannot go with you there. I have agreed with you hitherto, and upon 292 MODERN MAXIMS OF CHARITY. every other topic; but I can never admit this/' The gentleman who made this answer was a religious man, and a man of sense, and one who looked with alarm and horror upon the principles by which the world is at present governed. The word and law of God is openly de- nied in every particular. And when it is boldly challenged, as it is, even by the most religious and scrupulous, what hope can there be against the continued rise of the flood of infidelity, by which the whole Chris- tian world is about to be overwhelmed ? But let us forget the truth of God's word for the present, and admire man's wisdom and his practice, and his own opinion of it ; for it is very great ! God has said, " Give to every one that asketh ;" and, " Be temperate and frugal ;" and, " Lay not up treasure ;" and, " Woe be to the rich." But let us forget this. Man says, " Never give to any one in the streets; all the beggars you meet with MODERN MAXIMS OF CHARITY. 293 are impostors and criminals. It is a crime to beg; and all the charity you give them only makes them idle and worse: you are a partaker in their criminality. It is a crime to give. The greater part of what is given in charity does more harm than good: it fosters vice and idleness : it prevents a man from exerting himself; for all which you are answerable. Some few cases there are which may be better for a little assistance ; but these cases are rare, and most of them doubtful. If you have thoroughly investi- gated and ascertained such a case, why then you may give to it freely; but never give any thing without thorough inquiry. Give once, and have done with it. Never give in dribblets ; assist effectually, or not at all. If you cannot inquire, give nothing ; for there are ten chances to one that it is an imposture. In the meantime, make as much as you can, that these burdens may fall lighter. The riches of a country are its prosperity. Educate the poor, for this rea- son, in order that they may be rich; that c c2 294 MODERN MAXIMS OF CHARITY. they may be able to support themselves, and so be off your hands. Teach them by all means to save; saving is the greatest virtue. They must not depend upon their children in their old age, nor upon one another, but upon themselves. You must force them to save, by shewing that they have no resource in you. You must make as much, and give as little as you. can. " For this purpose, you ought not to restrict the education even of the lowest pauper in any particular. You must give him the utmost amount of learning that you can, an education equal to or beyond those who are able to pay for their own schooling ; you may fill his mind to cramming. But as for food and clothing, as regards the health and strength of the body that strength by which he ploughs and reaps, and that health by which he endures the inclement seasons, as to these, the supply must be measured by the means of the ordinary labouring man ; the supply must not be equal to his, but be- low it ; and the line of support to the body FAILURE OF THE SYSTEM. 295 is to be drawn just above the point of star- vation.'^ O admirable wisdom ! O sublime policy ! Oh, the depth and knowledge of our later ancestors, who spoliated what our earlier forefathers had dedicated to charity and the Church, and made so wise and just a legal provision instead, by which the poor have secured to them all those blessings of human design and forethought, so sure to diminish poverty, in lieu of the ill effects of charity given upon mere Christian principles ; and, lo, England, in the meantime, is the most pauperised country in the world . b But these being our principles, what, on Dr. Kay's Report on Education to the Poor-law Commissioners ; First Report of Poor-law Commis- sioners, p. 228. " Policy without religion draws the line of support just above the point of starvation." REV. THOMAS DALE'S Sermon for Greville- Street Hospital, 1839, p. 10. b " England is the most pauperised country in Eu- rope" (Dr. KAY'S Report to the Poor-law Commis- sioners, Fourth Poor-law Report, p. 230) ; and if of Europe, then obviously of the world. 296 OUR CHARITY BOASTED OF. the other hand, is our practice ? What, in the first place, is our boast ? Whatever be our reasoning, our practice at least is generous. This is our boast. Eng- land is the most charitable nation in the world ! It is a country in which suffering is sure to meet with adequate and imme- diate relief. Distress has but to make itself known, and the charitable sympathies of the benevolent public are only too warmly en- listed, and contributions are sure to pour in, in abundant and overflowing streams. And look at the ample and adequate provisions of public beneficence ! First, there is that noble legal provision of the poor-law, more extensive and perfect than in any other country, and declaring by act of parliament that no man shall die of hunger; thereby stamping this kingdom and its constitution as essentially Christian. But let us look around on the hospitals, and infirmaries, and foundations for education and reforma- tion, which meet our eyes whichever way we turn, especially in this vast and noble OUR CHARITY BOASTED OF. 297 metropolis. In these, every form of human suffering is anticipated, and amply provided for. There Christianity shews itself in its purest shape, and under its purest motives. There the poor are equalised with the rich ; for there the greatest learning and skill of the age are provided, and wait gratuitously upon