compassion; for we are acquainted with the melancholy constitution of the lower world. We devise plans for the alleviation of sufferings over which it is unwise to weep, because it is idle; and with composure and complacency we leave them beneficently to effect our benignant purposes by means that partake of our own prudence. We do so on many occasions and having infused the spirit of charity into our scheme, we allow it to work. Why may not a poor's law, providing for the helpless whose faces we never saw, be of this gracious kind? Our contributions to a public fund do not cease surely to be charitable, because our monies are not given out of our own hand to the same poor persons whom otherwise we should have directly relieved; nor is our warm benevolence necessarily transmuted into cold justice by being united on principle with that of our brethren, and the sum distributed upon system to the poor. It seems to us a strange thing to say that under such a humane law as this, "compassion may be dispensed with as a superfluous part of the human constitution." For out of that very compassion has arisen the law, and to that very compassion that law makes a perpetual but not importunate appeal. In that fund the charities of the nation are consolidated-and the hearts of the humane are at rest. The law was not imposed upon the people-they, through the wisdom of their wisest, sought it for themselves-nor, when left to their own feelings and their own judgments, have the people ever been impatient of the burden. Charities there will always be left entirely free to all men-but they will not be neglected because they are comparatively few. Should they sometimes be neglected, there is a great comfort in the knowledge that provision has been made for millions; and with the law it is rare indeed that any wretch sinks down in inanition and dies.' 'A thing of law" may also be "a thing of love." For example-marriage. It is surely not true that "Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies." we can imagine no illustration more serious and more to the point. If mutual affection between a young man and a young woman, "in that distinct province of human affairs, where the fine sensibility of the heart has met with its appropriate object," be cemented by marriage, then love and law are congenial, and so may they be when leagued to lighten the distresses of others, by "ministration of relief." What, asks Mr Sadler, do the poor's laws form “but a great National Club, or, as our Saxon ancestors would have denominated it, a Guild, to which all that are qualified contribute in behalf of the distressed members ?" We do then most cordially go along with Mr Davison in the following beautiful passage, of which the sentiments run directly counter to those of the Bishop of Landaff and Dr Chalmers; and perhaps they will find favour in the eyes of many who may be less disposed to be persuaded by any thing we can say. "The humanity which it was designed by the original text of the main statute upon this subject, to infuse into the law of the land, is a memorial of English feeling, which has a right to be kept inviolate; and its just praise will be better understood, when it comes to be purified from the mistake, which either a careless abusive usage, or an unpractised and inexperienced policy in the extent of its first enactment, may have combined with it. It is the page of many in a book, which has to deal much, of necessity, in severer things; and there is a spirit of kindness in it, particularly fitted to recommend the whole authority of law, as a system framed for the well-being of its subjects. I would therefore as soon see the best clause of Magna Charta erased from the volume of our liberties, as this primary authentic text of human legislation from our statute-book. And if, in the course of a remote time, the establishments of liberty and of humanity which we now possess are to leave us, and the spirit of them to be carried to other lands, I trust this one record of them will The illustration may seem scarcely serious enough for the occasion. But survive, and that charity, by law, will be a fragment of English history, to be preserved wherever the succession of our constitution or religion shall go." Yes-charity by law. Call it not on that account-in the common sense of the term-compulsory. Let us remember Wordsworth's noble lines to Duty. the humanity of their opinions. But it is not so. Nine out of ten of them, if not compelled to do it, would give nothing to the poor. They are not the persons who would play the part painted in that captivating picture. He is a kind-hearted man; but his disciples are in general scrubs. You see that in the scurvy shabbiness of their sneaking sentences which it sickens one's stomach to read aloud, and sends over an audience one universal scunner. Mr Malthus quotes with high admiration a passage from Townsend, than which nothing can be imagined more unjust. "Nothing in nature can be more disgusting than a parish pay-table, attendant upon which, in the same objects of misery, are too often found combined snuff, gin, rags, vermin, insolence, and abusive language; nor in nature can any thing be more beautiful than the mild complacency of benevolence, hastening to the humble cottage to relieve the