The Sun. — 1844-11-15 (London, England)

STAN LARD.—There is a growing disposition on the part of certain pseudo-philanthropists to represent the higher classes of society as more insensible to the condition of the poor than they were wont to -be in, what young Englanders are pleased to entitle, the "good old times." Every casualty to the poor that may happen to be recorded in the newspapers, is seized upon by these modern philosophers, as a fresh illustration of the correctness of their theory. One or more suicides have recently occurred in the humblest walks of life, arising, it is said, from extreme destitution, and these catastrophes are referred to, ad nauseant, asinstructive evidence of the insensibility of the rich to the condition of the poor. No inference can be less _warranted. The columns of the daily press must have convinced all readers of newspapers of the fact, that no genuine case of distress is ever recorded in their columns which does not command instant and liberal relief. In the vast aggregate of human misery which is to be found in large towns, the most distressing cases of poverty and destitution are often those which are most carefully concealed from public observation ; and men of wealth, however benevolent, most of whom are liberal contributors to public charitable institutions, have often neither the leisure nor means of hunting out such cases. We can affirm, however. with the utmost confidence, that there is no. nation on the face of the earth in which more of active charity is to be found than in England, nor any city whatever which exhibits so large an amount of sympathy for the sufferings of our fellow-creatures, whether they have arisen from penury or disease, than this same much-reviled City of London. Persons whose knowledge of the extent of public sympathy is derived from the columns of some of our Contemporaries, must have long ago inferred, that there is in England, and in London in particular, a most unchristian disregard of the feelings and comforts of the humbler classes. Yet is there hardly a day in which meetings of its busiest inhabisants, of the higher and middle orders, are not convened for the purpose of forming permanent institutions for the r!lief of sufferers of all denominations. There is ins London alone, and we challenge contradiction to the fact, more money collected for the relief of the distressed in one year, than is contributed for any similar objects in any other city in the world. There is hardly a disease which has not given rise to some valuable public institution, where the poor, could they divest themselves of the prejudice which, unhappily, influences them -'a many subjects, may have the benefit of greater skull and more unceasing attention than can readily be obtained by the wealthiest member of the Community at home ; the combination of skill usually atforded gratuitously in a public institution, and the Ligid system of attendance which is provided, beings greatly beyong the advantages which any private esia.bllsllment of moderate extent could by any possibility supply. Yet one of the most prevalent " . rose " of the day is the prejudice arising fissna ignorance, which exists amongst the destitute Poor;, ins this such establishments. • More than one suicide v s, er • ulgar this class of society have recently been recorded by, the daily newspapers, which profess to have been occasioned by destitution ; the parties preferring rather to My in the face of their Maker, ralser than avail themselves of the relief which Might have been afforded them in an union workhouse. Nor ought it to surprise any one, that the exacta" rated accounts of such places of refuge, which havtP been repeatedly supplied by an influential portion of the: daily press, should have so- wrought on minds depressed and weakened by painful personal privation.. We are no admirers of union workhouses, and arelittle disposed to eulogise the New Poor-law Bill, even-. in its present improved and modified form; but weare quite satisfied that but for the factiously exaggerated accounts of the treatment of the pee! under that law, which have appeared in a contemporary ,iournal, in w hick the union workhouse has been typified by Dante's Hell, and its executive represented as so many it incarnate fiends, no such prejudices against as thedistressing casualties to which our attention has. been directed would seem to indicate, could have existed. The conduct of a few persons cams( cted with the administration of the New Poo r-law,—conduct which, in the particular instances, it is •impossible to reprobate too severely, has furnished an excuse for stigmatizing the whole of its executive in terms calculated to excite the deepest and most painful prejudice against. it; and thus the poor are contest to suffer• the most heart-rending privations rather than avail themselves of relief from such a source; nay, in instances, . some they have, we are told, committed suicide rather than accept of the relief it would afford them._ These distressing cases have been reported insoa daily print Int the most prominent. manner, as .. r. many, fresh proofs of . the . frightful unpopularity ,o.t- the, New Poor-law Bill ; whereas they are more likely tap have resulted from the exaggerated accounts which have appeared from time to time in its columns of the alleged, sufferings of the poor in union workouses, and its re-i peated and unfounded assertion that a few examples oe the misconduct of the authorities in such receptacles are but the types of the entire system.