the meanest and lowest conditions of suffering humanity. There the lame man is made daily to leap as the hart the blind man to see plainly the deaf and the dumb to hear and speak the diseased and maimed to rise from their bed ; and so the bless- ings of Christ's presence are showered down and dispersed abroad with a never- failing beneficence, in this most pure and holy seat of Christian doctrine, worship, and practice. We will not dwell upon the establishment of hospitals as schools of medicine, and for other such motives ; or on charities instituted to give employment as secretary to some worthy unoccupied individual. These things are the merest exceptions, and are most rare, 298 LITTLE CHARITY IN ENGLAND. no doubt. We will not particularly notice, that charitable foundations were five times as numerous when the country was less rich, and previous to the sweeping and cleansing of the Augean Church, from motives the most pure and disinterested, and most wholly unaugean ! These things are not directly to our present purpose. This country is the most uncharitable country in the world. The sums that we give in charity are a mere pittance, and are shameful to the name of Christian ; though pretty well for a nation governed, as this is, entirely upon heathen principles. The state of the poor is the greatest disgrace to huma- nity let alone the name of Christian, which we profess that ever has existed since the world began. The separation and estrange- ment of the richer orders from the poorer is indescribably greater in this country, which professes the religion that makes all men brethren, than it ever was in any country pro- fessedly or practically heathen except, per- haps, in Rome in her most palmy period; LITTLE CHARITY IN ENGLAND. 299 that is, when she was over-ripe, and growing rotten, and tottering, as we now are, to our fall. We say nothing, too, of America, which is only the realisation of every English vice and principle in a more advanced state, and in greater intensity, and under the doom of a heavier and more certain ruin. We boast that distress is sure to be re- lieved as soon as known ; but we take espe- cial pains that we should seldom know it. An exaggerated case in a newspaper, or an advertisement for an hospital, or even a very severe winter, may make us draw our purse- strings to the extent of one or two guineas subscription, or a twenty-guineas life-dona- tion ; and so we remain satisfied for the rest of the season, or for our lives, with the self- flattery that we have done a noble and a Christian action, and have felt our hearts expand with benevolence when we have seen our name published in the list of contri- butors. But as for all the misery and star- vation, and intense suffering and wretched- ness, which crowd the courts and alleys 300 LITTLE CHARITY IN ENGLAND. around us, within a hundred yards of our kitchens, and at all seasons, these we never see, and never hear of, and of these we know nothing ; and we take especial care that we shall never know, for we would not enter or approach such places, or come near such people, lest we should be infected. We would not talk to them in passing : that would be out of place and vulgar, and might teach them to be familiar, or encourage them to beg; and if they come out and beg, and force themselves upon our notice, why, then, they are impostors, " for the really distressed are always ashamed to beg ;" " and, besides, they ought to go to their parish." England is the most uncharitable country in the world. What we give in charity is a perfect pittance. What ought this country to give in proportion to its riches ? and what proportion does it give ? Our great boast is our numerous and mu- nificent hospitals. Even in infidel France, where the monasteries and other foundations were spoliated during the Revolution, as in FOREIGN HOSPITALS. 301 England at the Reformation, the hospitals in Paris are so extensive, that, in 1838, there were admitted into them, of sick persons, 75,305 in-patients each of whom remained, upon an average, about twenty-five days, out of a population of 899,343. (In 1837 there were admitted 76,887.) Into the Lon- don hospitals, for a population of l,800,000, c there were admitted in the same year about 37^000. The same proportion as in Paris would have been upwards of 150,000. The above numbers shew, that in Paris there are upwards of 5000 hospital -beds constantly occupied.* 1 In London (including the luna- tic asylums, and Hanwell Asylum, established by act of parliament, which is for the whole of Middlesex,) there were, in the same year, c It is computed that at this time, March 1840, the population of London is 1,950,000; and that at the next census, in 1841, it will be upwards of two mil- lions. These numbers are most likely exaggerated. d Planta states them to be 15,000. But this in- cludes foundling hospitals, and other charities in the nature of almshouses. D D 302 LONDON HOSPITALS. 4500 hospital -beds, and less than 4200 in use. 6 At Nantes the Hotel Dieu contains 600 Hospital-beds, and average number of patients : 1fi oo No. of Occu- beds. pied. Guy's Hospital .... 530 510 St. Bartholomew's . . . 500 491 St. Thomas's .... 400 395 London 320 317 St. George's .... 320 313 Seamen's 240) > 250 Convalescents . . .603 Middlesex Hospital . . . 235 225 Westminster . . . .127 120 University College . . -121 110 Charing Cross . . . .104 100 Fever (1837) . . . . 60 21 Small-pox 35 30 Lock 80 80 Greville Street . . . .20 18 Hanwell Lunatic Asylum (for Mid- .810 791 dlesex 1839) Bethlem Lunatic Asylum . . 