The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JO-URNALS,

TIMM—Tit the returning warmth and lingering bright-
ness of a " St. Luke's summer" Ws not easy to remember
that we may soon have to provide in haste and confusion
for the " wayfarers, wanderers, and foundlings" composing
the class of houseless poor." Bat in three or four weeks
the days will be vary short, the nights very long. There
may be many degrees ci frost, and other causes may send
into the 'streets the weak, ill-taught, and desultory crea-
tures that can only earn a livelihood under the most favour-
able circumstances, and with the utmost stretch of kind..
ness It shows the enormous. magnitude of the evils which
charity has to contend with, that the miserable of the
miserable, the utterly houseless, the beings without even
a partnership in misery or a home in guilt, have been
reckoned at en average [of several :thousand—as many,
that is to say, as aro considered to deserve a representative
in Parliament; If they aro so many, what must be the
numbers of those who are still privileged to cross:a thresh-
hold, and may still obtain for the night a bed to lie on ?
We have had cur share in urging upon the Legislature the
necessity of removing what has been a national scandal.
It is not a great matter comparatively, nor is it beginning
at the right end—but taking the fact as we find it, no
Government that hid an eye even to appearances could
permit thousands to lie about our streets and
open places like vermin, or molest passengers with
the cry for a night's rest. In this country such
a scandal is °veil- more tolerable than elsewhere,
for in no country are there so many institutions,
public and private, old and new, endowed or voluntary, for
the relief of the destitute. So was introduced last
session for the relief of thehouselm poor. The great diffi-
, was, that whereas- all-our institutions affect a local
character—that is, local objects, local responsibility, local
management—here was a class in its very definition with-
out locality; either they who are supposed to have foun-
dered midway in this labyrinth of rocks and shoals, or
driftlese outcasts whose life's horizon has no beginning or
end and whose course has no compass or chart ; or absolute
foundlings, that is, children who have lost themselves in
this forest of houses, and cannot retrace their way to a
home which perhaps they canna describe. Who is to give
so much as a night's lodging to these, when then they are
believed to be only the head of a column counted by literal
myriads ? At last the Metropolitan Board of Works, bear-
ing in mind the larger duties and the higher position they
are daily assuming, accepted this moderate charge. So the
Act was passed one of the last days of the session, and,
after some correspondence with the Boards of Guardians,
the Poor Law Board issued the explanatory Circular which
appeared in our yesterday's columns. Taking the Act and
the Circular together, we must consider that a great step
has been taken towards the mitigation, perhaps the extinc-
tion, of this scandal, and, possibly, to the further alle-
viation of distress though not houseless and on the
streets. Such of our readers as do not know the
metropolis so well as we aro obliged- to know it will
notice, with surprise, the very stinted modicum of
relief which it is assumed that thousands will
struggle for, and which it becomes a publio necessity to
protect from abuse or misappropriation. The regulation
ti ward," or place of reception, is to consist of two rooms,
in each of which a continuous platform bedstead, like the
raised portion of a dog-kennel, is divided by boards into
widths of not less than 27 inches, Each sleeper is to be
allowed clean straw, or cocoa fibre, in a loose tick, with a
rug; and the women and children a little more covering.
The rooms aro to be warmed and ventilated. There aro to
be bath rooms, an .1 it is expected that every person admitted
shall take the opportunity of a complete ablution. A yard
for work is to be provided for the men, wfio are to be come
pelled to do a task of work in return for their night's board
and lodging. The meal given is not to be such in quantity
or quality as to invite a repetition of the visit. The task
of work, however, is the chief repellant relied on, and there
is a special censure directed against allowing the lodger to
depart without his task in consideration of his saving the
union the cost of his breakfast. The practice has been found
too agreeable to the habits of many of the lodgers. Here
is a night's hospitality reduced to the very smallest scale.
Perhaps a man ought to have passed a few nights in our
low London lodginghouses to estimate duly the boon here
offered to the houseless. We must, however, guard against
a mistake our unofficial and unparochial readers may fall
into. All this is substantially no novelty at all.
