The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-10 00:00:00

of these outcasts from fortune and friends, the bet-
ter it will be for the diffusion of the first
principles of Christianity and the welfare
of the community at large. There are many
reasons which might be furnished for the prevalence
of this practice of workhouse visiting, and besides
worldly considerations of benefiting the poor and
ameliorating the social condition of the country, the
best influences of human nature must surely plead
for those who have been placed in so lamentable a
position. It is an awful thing to reflect upon that
the workhouse should be the receptacle of so tinny.
There are hundreds now pining in its confines whom
one thcught as little that they should ever enter its
precincts as some of the effluent and some of their
visitors. It is not always easy to foretell to what
straits a person may be reduced through the thou•
sand ills to which flesh is heir, and it is dealing out
a very hard measure to say, that all who become
paupers forfeit their claim on the friendly feelings
of the :community, and must not expect to share
more than the scanty portion allotted to them. For
too many, alas, all assistance is useless; the passage
to the grave may be smoother, and that is all; they
have entered upon a dwelling which must henceforth
be their home until they are called upon to enter
the common home of our raoe. There are hundreds,
however, for whom a timely aid would do much,
and many others would be cheered on the dark
road by acts of kindness and testimonies of
sympathy. It would be a wiser, kinder, and
more Christian course to regard this large
array of paupers as a part of the great family of
mankind, who are dependent, in a great measure,
upon the kindness and attention of their more pros-
perous brethren for the comforts they can enjoy in
their sad state of privation. As a writer in this
periodical truly remarks, " The harvest is great but
the labourers are few." It may surprise some of

those who do not attend to such matters very parti-
cularly to learn that there are as many as seventy

thousand recipients for outdoor relief at one time,
and that the "annual number essisted by the poor
. rates is calculated at two hundred thousand." Surely
such facts speak volumes as to the importance of
this subject, and it is essentially one that calls for
attention and regard. There can be no greater
mistake made than to shut out those driven by hard
necessity from all intercourse with the better and
more elevated of their fellow-being. They become
hardened in iniquity and lost in corruption, and
when they sink into those depths who shall say
where the blame rests, and by what limits it may
be bounded ? Have not the wealthy, the influen-
tial, and the powerful great responsibilities
resting upon them, and do not the tenets of
their religion inform them that they will have
to render one day an account of their steward-
ship. There must have been something very
faulty in the structure of that society which
shut out the suffering and sorrowful from all chance
of alleviation ;and prospects of solace, and made
poverty an unpardonable crime. It is well that a
better and truer spirit is gaining ground among
us, and there is this satisfaction in the benevolent
efforts now so strenuously made by the Workhouse
Visiting Society, that their work cannot change
with the convulsions of politics and the current of
shifting events. The poor shall never cease oat of
the land. We are all well acquainted with this
fact, and it should quicken our efforts and urge on
our enterprise to mitigate the evils and lighten the
burdens of their crooked lot. It is very satisfactory
to find that so much can be done to benefit the
condition of the inmates of workhouses, and it is
doubly gratifying to reflect that the beginning is
always the hardest part of such undertakings.
There is no reason to doubt or to despair of great
improveminta taking place in e few years in thiF,
important work, and it will be a blessed day f.dr the
distressed when all the workhouses of ,be metro.
-
polis are open to visitors, instead of' little more than
one-third as at present. To Ireip these who cannot
help themselves is a praf:deworthy endeavour, and
it is also a grateful tr.,;h: to give the needful chance
the desired opr„ortunity to the struggling who,
without the friend in need, may sink into a hope-
less state 0 despondency.