240 229 St. Luke's Lunatic Asylum . . 300 193 King's Coll. Hosp. (not then estab.) 4502 4193 FOREIGN HOSPITALS. 303 beds ; 300 of which are for the inhabitants of the city, being one bed to about 290 per- sons: the population being 87J91. At Bourdeaux the hospital contains from 600 to 650 sick. Supposing half the num- ber to belong to the town, this is about the same proportion to the population, which is 109,467. f The beds in the hospitals in London are as one to 400 persons, including the Hanwell Asylum for all Middlesex, and the Seamen's Hospital. But the London hospitals are occupied by country patients, as well as those of Nantes and Bourdeaux j so that the disproportion is even much greater. The magnificence and great extent of the hospital at Lyons, La Charite, is gene- rally well known ; but I have not obtained the particulars respecting it. Reichard calls it of " amazing extant." The population is 109,000.s " f Senior's Foreign Poor-laws, pp. 165, 173. At Rome there are 2154 beds for patients in two of the hospitals alone, those of Santo Spirito and of 304 FOREIGN HOSPITALS. Let us look at the rest of the comparison. The French are very averse to going into a workhouse, and out-door relief is given to the fallen with a liberal hand, and for the Our Blessed Saviour, The population is 130,000 or 150,000. ( Orthodox Journal for Aug. 1840.) In Naples there are sixty charitable foundations very richly endowed; viz. seven hospitals; thirty recep- tacles for foundlings and orphans ; five banks for loans and savings ; the rest are schools or confraternities. (BURN'S Poor-law in Scotland and on the Continent, p. 466.) In Cadiz there are three hospitals for sick, in one of which are 6000 patients. (Ibid. p. 467.) Having heard it remarked that the foreign hospitals are less commodious, I have made inquiry, and find the contrary to be the case. Even the degree of clean- liness is not deficient, in proportion to the habits of the people. I subjoin one reply which I received from a friend, an architect, because it is short and compre- hensive ; and his attention has been especially directed to the commodiousness of the hospitals on the con- tinent. " I saw very little of the Paris hospitals ; but at Lyons I saw a very extensive one. The point that struck me most was the four great wards, forming the arms of a transept, in the centre of which stood the FOREIGN HOSPITALS. 305 following Christian reason: (( It is much more gratifying to the poor sick or infirm man to be assisted at his own home, and to receive there the attentions of his wife and children, or relations, than to be in a man- high altar ; so that all the patients in those, the prin- cipal wards, see the mass celebrated every day. " At Genoa is a very fine hospital, of which I could shew you the plan. " At Florence are several very fine establishments of this kind, for sick, for insane, &c. ; but the finest is for the foundling children, within which is a school for midwives. " At Rome the hospitals are both numerous and very large. There is one for cutaneous disorders en- tirely. The most celebrated is, I think, that of Spirito Santo, in Transtevere. " But it is at Naples that institutions of this kind appeared to me to have reached the highest point of perfection, in regard to commodiousness, cleanliness, attendance, order, classification, and every other re- quisite. " I remember, in one, seeing two boys, who had been operated upon for the stone, put in a large airy room (this was in summer), without any other inmate, .that they might be quite quiet. " In the same building I saw another large room, D D2 306 FOREIGN HOSPITALS. ner isolated, when placed in a poor-house, amidst individuals who are not bound to him by any tie either of blood or of friendship." 11 The number relieved at their own dwellings in 1838 was 58,500. The same proportion for London would be 97,500. The average number is 28,432, as nearly as can be calcu- lated. This number ought to be multiplied by 2, to embrace the different individuals relieved at different seasons. Three times the number would be 85,296. The in-door poor in Paris in 1838 were 12,945. The average in London is 14,450, which ought to be multiplied like the last. The in-door poor, therefore, are more numerous than in over the door of which was written ' Incur dbili ;' there were only two inmates at that time. " The first thing that strikes in foreign hospitals generally is their extent, and the abundance of space, light, and air, in them ; the next is the fulness of the attendance ; and the third the presence of religious feeling which enters into all belonging to them." The Lock Hospital in London is now rebuilding upon a very moderate scale, for want of sufficient funds. h Official Report of Relief in Paris, 1838. ENGLISH CHARITY. 307 Paris, but not so as to make up the dispro- portion. And what is the amount of the relief given ? In food alone, in the poor-houses in the hospitals it is more the daily cost is sixpence a day sterling per head, or 3s. 6d. per week, which is equal to 5s. in England. 1 The allowance in London poor-houses is under 2s. J England is the least charitable country in all the world. What ought to be given in this country in proportion to its riches ? and what proportion is given ? A Christian man would not give less than a tenth of his income, as a general rule, though no rule or limit can really be applied to Christian benevolence. k Many, of course, as those without family or incum- brance, would give a much greater propor- 1 Official Report on the Hospitals, Poor-houses, and Poor-relief in Paris, during the year 1838. J See the dietaries published by the Poor-law Com- missioners. It is the same in parishes not brought under their jurisdiction. k See the laws of the Mosaic code, and the practice of the Jews upon this subject, ante, p. 208. The Ma- hommedan law enjoins the giving away of one-sixth. 