The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TIIE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

(From the Times.)
The attention of the House of Commons was un-
duly occupied last
night by the claims of the com-
pound householders. More important points for
consideration were slurred over in an elaborate dis-
play of familiarity with the incidents of rating, and
an opportunity
was afforded to the Ministry of
putting aside the true questions at issue. The
house is thus in danger of encountering the risk
Mr. Gladstone very
properly foreshadowed, of
being forced to accede to the proposal to go into
committee without the securities for the amend-
ment of the bill which are imperatively demanded.
As far, for example, as anything was said last night,
we might almost suppose that the dual vote was to
be defended. Wed() not, indeed, believe the Ministry
capable of so misunderstanding the temper of the
house and of the country as to insist on a pro-
posal which would at any stage insure the rejec-
tion of their bill, but they were able by the course
taken in discussion to defer its abandonment. Mr.
Hardy even professed a desire to have the ques-
tion argued, and if the House of Commons were a
mere debating society, we might be interested in
the array of reasons which could be marshalled
against this most invidious and irritating proposal.
The lodger question also was left almost wholly
untouched ; yet nothing can be more certain than
that without a lodger franchise the prospect of a
settlement is hopeless. The electoral returns from
which Mr. Gladstone quoted so lengthily conveyed
pying
be nugatory. The
a lesson beyond those he drew from them—that any
redaction
an of
qualification must, in
the
lodger,
the metropolitan
districts,odger alone, is the man who
d the
needs enfranchisement in London. The educated
bachelor, the frugal clerk, the hard-headed artisan,
come within this category. They arc the men
whose enfranchisement Mr. Roebuck rightly de-
clared was a principal object of Reform. Why should
not all these be enfranchised ? 111 r. Hardy faintly
suggested that they would be enfranchised as tax-
payers, but we do not understand why a simple
another qualification
open allshouldkindsb e p
t
ofut
abuse. Still less is it
easy to conceive why, on the grounds of the balance
of power, there should be any hesitation in conced-
ing a, franchise which, beyond most others, would
meet the wishes of the classes who desire the privi-
lege of voting. The nee..ssary qualification of resi-
tiAtiti tnnst always keep the number of Lodger-
voters within moderate ; they would be found
Oily- iti the largest borongh:_, i and we should not be
cligpbSed td look ttpou it as otherwise than a gain
were the nttitibet of artisan lodger-voters in a
metropolitan constituency numerous enough to ex-
ercise a direct influence on the choice of a mem-
ber. These cardinal points of the Dual Vote
and of the lodger franchise were unfortunately left
to amateur debaters and professional advocates.
Lord Amberley, indeed, " without presumption,"
wished the house " to treat the question on
broader grounds" than had been attempted, but
he charmed in vain. When the debate was ad-
journed to this evening the intention of the Go-
vernment was as obscure as ever, and mainly, as
we conceive, because the policy of the Opposition
was not clearly defined. We should be the last to
suggest any factious or indiscriminating antagonism
to the Ministerial proposals. We desire to see the
question which has agitated the country for years
settled on a firm and enduring basis. But, because
we desire this, we must insist on the necessity of de-

cision on both sides. Let us have no more time
lest in " higgling" where each is willing to give
way, but each waits for the other to make the fir,t
sign. The one party must pronounce boldly what
is escntial, the of er declare to abide by what it
will not relinquish. The Howe has another night.
before it, and we trust it will turn it to better ac-
ccount. We can cone five nothing more degrad-
ing to its character as a deliberative assembly,
nothing more prejudicial to the prospect of a settle-
ment of the Reform question, aan that it should
enter into committee not knowing its own mind,
and so leaving the issue to be the sport of chance.