wants of industry and virtue, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to soothe the sorrows of the widow with her tender orphans; nothing can be more pleasing, unless it be their sparkling eyes, their bursting tears, and their uplifted hands, the artless expressions of unfeigned gratitude for unexpected favours." This is somewhat too sentimental and in any other writer but a Po litical Economist, such a style would meet with little admiration. Snuff is not disgusting to Mr Coleridge or Christopher North; and so insignificant a pleasure might be tolerated even to a pauper. Rags are often more a misfortune than a sin-and so are vermin. Gin, and insolence, and abusive language, admit of no defence; and too common they are at such a table. Yet with proper management they need not be there; and of such a table, under proper management, ought here to have been the picture. For how pretty the interior of that contrasted cottage, and how attractive its inmates! No snuff-no rags-no vermin. Yet in many thousand cottages, had poor's laws never been in England, would all such nauseous nuisances have been plentifully found. As for Scotland—let the good Christians-male and female-who pay charitable visits to the poor in the "Thou who art LIBERTY AND LAW!" The feeling is still free. It is succinct, not shackled-and fitter for service. Without fear of omission or negligence, charity surveys her domain. She has a seat, and a sceptre, and subjects-and her power is stable. Christianity itself is part of the law-yet is its spirit free as the breath of heaven. Benevolence and Justice thus go hand in hand. The humane do not feel that their contributions are less voluntary, because given according to enlightened regulation; the callous have not the face openly to complain, and become reconciled to giving, which, if not under such voluntary control, they would evade; and the miser's self, with heart even more withered than his hand, he indeed is forced to contribute his mite to the relief of those necessities, which others, being yet human, painfully endure, but which in him are a source of unnatural and diseased enjoyment. Mr Malthus, an elegant and eloquent writer, contrasts strongly with the "forced charity" of poor's laws, which, according to his views, leaves no satisfactory impression on the mind, and cannot, therefore, have any very beneficial effect on the heart and affections, that " voluntary charity, which makes itself acquainted with the objects which it relieves, which seems to feel, and to be proud of the bond that unites the rich with the poor, which enters into their houses, informs itself of their habits and dispositions, checks the hopes of clamorous and obtrusive poverty, with no other recommendations but rags, and encourages with adequate relief the silent and retiring sufferer, labouring under unmerited difficulties." We say, "Peace be to such, and to their slumbers peace." Thousands and tens of thousands of such truly Christian spirits are there this day in England. The picture is beautiful, and it is true. Nor do they who act thus grudge the poor's rates. Would too that all who do pretend to follow Mr Malthus, were convinced like him of auld town of Edinburgh, say what they see and smell in many of those abodes of wretchedness and sin. Snuff, tobacco, rags, vermin, gin, insolence, and language worse than abusive-enough and to spare. Heaven forbid we should even seem to say a single syllable in disparagement of private charities! But let us not set the "disgusting" against the "beautiful." "Twould be easy to do so with far more powerful effect than Mr Townsend. 'Tis a false and foolish way altogether of treating so sad a subject as misery, whether merited or unmerited; and no one has told the world so with more convincing eloquence than Dr Chalmers. Neither is it difficult to paint affecting pictures of virtuous poverty, religiously bearing its lot in unrelieved and uncomplaining privacy, and in humility, not pride, unacquainted with alms. "Verily, they shall have their reward." But let us, -" because that we have all one human heart"-beware how we load with our laudation any "custom of the country," that would cruelly impose such endurance on the virtu ous poor. A sad sight it is to the eyes of a Christian, some aged woman, who may have seen perhaps far other days, wasting away over a cup of thin tea and a mouldy crust. She is no pauper-not she indeed-and you must not insult her with your alms. Yet, had the "custom of the country," been to give her-and all like her-a claim-a right to reliefwould it not have been far better, and not less beautiful, to see her eating her loaf of Love and Law? She had not needed then to feel the blush of shame on her clayey cheek; for what she ate would have been her own as rightfully as any venison-pasty ever was theirs, while being devoured by the members of the Political Economy Club at a Gau deamus. And here we cannot do better than again quote a noble passage from Mr Sadler. "In closing these observations upon the sacred right of the poor to relief, as further confirmed by divine revelation, I must remark that this title does not rest upon the foundation of individual worthiness, nor, indeed, does personal demerit abro gate it; though such circumstances may, properly