308 ENGLISH CHARITY. tion. Those who have large families might give less. But something must be taken as a basis of comparison ; and if one-tenth of the income of the country were to be given up in charity, perhaps that might afford some symptom of the adoption of Christian rule in the country, and a hope of Christian pro- gress. As pauperism obviously increases with the increase and accumulation of riches, a larger proportion of our enormous wealth ought to be given here than elsewhere. What amount, then, is given in charity in England ? Five hundred thousand pounds ? A million ? Two millions ? Five millions ? k Let it be taken at five millions, if any one can find a ground of calculation upon which such an amount may be estimated. Mr. McQueen estimates the income of Great Britain and Ireland at 722 millions. 1 What proportion k The Bishop of Chester estimates the private charity at five millions ; but he does not state any grounds. Sermons on Christian Charity, Preface. 1 General Statistics of the British Empire, p. 218. This estimate is the more probable, because the in- ITS AMOUNT. 309 does the charity of the country bear to this amount? Very little faith is to be placed in statistics ; therefore I do not pretend to certainty. Here is enough, however, to make it difficult to believe that one-tenth part is given in charity of the amount which might fairly be expected in a Christian coun- try. Adding that portion of the poor-rates which goes to the poor, it would scarcely be a seventh. Taking the minimum estimate, or one-tenth, as the sufficient contribution to the poor and the clergy together, and for all religious purposes, we contribute, perhaps, voluntarily and compulsorily, fifteen millions upon the whole, or about one-fifth of what ought to be given. Let us look at it in another point of view. Compare the lists of wealthy men in London with the lists of contributors to public charities. If we take the Court Guide and the lists of the principal and best sup- ported charities, where we find fifty houses come of France has been estimated at ten milliards of francs, or 400 millions sterling. 310 ENGLISH CHARITY. in a street, we shall find subscriptions per- haps to the amount of fifty guineas among them, and these fifty guineas subscribed by very few individuals. The occupiers of these houses have between them not less than 100,000/. income, perhaps 200,000/. Many of them give two or three guineas a year to London charities, and probably very little besides. A much larger number subscribe nothing at all; and a very small number give liberally and handsomely ; perhaps one, more than might have been expected of him. Or take fifty names alphabetically, and take the same names in the subscriptions to charities, the same result will be obtained. The greater number of subscriptions are by persons whose names are not elevated to the Court Guide. But though these give more freely than the others, yet they give nothing as compared with the rule which has been proposed. The richer give less in propor- tion; the richest give least. m The fact is, m The liberality in alms-giving is in an inverse pro- portion to the wealth of the contributors. Persons of ITS CHARACTERISTICS. 311 we are too rich to be liberal. The richer people grow, the poorer they become in practice; the less they give, and the less they can give, and the less they can do. The rich are too poor to marry. The rich are too poor to be hospitable. The rich are too poor to take a loss with resignation and the smallest independent fortunes give their guineas to charities, and the proprietors of thousands a year in general give no more. The most striking feature in the giving of charity is, the very small number of persons who give at all. The rector of a large and populous parish in London says, from his own experience, that the number who give to charities at all is incomparably few. Those who do give, give largely, even beyond what might be expected of them ; but they are a mere nothing in num- ber. This is the general experience of all secretaries and collectors for charities. They generally know be- forehand who will respond to an application, and often the amount nearly which each person will contribute. In a wealthy parish in London, of 22,000 inhabit- ants, a rental of 113,0002., and a probable income of one million, the Visiting Society and the Infant Schools are supported by 1 1 1 families and 121 persons ; of which fifty-five contributed, in 1839, 1 guinea, or under, 312 ENGLISH CHARITY. cheerfulness. The rich are too poor to be charitable. Thus, in this country of enor- mous wealth and prosperity in which, as in all other places, pauperism increases with riches, and consequently a larger proportion subscription ; seventeen, from 1 to 2 guineas ; six, 5 guineas ; one, 10 guineas, besides a 5-guinea donation ; fourteen gave a donation of 1 guinea or under ; twelve gave from that to 5 guineas ; three, 10 guineas ; one, 20 guineas ; one gave 5 guineas donation and 2 sub- scription ; one, 7 donation, and 2 subscription ; and one gave 20 guineas donation, and 3 guineas subscription. Another principal feature in charities is, the vast proportion which is given by the clergy, notwith- standing the inadequacy of their stipends. It is reck- oned that two-thirds of the subscribers to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge are clergymen, be- tween a fourth and a third of those who subscribe to the National Society, and half the subscribers to the different diocesan associations for education. These charities are peculiar ; but they are some of the largest subscriptions. The statement by the secretary of the National Society, dated Sept. 14, 1840, after exemplifying the extraordinary liberality of the clergy, proceeds in this manner : " A distressing contrast to this self-denying zeal of the clergy is too frequently presented in the ITS CHARACTERISTICS. 