THE " WESTMINSTER GAZETTE " Ov WORKHOUSE
CHARITY.—There is no country in the world where
so much is done in the way of charity as in Eng-
land. Nay, more, there are. no people so liberal
with their money for charitable objects as the
English, be they at home or abroad. Distinc-
tions of faith, and race, and blood are forgotten
when an appeal for help comes tefore them ;
and those who will vainly knock at the door of an
Italian or Sicilian magnate will find a ready re-
sponse in the heart and the purse of the British
merchant. There are hundreds of men and women
in this dear land of ours who feel and act on good
old Spencer's principle :
Good is no good, but if it be spend :
God giveth good for none other end.
Having duly acknowledged this, we are tempted
to ask how it is that in England, and especially in
our large towns, the misery is so appalling ? That
a week's unusual frost or cold drives hundreds to
their graves from sheer want of food and cloth-
ing and that the workhouse machinery, so costly
and so cumbersome, and falling so heavily on
those just removed from actual pauperism,- utterly
and palpably fails to meet the evil. The answer
may be found, we think, in the errors of our pre-
sent system, and in the view taken of poverty by
the majority of the nation. Although, in the ab-
stract, we are ready enough to allow that it is of
God's ordering, and that in Holy Writ it is ex-
pressly stated that the poor shall never cease out
of the land, yet in practice poverty is looked upon
in England very much as a crime—a consequence
of want of wits, or thrift, or prudence, and to
be dealt with accordingly. The practical opera-
tion of our. workhouse system is, in consequence,
purely penal. Go over the best,regulated " house"
in any country union. Bolts and bars, locks and
keys, divide every court,- and ward; and passage.
A chill goes through.us when the door is locked
hind us, and we find ourselves in an apartment,
spotlessly clean, it is true, as far as whitewash and
scrubbing can make it, but utterly denuded of any-
thing like warmth, or comfort, or hominess (to
coin a word which none so well as English people
understand); where, on hard benches aroundthe cold
and cheerless room, of which the windows are
generally so glazed as to prevent their seeing out
of them, are ranged a set of old men, or old
women, as the cases may be, half stupified with
the intolerable routine of their daily lives, which
a clever and popular novelist has described as
" an alternation of soap and water, picking oakum,
and water gruel," and who rise on our entrance
with the servile and forced obedience of a prisoner
in a cell, their eyes often glancing fearfully and
furtively at the master or mistress who accompanies
the unexpected visitor, and replying in a set and
stereotyped form to any question which may be
put to them. Should the attention of the official
be for a moment diverted to some other object,
an eager whispered petition for " tea " or "batty"
may come from the lips of one or other of these
automatons, instantly hushed by the consciousness
of being watched by the dread authority, whose
powers of punishment are unlimited and unknown.
And who are these men and these women ? Men
who have laboured all their lives long in tilling
the" soil which has made them so ungrateful a re-
turn ; or shopkeepers whom bad debts, or competi-
tion, or " co-operative stores," have ruined ; or
widows, who, after years, it may be, of devoted
patient love and toil, have been left to face the
world alone, and given the alternative of a pit-
tance not sufficient to keep a roof over their
heads, or " The House," that terror of their
youths ! or else, people " who have seen Vetter
days," a class of endless ramifications and suscep-
tibilities of misery unfelt by those of humbler
birth or coarser organization. Still sadder is it to
leave these wards and go to the children. The
hours of school are over ; the cane and the strap
have done their work for the day ; and the poor
little things, in their hideous workhouse livery,
stand huddled and frightened together in the
corner of a bare room ; or else in a gravelled
court, miscalled a play-ground, utterly destitute
of the smallest amusement, without even the
swinging pole of our youth or anything to make
them forget for one instant that they are " Pauper
Brats," as the poor themselves call them. And who
are these children ? The orphans of respectable
labourers, or the offspring of a sin which let none
who dwell in sheltered homes dare to condemn
too loudly—is it their fault that they came into
this hard world ? And when those children grow
older, with all sense of honest independence and
freedom, and childhood's joy crushed out of them,
what is their fate ? If they are boys apprenticed
to the worst and hardest masters, and to those
who ask the lowest premium ; for none of the
better class will take a workhouse lad. " They
are all sneaks," was said to the writer the other
day, " and good for nothing when they come out
of the house." Or if they are girls, harsh domestic
service is equally their portion, maids of " all
work," as it is too justly called, overworked and
under-fed sometimes, as in a case known to the
writer a few years since, given food only every
other day. Not two months ago, in a Wiltshire
parish, one of these poor girls drowned herself
in sheer desperation. She had told one of her
companions in misfortune "that she could bear it
no longer; that cruel as her mistres was, she would
rather die than go back to the ' House;' that she
didn't believe God could be the God of the poor,"
and so she went to her account. And sup
posing the " eligible" place for the workhouse
girl at the proper age be not found, what then ?
At fourteen she is separated from her companions
and placed in the ablebodied women's ' ward.
Do our readers know what that means ? In this
ward are all those poor creatures, hardened in vice,
who in winter are driven to seek some shelter from
the piercing cold of the streets. They are
utterly bad, reckless, and depraved, and, with the
ingenuity of devils, resolve to employ their leisure
time in perverting the pure and innocent girls or
young widows who may be thrown in their way.
The language of these women is such that re-
spectable tradesmen, employed in the premises,
have refused to work within hearing of their
words. An inquiry was set on foot by a late
eminent Cabinet Minister as to the state of
the unions in his own county on this head. The
returns were appalling. The masters and chap-
lains of the workhouses, one after the other, gave
evidence as to the frightfully demoralizing effect
of this atrocious system, whereby young girls were
literally trained in vice. They stated that in one
week after the children had gone into those wards,
their manners and dispositions seemed to change :
that they became saucy, bold, impudent, and
bad. In one or two houses efforts had been made
to check the evil by building separate wards for
known prostitutes ; and a clause in the new Poor-
law Act was proposed, making it compulsory to
erect a distinct wing or rooms for this class of
persons, on the very true and righteous plea that
as the guardians were compelled to provide an hos-
pital for physical diseases, much more was it in-
cumbent on those entrusted with the care of
public morals to keep their orphans free from the
more deadly infection of vice and its consequent
misery. Yet nothing, after all, was done; the
statesman died ; other interests engrossed the
public mind •, and the evil remains to this day, and
bears its bitter fruit year by year, filling our gaols
and penitentiaries. This is only, after all, but a
part of the system which has substituted the poli-
tical economists and the policeman for the apostle
of charity. Mind—we do not say the philanthro-
pist. With all his anxiety for the good of his
species and the improvement of the human race, he
cannot meet evils of this gigantic. nature. Chris-
tian charity alone will suffice, for it sustains its ex-
ertions by fixing its eyes on a higher object than
the misery it relieves. What is not done for
God in this matter," says a noted writer, " is done
but uncertainly as well a's scantily, and soon
wearies of the unlovely and exacting poor." It
is the similitude of Jesus which beautifies poverty
and transforms our service into one of loving de-
votion to Him as seen in His poor and suffering
members. Day by day our papers teem with
startling revelations of the cruelty, neglect, and
iniquity which goes on within those workhouse
walls. The leading journal fell foul of. the
author of " Impressions of Spain," because she
ventured on a comparison between similar insti-
tutions in that country and in England. Yet,
when our present system is universally repro-
bated by men of every shade of opinion, and
the voice of our poor is crying out to Heaven
against our so-called relief of their necessities,
would it not be worth whilc to confiider) calmly