The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-14 00:00:00

WORK HOUSE REGULATIONS.

Every age has its panics. At one time the Turk,
then the Emperor, then the Pope, then despotism,
then the Radicals, have occupied the attention of all
who had something to lose, and leisure to be alarmed.
A few years back the cry was, that every article of
food was adulterated; and nobody could be sure it was
bread he was eating, unless be had sown, reaped,
thrashei, ground, sifted, kneaded, baked, and sliced
the material with his: own hands, or, as a second
best course, by the hands of a confidential servant
interested in his preservation. The cholera frightened
us all once ; comets now and then ; the new tariff
spread considerable consternation in some quarters;
mad dogs are always and everywhere terrible; the
slow westward progress of white ants, and the oc-
casional visit of a real oriental locust, have in their
turn considerably affected the more cautious and
provident part of mankind. But what do our readers
suppose is the last new bugbear ? A very terrible
one, to judge from the universal horror it has excited.
All parties, and almost all classes, both sexes and all
ages, agree in the most dreadful apprehensions. The
most alarming circumstance of the new enemy is, that
it has been amongst us from time immemorial, and is
impossible to be quite eradicated. The baneful charac-
ter of its operations has only just now been discovered.
Reader—prepare your nerves. The new enemy of
mankind is Charity.
By the light of the economists it is discovered that
charity, notwithstanding her angel robes, her gentle-
ness and smiles, is the most insidious and deadly of
monsters. Her charms are meretricious, her sem-
blance a disguise, her name a misnomer, and her com-
mission a forgery. Proteus as she is, it is hard to say
in which of her many forms she is the worst. Some-
times she presents herself in the shape of a fair young
lady, carrying a basket of provisions. Don't kiss—
don't shake hands—don't speak, but stop your mouth,
nose, and ears, and run for your life. She is more
terrible than the old hag who carries the plague to
Aleppo or Bagdad, at sight of whom the whole popu-
lation shut their windows and doors, and sit in speech-
less affright. If you have interchanged the smallest
civility with the harpy, a consuming canker will con-
taminate your substance and your store. Sometimes
the wretch assumes a dingier character, and goes
about with a cart distributing half-hundreds of coals.
Fatal incendiary. The hearth her coals have once
lighted, will never again know an honest combustion.
Sometimes she presides at a caldron, and distributes
soup to besotted crowds, who little think they are
gulping down dog's-meat and dependence, brick-
dust and bondage. Sometimes she carries bags of
clothing infected with future nakedness. Sometimes
she takes the attributes of Lucina, and delivers
paupers of paupers ; whereas it is the midwives of
Egypt we want just now. Sometimes she carries a me-
dicine-chest, and glories to lengthen the days of idle-
ness. ...sometimes she enrols a crowd of rustics in a
penny club. Wretched beings! Their names once down
in that black list, they never will be their own men
again. Sometimes she harbours old men and women,
widows and orphans, the sick and destitute, in
lazar-houses, whose very sight spreads an epidemic
of age and infancy, widowhood, sickness, and destitu-
tion. Sometimes—direful invention of these latter
days—she invades mother earth herself, and scars
her fair face with leprous allotments. But there are
no limits to her destructive ingenuity. The charla-
tan wife readily accommodates herself to every want
and weakness of man. Not a cry can be uttered but
she presents hersents herself with some one of her
nefarious devices. To crown all, she augments the
curse of death by burying the dead, and thus making
the grave itself a school of improvidence.
Nothing can exceed the universality of the horror
which these newly discovered atrocities of charity
have excited. Quiet old gentlemen, not hitherto
supposed to trouble themselves very deeply for the
welfare of society, are now loud-tongued alarmists,
on the dangers of benevolence. Old ladies, who
hated a paradox as much as a burglar, and would
almost rather have their houses•broken into than their
reasons taken by surprise, zealously propound the sin
of giving. At the weekly meeting of district visi-
tors, the new curate, or the old incumbent (it matters
not which), is sure to open his address to his fair co-
adjutors—" Dear sisters, the great secret of charity
is to keep your money in your own pocket. There-
fore pray don't let's hear of funds. Depend upon it
they are quite unnecessary for the purposes of rm en-
lightened
charity." On this point the greatest bigots
are liberal, and the liberals are must cei tainly
bigoted. Men who hate the whole theory of political
economy with a hatred unspeakable, and consider it
a most utter and iniquitous delusion, will yet reserve
one clause. The one jewel in this toad's eye is the
rule of not giving except for an exact equivalent. As
we kill a whale for its blubber, a beaver for its fur,
a castor for its oil, and the eider duck for its down,
throwing away all the rest, so are there thousands
who extract from political economy the one precious
virtue of capital for capital, and send all the rest to
the dogs, or to any other residuary legatee of super-
fluous remainders that may happen to occur to them.
The application of this science is a great experiment,
so they will only consent to try it on a cheap ma-
terial—namely, the poor. To take care of oneself is
now the first duty of man. He is the greatest public
benefactor who gets on the fastest. Country gentle-
men, for conscience sake, suffer the labourers on
their property to starve, or be turned out of doors,
or sent to the union, and feel themselves to be
martyrs all the while. Their daughters, who two or
three years ago were setting up for so many Sisters
of Mercy, now sit quietly at home, and read Miss
Martineau.
For ourselves, who continue in the old tack, the
world is so turned about us, that we hardly know
our bearings. Not a day passes but we receive ex-
postulations at the novel and revolutionary character
of doctrines which we should have thought, if any-
thing, were rather too stale for zealous propagation in
these days. It seems that not giving is now become
a catholic verity, and we who still cleave to the old
poor-law, and other beggarly elements, are now the
heretics and innovators.
How far the doctrines of the economists are cal-
culated to supersede the offices of charity, and make
a whole nation prosperous and happy, supposing them
to be thoroughly carried out, is a question so utterly
abstract and conjectural, that we may be excused
from entering into it. They cannot be carried out in
our very mixed state of society, and with the multi-
tude of interests and preiudices arrayed against them.
We have no more immediate prospect of seeing the
whole creed of the economist adopted by the nation,
and producing its glorious millenium, than we have of
hearing the music of the spheres, or Robert Owen's
more rectangular harmonies.. Consider the state of
things which the economist supposes—all the elements
of society divested of their present stiff and formal
character, and melted to perfect fluidity; labour and
capital finding their level as quickly as wind and
water; every five shillings and every five hours flow-
ing towards the greater demand as naturally as the
surrounding water fills the vacuum you make by
drawing a bucket out of the river. The labourer, in
this theory, is ready, both by education and circum-
stances, to scent out and pursue an additional 6d. a
week as far and as instantly as a vulture its prey, or
a capitalist one-quarter per cent. more than he gets
now on equal security. Land, in this theory, is
nothing whatever but an investment, with no other
use, value, opinion, or fancy connected with it, than
shares in a dock or a railroad. None of these con-
ditions at present hold. Our customs and institutions
are stiff and rigid, and so they are likely to remain
for ages. We do then protest very strongly against
working at once, with all its purity and severity,
against the poor man, against even the aged, the
orphan, the sick, and the unfortunate, a system the
benefits of which they of this generation are certain
never to receive. The economist turns round the
wheel, and sets his machine in motion. " Don't you
see labour flowing towards that capital, and capital
meeting that redundaace of labour, and all those other
beautiful and profitable combinations ?" If he could
put the British isles, with all their living and dead
stock, into his machine. doubtless he would be able to
master the results. Unfortunately, it is a concrete,
actual, solid reality we have to deal with. We must
legislate on facts and for facts.
The economists are glad of any friend, however in-
consistent. Ten years ago they made an unholy
alliance with the squirearchy to carry the New Poor-
law, though the two parties have really almost as
little community of feeling as Turks and Christians.
Nor are they at all anxious to see their system ad-
vance as a whole. Any part will do. Hence their
cruelty. Under their suggestions the poor man has
been stripped of his existing protection, without se-
curing for him the theoretical substitute. We have
taken from him an ancient vested right which to him
was hard money, and given him instead a promissory
note payable to the n•th generation of his children.