313 of our accumulations ought to be set apart for charity in this enormously wealthy country, we are too poor to be charitable ; we are too poor and selfish to raise our revenue, and to pay our public debts ; we cannot afford to build churches, or maintain apathy and misplaced economy of their parishioners. There are some gratifying and even splendid excep- tions ; but in too many instances it is quite disheart- ening to read the pitifulness of the sum that even in extensive parishes and wealthy neighbourhoods is all that can be raised, either to build a school, or to pay a teacher. A very large proportion, and in some in- stances the whole of the expense, is borne by the parochial minister. Too many letters declare that manufacturers give nothing ; that landlords give al- most nothing ; and that farmers confine their bounty to the cartage of materials." The last report of the Metropolis Churches' Fund also has the following passage: "At the same time the committee must honestly avow their great dis- appointment at the comparatively small number of the contributors. The fund placed at their disposal has been chiefly raised by large contributions from a few ; and they cannot but lament that the appeal of the bishop of the diocese to its wealthier inhabitants for E E 314 ENGLISH CHARITY. a clergy sufficient for the people ; we are forced to encourage a trade in poison for other nations, and to suffer every demoral- ising habit and luxury that can contribute to the revenue among ourselves. Oh, ad- mirable prosperity ! Oh, Christian country ! the means of supplying an obvious and pressing want has as yet awakened so few of the large landed pro- prietors, merchants, and others, who are drawing im- mense wealth from the increase of the metropolitan population, to the bounden duty which rests upon them to care for the spiritual wants of those who contribute to their temporal interests." Some increase of liberality must be acknowledged, with thankfulness to God, in the last two or three years, and especially some few munificent contribu- tions to particular objects ; but still the characteristic is, the very few persons who give liberally, and the sums raised are as mere drops compared with the ocean of our riches. The great object is, not to draw more from those who already give freely though these are always the persons most influenced by any new appeal but to increase the number of contributors to charitable objects. The above extracts correctly describe the ge- neral state and character of charity in the country, and especially in the metropolis. ITS ILLIBERALITY. 315 Oh, paradise of the devil and his angels where to Mammon and his golden image he has given his seat inviting and about to suffer the self-chosen and self-inflicted tor- ments of outer darkness and hell. In this paradise of Satan, people dare not be charitable, people dare not do their duty. A custom existed at a mansion house in Sussex, of giving a penny to every tra- veller who applied for it, which was sup- posed to have been begun at the suppression of monasteries. This custom, which led to no inconvenience some hundreds of years ago, when the penny was of a value three or four times as great as at present, has been changed into the practice of giving a penny roll, because the penny was an in- ducement to come from far and wide, and brought numbers of persons for whom it was never intended. At another house, in the same county, the practice of giving bread was established, but of necessity dis- continued, from the very great numbers that it brought together. 316 ENGLISH CHARITY. The Mendicity Society in London does as much as the state of its funds will per- mit. But in order to keep within its income, it is forced to adopt such strict and narrow rules of relief, that numberless really dis- tressing cases are quite ineffectually assisted ; and the great majority of applicants are scarcely more than kept temporarily just above starvation. Yet for these very im- perfect and limited operations the Society is often complained of by practical men and philosophers of the modern school, because they encourage people by their liberality to emigrate to London from all parts of the kingdom. The Refuge for the Houseless opens its doors during the severe weather in winter, and affords an asylum to those who must otherwise sleep in the streets, and those who prefer their entertainment to paying fourpence for a private lodging and a bed. Each man lies on the floor, in a compart- ment about eighteen inches wide, partitioned off from his neighbour by a board nine ITS ILLIBERALITY. 