enough, be taken into due consideration in its ministration. It is placed upon a very different basis-upon human suffering, and the pleasure of God that it should be relieved. If there be one point more preeminently clear in our religion than another, it is that we are totally inhibited from making merit the sole passport to our mercy; the foundation of the modern code. Every precept touching this divine virtue instructs us to the contrary, and I defy those who hold the opposite notion to produce one in their fa vour. A feeling that has to be excited by some delicate sentimental touches, some Shandean scene, and is to be under the guardianship of worldly policy, may be the virtue of political economy; but this fancycharity has nothing in common with that disinterested, devoted, unbounded benevolence, which, as Tertullian says, is the mark and brand of Christianity. Nor must I omit to add that, agreeably to this religion, the feelings of the poor are no more to be insulted in relieving them than are their wants to be neglected. Mr Malthus may, indeed, say, that dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful;' but to save it from that disgrace, God has taken poverty under his peculiar protection, and it remains so connected, in every form of religion, throughout the earth. 'Jesus Christ' (I quote from Tillotson) chose to be a beggar, that we, for his sake might not despise the poor:' or, to use the language of another distinguished prelate, 'he seems studiously to have bent his whole endeavours to vindicate the honour of depressed humanity, to support its weakness, to countenance its wants, to ennoble its misery, and to dignify its disgrace.' 999 But have not the poor's laws degraded-destroyed the English character? Have they not extirpated all manliness and independence among the lower classes, and produced a pauper population of unprincipled reprobates and coward slaves? Have they not deadened all charity among the higher classes, in whose barren bosoms now lie benumbed and palsystricken in hopeless torpor, all those noble and generous feelings that belonged of old, as if by divine right, to the gentlemen of England? Have they not banded by antipathy, in "frowning phalanxes," the tillers and the lords of the soil, who, in mutual abhorrence, are regarded now as implacable, because natural enemies? Has not la plaie politique, la plus dévorante de l'Angleterre, ate like a cancer into the vitals of her strength? And is not poor, wasted, worn-out, debilitated, staggering, and fainting England, just about to lie down and die, like a sheep in the rot behind a stone wall, among the horrid hopping and croaking of ravens, sagacious of their quarry from afar ?" 66 So she may seem to be conditioned, in the drunken dreams of French vanity and impudence; and we remember in what horror those prating Parisian physicians and surgeons who came over to see our Cholera, held up their monkey paws at the hideous filth and poverty, and profligacy of our Town Poor-bad enough in all conscience, we allow, in too many a Sunderland. But the Cholera, though capricious, took a different view of the subject, and "made lanes through largest families" in the gay city of the Seine, in a style that established its preeminence in dirt and disease beyond all the capitals of Europe. Strange that, with a pauper population, England could subsidize the whole Continent-with armies of her own native cowards drive the Flower of the French, with the Bravest of the Brave at their head, helter-skelter through all the fastnesses of the Peninsula, and right over the Pyrenees. How came the soil of England to be cultivated as we now behold it, by the lazy and reluctant hands of slaves? To be "intersected in almost every spot by a close network of communication, by roads, canals, and railroads?" To be more glorious in the accumulation of her enormous mass of capital than ever was Babylon of old, with her hanging gardens aslope in the sunshine, and towered circumference of lofty walls, on which many chariots could be driven abreast, and then abreast gallop through her hundred gates? Who can look to the immense amount of the public and private charities of England, reaching certainly to upwards of a million a-year, and reassert that a poor's law deadens spontaneous charity ?" And how dare the Scotch so much as to utter the word "generosity," with the example of the English before their eyes? What subscription was ever set agoing for private or public purpose in Scotland, that did not, like a wounded lizard, drag its short length along, and then, suddenly stopping, turn over on its back, and die in the dust?