At the last meeting of the bench of magistrates at
Kingston, seven young men were charged with mis-
behaviour in the Kingston workhouse, and refusing
to perform the work allotted to them, according to
the regulations of the establishment, as casual paupers.
It appeared that on the previous day the defendants
went in a body to the house of the relieving-officer,
and stated they were destitute, and demanded relief,
upon which he gave them an order of admission to
the workhouse. They were there required, before
any food was given to them, to break a certain num-
ber of stones, which they one and all positively re-
fused to do, upon which they were turned out of the
house, without any kind of food or refreshment being
given to them. They then, it appeared, went back to
the house of the relieving-officer, and again demanded
relief, and they were instantly taken into custody,
and conveyed by the police before Mr. Row, the
Mayor of Kingston. They there excused themselves
by saying that they were faint and weak and wanted
food, and they did not think that the people at the
workhouse had any right to set them to work
before they gave them food. The mayor recom-
' mended that the men should be admitted into
the workhouse, and that food and shelter
should be given them for the night, upon the under-
standing that they should do double the allowance of
work the next morning. This was accordingly done,
but in the morning the men again refused to work,
and they were in consequence given into custody a
second time, and brought before Captain Roberts and
Mr. Williams, the presiding magistrates at the county
bench. The defendants conducted themselves in a
very impudent manner, and insisted that they had a
right to have food, and that nobody had a right to
I compel them to work in the workhouse.
The MAGISTRATES said that there appeared to be a
determination among persons of the defendants' class
to set the workhouse rules at defiance, but they might
rely upon it they would find the law too strong for them.
They were then sentenced to fourteen days' impri-
sonment in the House of Correction. The defendants
were then removed, laughing at the proposed punish-
ment, and declaring that they should be as well off in
gaol as in the union workhouse.