317 inches or a foot high. This box, about the size of a coffin, is strewed with straw. A piece of bread is given in the evening, and again in the morning. This establishment, which is not opened till the severe weather sets in, is complained of by thousands in London parish officers, rate-payers, officers of other charities, philanthropists, and phi- losophers because it occasions, by its lavish and extravagant and misguided hospitality, an annual emigration of the poor from all parts to London for the purpose of taking advantage of their culpable liberality ! The parish officers frighten away the timid by their manner : to those who would come into the workhouse they offer a small pittance out of it; to those who will not come in, they offer the house ; to those who have a settlement in a distant parish, and want only present relief, they offer to pass them, because it would be ruin to them to accept it. And one parish cannot be much more lenient than the rest j for if they were to relax their illiberality, all the poor of E E 2 318 ENGLISH CHARITY. other parishes would directly flock together to them. There are some few parishes near the metropolis which have for a long time been more burdened by the poor than others, be- cause they have had resident in them several wealthy and charitable individuals. What conclusions are to be drawn from these and other such facts ? Most plainly these, it will be said : that by increased libe- rality you only increase mendicity ; and that if you go on extending your bountiful sys- tem, and make that general which has been locally so injurious where it happens to have been tried, you will soon pauperise and make beggars of the whole kingdom. The conclusions which I draw from them are directly the reverse. I see no reason for supposing that these parishes, or charities, or individuals, have gone at all beyond their duty ; but I conclude, that all other places and individuals who have followed a differ- ent rule and practice have grossly failed in theirs. ITS SEVERITY. 319 What must be the condition of the poor in this country, when a penny or a piece of bread will bring people from far and near, and make their applications most inconve- niently numerous ? What must the real state of poverty be, when all kinds of shifts must be resorted to, to prevent the numbers from being overwhelming which would apply for the miserable pittance which the poor-law provides and the hospitality of an English workhouse ? What must be the state of the poor, and the measure of charity in the pro- vinces generally, when a bed of loose straw eighteen inches wide, in company with sixty or a hundred other persons lying upon the floor of the same apartment, and two pieces of bread, and this during an uncertain and limited season, will cause the poor for a hundred miles round to flock together to London ? Truly this England is a country pre-eminently charitable ! But this country is not like other coun- tries. In this country the gaining a liveli- hood is so difficult, competition is so great, 320 ENGLISH CHARITY. and the rate of remuneration is so small, it is so difficult even to obtain employment, that we must act on different principles ; the poor must be compelled by greater strictness and severity to exert themselves, and they must be starved into the necessity for strain- ing every nerve and sinew, before it becomes justifiable to give them any assistance. True enough, this country is continually increasing in its difficulties and miseries, with every increase in its riches, and so- called prosperity. But because the selfish- ness, and worldliness, and madness of the rich, dispose them to more and more rapid accumulation, to the increase of their own misery, and their own temporal and eternal ruin, is this any reason whatever why the poor should suffer the consequences for their sakes, and their duties and obligations to the poor be altered or diminished? Surely, if they have procured an advantage, as they think it, they might perceive it to be just that, at least, the poor man should not be curtailed of his former advantages for the ITS FALLACY. 321 sake of their improved circumstances, but rather that he should partake more largely and liberally of what must now be their superabundance and superfluity. But no ! though all the difficulties of living are in- creased to the poor man by the greater ac- cumulation of wealth, yet the rich, who are the cause of this, and who reap the supposed advantages, are able to call less their own, are able to spare less, whether from in- creased demands and difficulties, or increased selfishness, the moral and worldly fetters which Mammon entwines around his wor- shippers, and the nervelessness and disin- clination to shake them off with which he enchants and rivets them. Such as this is ever the curse of those who follow worldly ends and principles, and support them upon worldly reasoning. The question is, can it be wrong to give now what it was our duty to give formerly, and is a duty still in all other countries, merely because we have a greater accumula- tion of riches, and the difficulties and dis- 322 ENGLISH CHARITY. tresses of the poorer classes are greater? If so, this one curse upon the seat of Mam- mon's kingdom, this noisome sore upon the men who have his mark, is sufficient for us to notice, as comprehending the rest, with- out detailing all the necessary effects and consequences by which this judgment must be worked out. Those consequences we are suffering already, though only beginning to suffer them ; because, whether the principle be a true or false one, we are determined to act upon it. It is a principle too abominable for the adoption of any merely heathen country ; and accordingly our punishment shall be heavier than that of any other king- dom, heathen or idolatrous. What, then, ought to be done for the poor in this emergency ? Should the whole system of poor- relief be immediately changed, the laws altered, the parishes give out of their public funds to every one that applies to them, and increase their dietary to the standard of relief in Paris, and the charities open their doors and purses to every one ITS HOPELESSNESS. 