Every parish and every union is bound to take
in the houseless, •as i; has been adjudged long
ago. But hitherto it has been the interest of parishes• and
unions to offer as little accommodation as possible and fence
it round with every possible obstr notion. This act makes it
no longer their interest to bandy the houseless from one
door to another. They are to do their duty heir old duty
—and to render an account to the Metropolitan Board of
Works, which will reimburse them for what they have done
according to law; not, of course fir money payments. The
directions of the circular appear to provide, as they should
do, for the thorough supervision and record of a system
which, it must be admitted, is liable to abuse. The class
taken in hand, as a general rule, is one naturally and habi-
tually averse from labour and discipline ; hating scrutiny,
desirous to live only from day to day, with no value for
identity, and ready to undergo, if possible, a daily trans-
formation, if it could thereby obtain a daily supply for its
wants. Superintendents and books are necessary not only
to check the system but to improve and develop it into
something better, and that, in cur opinion, is the most
valuable and the most cheerful aspect of the matter. When
we call the whole affair a work of necessity, we are aware
that is this is at once the best and the worst thing we can
say of it. What can be more necessary than that all this
population should be housed every night in some fashion
or other ? What cart come less under the bead of spon-
taneous, discriminating, delicate benevolence ? After
all, the houseless are not they who suffer the most, and
that most invite the interest of those who wish to
make almsgiving and hospitality a means to some higher
kindness and more abiding benefit. Tho poor forlorn wo-
men who struggle on for months with sickness, and want
of all things, and then simply die out by long exhaustion,
uctrionded and almost unseen, are to be sought out, as
they do not present themselves for admission to vagrant
wards to be barracked for the night, rationed in the morn-
ing, and then turned out with
.a caution against too early a
reappearance. Whole families do not suddenly take to the
streets and enter the jaws of a union workhouse. They
will first suffer everything, part with everything, and try
every expedient that may be lawfully—not always lawfully
—tried. The Poor Law Board carefully excludes the
thought of this being a measure for such extensive forms of
distress as we have had recently, by long frosts or lung
stagnation of trade. When thousands aro famished sorties
thing else must be done. They aro not " wayfarers,"
"wanderers," or "foundlings." The great mass of the
work of charity therefore is not affected by this measure.
That remains for private benevolence or the general admis
nistration of the Poor Law, It will be found in due time,
as sure as the seasons come round, that either in the thun-
der of discontent or the still small voice of silent suffering,
misery makes its ever fresh appeal to those who have
hearts and hands. There will be abundant need of them,
and they will find enough to do, even though Parliaments,
parishes, churches, and past generations have done so much
to take the work out of private hands.
HERALD.—Under the directions or with the authorisa-
tion of Earl Russell Mr Ward, her Majesty's consul general
at Ilamburgb, has been travelling through the manufac-
turing districts, with the purpose of obtaining from the
different Chambers of Commerce their advice and sugges-
tions as to the articles a reduction of the duty upon which
shOuld be urged upon the Zollverein at its next re conside-
ration of its tariff rates. Mr Ward's mission has been
greeted with considerable approval by a contemporary, who
shows in his observations upon the subject that he knows
very little more about the Zollverein and the commercial
policy of Germany than he did two years ago, when he
announced the intention of Prussia to enter into the
Zollverein. We are sorry to be obliged to regard Mr Ward's
labours as useless, if they are not positively mischievous,
In the first place, it is to be regretted that he has lent
himself to the circulation of a Very unfair and most un-
founded representation of the policy of the Prussian
Government. Mr Ward says that whilst the treaty
between France and the Zollverein was being negociated
our Government entered into negociations with Prussia
upon the same subject, and WaS met with the question,
"What have you to concede?" but that eventually the
Prussian Government promised to give England the same
I privileges which it conceded to France ; thus leaving his
hearers to draw the inference that Prussia was at first in-
disposed to put them upon the same footing as the French
producers, and on'y after some pressure yielded. Tho fact
is that the Prussian Government from the first intended
that its concessions to France should be concessions to all
other nations, and indeed employed the treaty with France
much as the Emperor used his treaty with England—as an
instrument to break down the system of prohibition and pro-
tection. Several months before the treaty was signed Count
Bornstoiff, the then Foreign Minister of Prussia, in his
reply to a memorandum in which the Austrian Govern-
ment had raised objections to the treaty, declared that
the object of the Prussian Government in entering into
the treaty was to introduce into the Zollverein tho
great economical reforms which, first carried out
in England, had then, by the treaty with Fiance, been
put into practice in the t so, industrially, most wealthy
nations of Western Europe ; and ho went on to say—" We
have in our negociations with France by no means been
actuated solely by the idea of purchasing certain commercial
advantages by corresponding concessions, but by the con-
viction that important alterations of the customs tariff are
necessary in the well understood interest of the Zollverein,
itself, and therefore without any reference to equivalents."
The Prussian Ministry never thought for one instant of
denying England the advantages of whatever reductions it
might make in the tariff, and the Prussian people would