-We are a worthy, and a rational, and no very immoral or irreligious race, but we have a better right to pride ourselves on our prudence than our benevolence, and the whole nation doth too often look like a School of Utilitarians. "Look at Scotland" is still our cry-and England does look at her often with at least as much admiration as she deserves, and sometimes-it must be so-in derision of her huge cheekand-jaw-bones, her vulgar drawl, and her insufferable habits of ratiocination, which to that noble race by nature gifted with intuitions of the loftiest truths must, in their mirthful moments, afford food for inextinguishable laughter. But we dearly love Scotland"our auld respeckit mither"—and dearly doth she love us;-so let us with Mr Sadler take a look at France. He finely says,-" When she had trampled upon the rights of property, public and private, and revelled in the spoliation-had put down her sacred institutions, and filled the land with dismay and suffering, she seized upon the sacred funds which the piety of preceding ages had accumulated in behalf of suffering humanity, and swept away the Right of the Poor." After having seized their funds, the Comité de Mendicité recommended no other mode of provision; and how is Paris at this day? Mr Sadler tells us how she is. "The 'sore' of England, if her charity must be so denominated, we know. Has, then, the political chirurgery of France removed from that country the deformity of poverty by their rescissory operation? Much is said about the pauperism in London; let us compare it with that of Paris, the focus of the fashionables, and consequently of the superfluous wealth of Europe; and then let us see to which belongs the appellation of this 'plaie la plus dévorante.' And to end all disputes on the point, I will take one of the most expensive and burdensome years England has yet experienced; since when, notwithstanding the 'absorbent' system of our modern quacks, the expenses of the poor have very considerably diminished; and if large sums did not appear on the face of the rates, which are in reality the wages of labour, the declension would appear still greater. We have particulars of the year 1813 published. In the year 1811, the metropolis contained a population of 1,009,546 souls; that number was doubtless increased in 1813, when there were 35,593 persons permanently relieved in and out of the several workhouses, and 75,310 occasionally, amounting in the whole to 110,903, and involving an expense of L.517,181. Turn we now to Paris. In the twelve arrondissements, containing in 1823 a population of 713,966 souls, the report of the Bureaux de Charité sums up as follows: 'Total des indigens secourus à domicile ou autrement, 'Population des hôpitaux et hospices, 125,500 61,500 187,000' To this appalling number must still be made many very heavy additions, such as enfans-trouvés, &c. &c. The expense of maintaining these I hold to be far the least important part of the examination. The twelve Bureaux of Charity, it appears, distributed 1,200,000 francs in money; 747,000 loaves of four pounds weight each; 270,000 pounds of meat; 19,000 ells of cloth; 7000 pairs of sabots, 1500 coverlets, &c. But in the report from which I am quoting, it is added, that these bureaux form a part only of the public benevolent institutions of Paris; then follows an account of the various establishments, the numbers received into which, independently of schools, amounts to 75,200; most of these, I presume, are included in the 61,500, as reported to be in the hôpitaux and hospices. The report of the Consul général des Hôpitaux (année 1823) states, that the relief afforded to the indigent population of the capital, by his administration, amounted to 3,300,000 francs, of which the foundling hospitals absorbed a third. As to the private charities distributed, the article says, on ne peut savoir le montant.' But the conclusion of this important report must not be omitted; and I call the particular attention of those to it who are so loud in their admiration of the proper and judicious conduct of the French committee de mendicité, in rejecting the English plaie la plus dévorante. It runs thus: "It is painful to terminate this enumeration of the relief given to the indigent of the capital, by the observation, that her streets, her quays, and all her public places, are filled with mendicants!' "These are distressing statements, and there is, alas! no room to hope they are exaggerations; they receive a melancholy confirmation by the sta tistics of mortality. One-third of the dead of Paris are buried at the public expense!" The statement needs no confirmation- but see Dupin's Secours Publiques, and Degerando's Visiteur du Pauvre; and you will be told, that "in the country, in the dead season, want and misery abound, and there are no means of relief!" The wisdom of the gentlemen, then, whom Mr Malthus eulogizes so highly, is therefore manifested, says Mr Sadler, "in the vast expense which is now entailed upon the Government, leaving the country still very inadequately relieved, and swarming from one end to the other with mendicants." Mr Sadler then quotes a great number of authorities in proof that mendicancy is the alternative of having no poor's laws-not in France alone-but all over the South of Europe. No expense, however great, no establishment, however magnificent, seem to compensate the want of a regularly organized system of public relief for the poor. He then turns to the Netherlands; and finds that in a population of 5,721,724, (Official Report made to the States-General, 1823,) there were but about two thousand mendicants, but that the number of those who were at the "charge publique," and whom we should disdainfully call paupers, exclusively, both of the "atteliers de charité," whom we should certainly class with them, and of those who receive education at the public expense, was 682,185, or near an eighth-part of the entire |