323 who pleases to take the benefit of them ? A political system cannot be altered in a mo- ment, except by revolution ; though great changes for good may be effected much more rapidly than politicians would credit. If all things were changed together for the better, the new system would work well at once ; but can the Ethiopian change his skin ? While the rest of the machine remains the same, no one part can perform at a different speed, or on a different scale of duty. No one parish or place dare do its part, while the rest of the body to which it is vitally attached is governed by a different system of nerves, and nourished by a different circulation. But the public measures will not be changed for the better; it is evident that they will grow worse. If they were to be improved at all, it would be by a gradual and lingering advance, with many a regretful eye turned back upon Egypt, and many a vote by noisy acclamation for the re-erection of the golden calf. But there will be no such thing at all. The Egyptians themselves will never leave 324 ENGLISH CHARITY. Egypt, till, rising up together to follow and bring back the chosen which are essaying to escape from their dominion and contagion, they shall be swallowed up in the self-sought billows of a blood-stained sea. The parishes and public charities cannot change their system suddenly they cannot do their duty. They ought to change their system by degrees, and accommodate it, as they now do, to the general system, if it im- proves ; and if it does not, they must stretch it as far as possible in the right direction. Their bias and leaning must be towards the desirable practice ; and by the force of con- tinual example and effort they may do some- thing, either towards a general fashion and improvement, or in staying and stemming the downward stream of evil habit and prin- ciple. Public bodies dare not do their duty; but individuals ought not to be deterred by simi- lar reasons. In them it will not cause the same ill effect. The adoption of pure and perfect Christian practice by any oiie family, ITS REMEDIES. 325 or body of men, or individuals, may always be proved by anticipation to be necessarily productive of all manner of absurdities ; but in practice it is not so. God takes care to verify His own precepts ; so that in practice, however seemingly impossible, they shall al- ways work out the reward and the promise which belongs to them. And so in respect of charity : if evil would arise from a large body of Christians in one place beginning to set an example of real Christian benevolence, then God will provide that the first instances shall be distantly and evenly distributed, and that in this and other ways the fulfilment of His laws shall be justified by their success, and shall meet with the promised blessing. But real Christian practice, upon really Chris- tian motives, can never be unsuccessful. Even in public bodies, it must be justified by means and workings which, upon worldly princi- ples, we can neither anticipate nor compre- hend. But with regard to individual persons, to whom His laws are addressed more di- rectly, there can be no doubt or question. F F 326 THE DIVINE LAW, Each person must fulfil his own duty accord- ing to God's command, fearlessly and impli- citly, and there can be no doubt of the result and the success; but whether or not, suc- cessful or unsuccessful, he must implicitly perform it. To individuals, therefore, each in his own peculiar walk and his private capacity, let me particularly address myself. I shall en- deavour to remind and reassure them what are their real duties, though long obscured and forgotten through the false prevailing fashions and principles by which in the last age we have been darkened and surrounded. And I shall not much care to prove to those who are not already convinced of the hollow- ness and destructiveness of the present sys- tem, how surely the opposite course will lead to increasing happiness and honour, wealth, peace, prosperity, and strength. The word of God says, " Give to him that asketh thee ;" n (f cast thy bread upon the n I do not object, that men give too little meaning, or that they give a wrong meaning, but that they give AND HUMAN WISDOM. 327 waters." Man's wisdom says, "Give nothing without inquiry ;" " all indiscriminate alms- giving is an injury and a crime " " the greater part of the money given in charity does more harm than good ;" " the far greater number of cases are of impostors ; and of those who are really distressed, the greater part are made beggars by getting assistance they are made idle; whereas the proper way is to force them to depend on themselves, and to convince them that they have no other re- sources." One set of persons say, ec I have been so often imposed on, that I will never give any thing again.'' Another set say, " I have seen so much harm done by charity, that I believe that no charity at all would be no meaning at all to this precept. Our Saviour, at least, must have meant something by it. He must have meant, that asking ought rather to dispose us to giving than the contrary. He cannot have intended that asking should be a reason for not giving ; that we ought to refuse because a person asked ; that we should condemn a man, at once and of course, because he is a beggar. 