Objections to this mode considered. A tations to these crimes. A considerable part of these unhappy wretches will probably be found to be the offspring of such marriages, educated in workhouses where every vice is propogated, or bred up at home in filth and rags, and with an utter ignorance of every moral obligation. still greater part perhaps consists of persons who being unable for some time to get employment owing to the full supply of labor, have been urged to these extremities by their temporary wants, and having thus lost their characters, are rejected, even when their labor may be wanted, by the well-founded caution of civil society." 1 Police of Metropolis, c. xi. xii. p. 355, 370. Police of the Metropolis, c. xiii. p. 353 et seq. In so large a town as London, which must necessarily encourage a prodigious influx of strangers from the country, there must be always a great many persons out of work; and it is probable that some public institution for the relief of the casual poor, upon a plan similar to that proposed by Mr. Colquhoun (c. xiii. p. 371.) would, under very judicious management, produce more good than evil. But for this purpose it would be absolutely necessary, that if work were provided by the institution, the sum that a man could earn by it should be less than the worst paid common labor; otherwise the claimants would rapidly increase, and the funds would soon be inadequate to their object. In the institution at Hamburgh, which Objections to this mode considered. When indigence does not produce overt acts of vice, it palsies every virtue. Under the continued temptations to a breach of chastity, occasional failures may take place, and the moral sensibility in earn. appears to have been the most successful of any yet established, the nature of the work was such, that though paid above the usual price, a person could not easily earn by it more than eighteen pence a week. It was the determined principle of the managers of the institution to reduce the support which they gave, lower than what any industrious man or woman in such circumstances could (Account of the management of the poor in Hamburgh, by C. Voght, p. 18.) And it is to this principle that they attribute their success. It should be observed however, that neither the institution at Hamburgh, nor that planned by Count Rumford in Bavaria, has subsisted long enough for us to be able to pronounce on their permanent good effects. It will not admit of a doubt that institutions for the relief of the poor, on their first establishment, remove a great quantity of distress. only question is, whether, as succeeding generations arise, the increasing funds necessary for their support, and the increasing numbers that become dependent, are not greater evils than that which was to be remedied; and whether the country will not ultimately be left with as much mendicity as before, besides all the poverty and dependence accumulated in the public institutions. This seems to be nearly the case in England at present. I do not believe that we should have more beggars if we had no poor laws. The Objections to this mode considered. other respects, not be very strikingly impaired; but the continued temptations which beset hopeless poverty, and the strong sense of injustice that generally accompanies it from an ignorance of its true cause, tend so powerfully to sour the disposition, to harden the heart, and deaden the moral sense, that, generally speaking, virtue takes her flight clear away from the tainted spot, and does not often return. Even with respect to the vices which relate to the sex, marriage has been found to be by no means a complete remedy. Among the higher classes, our Doctors Commons, and the lives that many married men are know to lead, sufficiently prove this; and the same kind of vice, though not so much heard of among the lower classes of people, owing to their indifference and want of delicacy on these subjects, is probably not very much less frequent. Add to this, that squalid poverty, particularly when joined with idleness, is a state the most unfavorable to chastity that can well be conceived.The passion is as strong, or nearly so, as in other situations, and every restraint on it from personal respect, or a sense of morality is generally remov Objections to this mode considered. ed. There is a degree of squalid poverty, in which, if a girl was brought up, I should say that her being really modest at twenty was an absolute miracle. Those persons must have extraordinary minds indeed, and such as are not usually formed under similar circumstances, who can continue to respect themselves, when no other person whatever respects them. If the children thus brought up were even to marry at twenty, it is probable that they would have passed some years in vicious habits before that period. If after all, however, these arguments should ap pear insufficient; if we reprobate the idea of endeavoring to encourage the virtue of moral restraint among the poor, from a fear of producing vice; and if we think that to facilitate marriage by all possible means is a point of the first consquence to the morality and happiness of the people, let us act consistently, and before we proceed, endeavor to make ourselves acquainted with the mode by which alone we can effect our object. CHAPTER V. Of the consequences of pursuing the opposite mode. IT is an evident truth, that whatever may be the rate of increase in the means of subsistence, the increase of population must be limited by it, at least after the food has once been divided into the smallest shares that will support life. All the children born beyond what would be required to keep up the population to this level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons. It has appeared indeed, clearly in the course of this work, that in all old states the marriages and births depend principally upon the deaths, and that there is no encouragement to early unions so powerful as a great mortality. To act consistently therefore, we should facilitate, in. stead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction which we vol. ii. |