The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-03-10 00:00:00

aid() liberals of iit

&)C

yr, Virg

emnlves, as of late

they have done, in the Work of
lander, misrepresentation, and mockery of the suffer-
ngs of their fellow-countrymen in the West Indies,
nay run to wallow in the abomination of slavery—
nay run to smear themselves in the sweets which have
drops with the blood of the suffering negro : we shall
not follow them. The flimsy reasoning with which
avarice strives to hide its past hypocrisy from tmankind
shall not blind us. We ask, for " our bond," for
national consistency, and, above all, honesty, with
respect to this question!

Our "Liberal" contemporaries have seized upon
the fact of another insubordination at the Workhouse
having been brought before the police magistrate, to
insinuate against the Select Vestry the same charges of
criminal indifference, and neglect in the performance

of their arduous duties, with which, some weeks ago,

the public was dosed, usqzte ad nauseam.. Notwith-
standing the promptitude with which those gentlemen
have set about the alterations of discipline and classifi-

cation, recommended by the poor-law authorities, the
circumstance that the additional means adopted for the

purpose of repressing disorder have proved still below
the requirements of the case, is attempted, by the
Journal of Saturday, to be perverted into evidence that
they have wantonly and wickedly neglected to take any

precautions whatever to abate irregularities, which none
can regret should exist more deeply than the Select
Vestrymen themselves. We do not, however, think it
worth our while to comment upon attacks, which every

candid man in the community knows to be unjustifi-
able. 'We know the animus with which they are

made, and the purpose which they are intended to
serve; and, what is more, the public mind has arrived
at the same perceptions. Let the Jotirnal and the
Times therefore bray their loudest. The identity of

their " sweet voices " will not be mistaken !

There is something, however, in these continual
disturbances, and especially in that which was the
subject of examination on Friday, which, if our brother
journalists would divest their minds of the mists of
_ . .

political partizanship, and unworthy personal spite, is
well calculated to excite their serious attention to the
working of the law itself, under which scenes so dis-

graceful to a civilised state of society can occur. The

she-ruffians brought before Mr. Rushton were shewn
to have displayed a ferocity which few, even of the
brute creation, could have equalled. Girls, from IS to
20, were proved to have scaled walls two and twenty

feet high !—crept through the most disgusting localities,
and when attempted to be restrained, shewn evidence
of a disposition the most savage and brutal,—and this
in the pursuit of crime, and in the open light of day I
Former examinations into the state of things amongst
the inmates of our Workhouse, have brought to light
the fact that many of these wretched beings—these un-
sexed girls and women—have passed their whole lives
within its walls, and shew no disposition for any other
kind of existence than that of the virtual slavery in
which they were, held. And yet this is the boasted
" Workhouse Test" which was to rid us of pauperism,
and work a moral revolution in the condition of our
labouring poor! These debased and reckless women
are the fruits of its application !
Can any unprejudiced mind affect a doubt that, as
regards such demoralized beings, such a " test" is the
most fallacious possible ? These girls and women are
idle, vicious, and disorderly. They are also destitute;
and, as the condition of their receiving relief, we give
them good food, warm clothing, fire, and shelter, whilst,
at the same time; we have the conviction before us
that their minds are of that degraded order, and their
sense of shame so totally gone, that animal comforts
are all which they require ! We required previouslY
no test of their destitution—no test of their unwilling-
ness to pursue the paths of industry and honesty for
subsistence. These were perfectly ascertained cir-
cumstances, or are, at the least, fully ascertained now.
And yet we persist in applying to them a mode of
treatment which we 'acknowledge to be perfectly in-
efficacious for the purpose for which it was designed!
And what, we ask, is the evident result of a perse-
verence in such a system ? Why to establish in every
workhouse a source or moral pollution by which the
unfortunate and deserving poor must inevitably be
contaminated, or horrified, from the first moment of
their entrance within the walls of a union workhouse'
Admit that this evil can be mitlgaceil, so far as regards
its effects upon the condition and morals of the de'
serving poor, by strict classification ; but by how much
will such classification aggravate the depravity of the
vicious inmates, shut out as they will be from the
possible good effect of communication with the deserv-
ing and virtuous, and condemned to a species of moral
perdition ? No classification, however -strict, can en-
tirely abate the evils which must result from the
wcample of such wretched beings upon the young
amongst our unfortunate poor ; and the preservation
of a perpetual contact amongst the vicious themselves
—that closing of the door to all improvement in their
condition, which must be the result of a condemnation
of any number of human beings to fester in crime in
one revolting mass—is an alteration which is perfectly
horrible to contemplate.

Is it too much, then, to ask now whether—at least
in such cases as the one before us—the application Of
the workhouse test, as that by which to regulate the
propriety of giving relief from the poor-rate, is tft
open to exception ? For what is its operation ? The
test in question deters the virtuous and worthy among
the poor—drives thousands to perish by famine an
suicide—hurries thousands into the paths of vice,
.iI
it-
self, which is almost preferable to contemplates f
comparison with the sure ultimate contamination °,
the workhouse ; whilst able-bodied criminals, debased
below the level of the animal world, embrace with
eagerness the animal comforts which the workbotre
affords, and, it is notorious, would unwillingly quit its
s
walls to pursue a life of industry, however certain 1`
rewards.

The questions may indeed be put to us—what re;
medy would we apply ? Would we turn loose leg,
society these demoralised females ? It is not, 13°1
ever, incumbent upon us to answer. If the w°1.1,,
house test is a failurr', it is for the philosophers wllO
uprooted the ancient law of the land, and gave us tho
tbe
new-fangled thing in its stead, to prescribe for
disease which they have created. This much we vebe
tore to predict for their consolation. If that tes
indiscriminately applied for much longer, every sv:trbe
house in the land must be, in the strictest sense o' ne
word and in its regulations, A PRISON. Our hurriao
forefathers designed such buildings only for As-'l4lj.

FOR THE lIOUSELESS AND DISTRESSED !