328 THE DIVINE LAW, better than the present system." And this though the whole amount given is so very small in comparison with what it ought to be! But the word of God says, t-'KAXKLl.V 4li St. Martin's Laue. NEW PUBLICATIONS. JAMES BURNS, 17 POSTMAN STREET, PCRTMAN saOARS. THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER; lUDirto, Combining the features of the Quarterly and Monthly Periodical. PRICE EIGHTEEN PENCE. Each Number of this Magazine contains : I. Three or four articles on Theology, General Literature, or the Fine Arts (occasionally illustrated by Engravings). II. Reviews and Notices of Books. It is intended that this part of the Work shall be made as complete as possible, embracing publications in every department of literature. III. Miscellaneous Papers, Correspondence, Documents, &c. IV. Retrospect of Public Affairs. V. Ecclesiastical Intelligence; Proceedings of Societies; Ordinations, Preferments, Deaths of Clergy ; University News ; Copious Miscel- laneous Intelligence from the several Dioceses in England and Ire- land ; Scottish Church Intelligence, &c. &c. The Numbers already published contain: ARTICLES on Ancient History, Church Music, Missions in the East, Episcopal Visitations, Ecclesiastical Architecture (with Engravings), The Ancient British Church, Presbyterianism in Scotland, Invocation of Saints, the Inductive Sciences, Styles of Preaching, &c. &c. REVIEWS AND NOTICES: The Bible Cyclopaedia; Readings in Poetry; Anglo- Catholic Library; Life of Pepys; Burnet's History of his own Time; Recollections of the Lakes; Markland on Sepulchral Monu- ments; Enfield's Speaker ; The Rocky Island ; Faber's Poems ; Hewitt's Rural Life; Nicholl's Help to the Bible; Zornlin's Physical Geogra- phy ; Hints to Candidates for Orders ; Home Education ; Froissart's Tales ; Stephen on the Church of Rome ; Bp. of Chester on Christian Charily ; Bosanquet on the Romans ; Pardoe's City of the Magyar ; Sclater on the Primitive Church, &c. &c. PAPERS on the Invalidity of Dissenters' Baptisms ; the Census in Luke ch. ii. ; the Greek Article ; the word Catholic ; German Baptismal Formularies ; Memoir of Bishop Otter ; Table-Talk, &c. ECCLESIASTICAL INTELLIGENCE: Systematically arranged under the various dioceses. A POPULAR PERIODICAL FOR GENERAL READING. The Magazine appears on the 1st of each month, price 4rf., and contains a variety of articles of a useful and entertaining character, adapted to convey knowledge, combined with sound principle, to all classes of readers. It will be found useful for parochial circulation. CONTENTS op No. I. (New Edition) : Cyril Fortescue, Chap. I. Ingoldsbury, its Antiquities, &c. The Library, No. I.: Hints on Study, Choice of Books, &c. Lord Clarendon, and his Work on the Rebellion. Ancient History. Life of Brownrigge, Bp. of Exeter. Soutbgate's Tour in Mesopotamia ; Chaldean Christians. The Three Brothers; a Story. Notices of Books ; Poetry; Church Fes- tivals for January ; Miscellaneous Intelligence. CONTENTS OF No. II.: The Library, No. II. ; on the Study of Ancient History. The Life of George Bull, D.D., Bp. of St. David's. On the Danger of Dissent. Combe on the Constitution of Man. Anecdotes. Notices of Books ; Susan Carter. Sewell's Morals. Hook's Prayers for Children Riddle's Commentary. Small Books for Children. Poetry : the Sergeant who played the Friar (Sir Thomas More). Festivals for the Month. Cor- respondence. Summary of Intelligence. State of the Church in Wales. Church of England Libraries at Leeds and Nottingham. New Churches. Progress of Religious Societies. Diocesan Schools, Sec. &c. CONTENTS OF No. III.: Essay on the Progress and Prospects of Society. Cyril Fortescue, No II. The Church Societies. Biography of Izaak Walton. Notices of Books : Rome and the Early Christians ; Sclater's Original Draught of the Primitive Church; Aitchison's Truth with Boldness; Temper- ance Society; Festivals and Fasts of the Church of Kngland ; Howard's Scripture History ; &c. Poetry. Festivals. Miscellaneous Extracts. Intelligence. BURNS'S of jfiarrattbta anfc CracW, For Presents, Prizes, Village-Schools. See. Illustrated with Cuts. 1. RICHARD MORTON. A Village Tale. By the Rev. W. PRIDDEN, M.A., Vicar of Broxted. 6d. 2. The BOOK of CHARACTERS: the Minister, the King, the Bishop, the Gentleman, the Yeoman, the Merchant, &c. &c. (From FULLER.) Cloth lettered, 1*. 3. A GOD-PARENT'S GIFT. By the Rev. THOMAS CHAMBERLAIN, M.A. Cloth lettered, 1*. 4. JAMES FORD ; and other Stories. 9d. 5. CONVERSATIONS with COUSIN RACHEL. 9d. 6. DIALOGUES on the TE DEUM. 6d. 7. A MANUAL of CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE; being the Church Catechism expanded ; with an Infant Liturgy, and Scrip- ture Thoughts. By the Rev. JOHN JAMES, M. A., Rector of Rawmarsh. Sewed, 8d. ; cloth, Is. 8. WHAT WE ARE TO BELIEVE : a Practical Ex- planation of the Creed, intended chiefly for the Young. 18mo, cloth, 1*. 64. 9. CONVERSATIONS with COUSIN RACHEL. Part II. 9rf. 10. THE ROCKY ISLAND, and other PARABLES. By SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, M.A., Archdeacon of Surrey. In 18mo, with Engravings, price '2s. 6d. 11. PRASCA LOUPOULOFF: or, Filial Piety exem- plified. A true story. 6d. 12. A COMPANION to the FASTS and FESTIVALS (for the Young). 3s. 13. THE BOOK of ANECDOTES. With Frontispiece. THE MOTHER of ST. AUGUSTINE : a True Story. 18mo, 6d., or 5s. 6J. per dozen. BURNS'S 'S SoofcS, Neatly printed in 32mo, with coloured Wrappers, and Woodcuts. 1. Good and Bad Temper. 2