Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 377, March 1847. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid beings which we have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery-books, of summer holidays, (fitting that age); of the promised sight, or play; of praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman before it was a child. It has learned to go to market; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs; it is knowing, acute, sharpened: it never prattles.” Such was the child. The passage from the single to the married state, which generally changes the course of woman’s life, has to her been nothing more than a brief interval of pleasure. She soon joins the bands of the busy daughters of care. So the loss of her husband has been to her but a tragedy. The last act is over; the curtain has fallen: she is now in the outer world again; she is oppressed by sadness, vague and undefinable; but the noise and bustle around her, the tumult of her own thoughts, and her continued labour, afford that alleviation which the solitary and the unemployed seek for in vain. Those who would step in and, relieve her of her toil, may be well-meaning persons; but, they are interfering in matters they do not understand. They would spend their money more beneficially, and with greater regard to the principles of Christian charity, if each would take care that those who do for him any kind of labour, receive an adequate remuneration. It may be a politico-economic law, that we buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest; and, by a sophistical process, the limits of the principle may have been enlarged, so as not only to include raw materials, but manufactured products, and the labour which we ourselves employ. But it is forgotten, that a law which expresses merely what men do, has not the universality or fixity of a law of matter, but is liable to variation from the action of moral causes. The law may be partially true, as eliminated from a study of the present age. It is an age of calculators and economists. In a moral age it would be false. It is false in the present day, when moral men have to do directly with their lower and ruder brethren. This is an individual and personal matter, and each one will find that he has enough of his own work to do in his own sphere. This widow is an applicant for parochial relief. Repeated visits, and a succession of reports, at brief intervals, have enabled the officer to present an accurate narration of facts, both with reference to her past life and her present condition. It becomes clear that this widow differs from the other, in respect that she has greater habitude for labour, and that her mind is cramped down to the hard matters of the present hour: she goes to her work in the morning, and she returns home fatigued in the evening. To-morrow’s meal is secured, and the scene of to-morrow’s labour is known. Within the narrow limits of a week is her soul penned up. It is clear, then, what the duties of the guardians are. If their wish is to check pauperism, they must attend to that which this widow’s limited capacities prevent her from doing. In her young day, reading and writing were accomplishments; but the world has jogged on a little since then, without her knowing it. Reading and writing, as one of the mechanical arts, have become indispensable to every boy and girl. The same economic reasons which lead to the inference, that a girl should be taught to darn her own stockings, or mend her own frock, would also show that a boy and girl should be taught to read and write. The spread of education is something very different from the diffusion of knowledge. So, then, the officer’s report would show whether the children are duly sent to school; their progress might also be tested. At a future period, it might appear that the girl is strong enough to enter service, and the boy fit to be apprenticed either to a trade, or to the sea. In either case, the fitness of the master or mistress is ascertained and reported. A premium or outfit is given; and the particulars of the case are duly entered in the appropriate book, according to the existing method, and the master and child visited from time to time. The widow would thus be relieved in that particular respect in which she is least qualified to help herself, and her children are saved. She would soon discover that the time occupied in waiting for relief could be more profitably employed, and she soon ceases to apply.

      The sixth class consists also of widows; but they are remarkable for idleness, intemperance, or improvidence. We know of no means of washing the Ethiop white. To this class, money-relief is the most objectionable form of relief. An allowance of bread should be given for brief periods, and given in instalments. Sometimes it may be necessary to intimate that work may be required for the value given, and at other times the order may be made. It will, however, be found that the individuals of this class are careless about every thing. If they are dealt with leniently, they take advantage of the supposed imbecility of the guardians: if they are dealt with too severely, they become familiarised with the interior of a prison; and the instant the gloomy portal of the county jail loses its terrors, they place themselves in attitude of defiance. As the inmates of workhouses, they are dangerous spies, and are regarded with awe by master and matron; as recipients of out-door relief, they are insolent and full of threats. Perhaps the best mode of dealing with these cases may be ascertained, by allowing the attention to become abstracted from the mother, and concentrated upon the children. The mother is like a wild beast, whose nature and habits cannot now be subdued; but her cubs, her little ones, may still be tamed and humanised. At this point, reference may be made to a document which has not emanated from the Poor-law Commissioners, or from any parochial board, but from the magistrates of the county of Middlesex. It appears that a committee was appointed, in April last, to “inquire into the best means of checking the growth of juvenile crime, and promoting the reformation of juvenile offenders.” At a meeting of the magistrates of Middlesex, on the 3d of December, the report of the committee was read, and “received amidst repeated cheering.” The committee recommend that a bill should be introduced to Parliament, a draught of which is given in the report. The preamble states, “that the fearful extent of juvenile depravity and crime, in the metropolitan districts, and in large and populous towns, requires general and immediate interference on the part of the legislature; that the great causes of juvenile crime and depravity appear to be ignorance, destitution, and the absence of proper parental or friendly care; and that all children above the age of seven and under the age of fifteen years, suffering from these and similar causes, require protection, to prevent their getting into bad company, acquiring idle and dissolute habits, growing up in vice, and becoming an expense and burden on the county as criminals, and that such protection should be afforded by the county.” There are fourteen clauses: the first and fifth may be quoted – “1st, That an asylum for unprotected and destitute children be founded in and for the county of Middlesex by legislative enactment, and placed under the direction and management of the justices of the peace for the county.” “5th, That unprotected and destitute children shall be deemed to include all children above seven, and under fifteen years of age, under the following circumstances: – Children driven from their homes by the bad conduct of their parents; children neglected by their parents; children who are orphans, and neglected by their friends; children who are bastards; and children who are orphans, and have no one to protect them, or to provide for them, or for whom no one does provide; children who, from their own misconduct, have no protection or provision found them; children who are idle and dissolute, and whose parents or friends cannot control their bad conduct; children who are destitute of proper food, clothing, or education, owing to the poverty of their parents or friends, but whose friends or parents do not apply for, or receive parish relief; children who are destitute of employment; and children of the class which become juvenile offenders generally.”

      It is probable that a plan of this description might have a great and beneficial effect in diminishing juvenile crime; and it is conceivable that the clauses of the bill may be so framed as to develop all the good, and avoid the evil. It is to be feared, however, that the bill is founded on partial views. The children who agree with the descriptions given in clause number five, are the offspring of those who reside in poor neighbourhoods, where the inhabitants are already paying high rates, – high in proportion to the poverty of the locality. If this be so, then every possible species of opposition, which can be offered legally or illegally, will be directed against the bill, and against its being carried into operation. The authorities of these poor and populous parishes already find it a matter of extreme difficulty to collect the rates, and are overwhelmed by the number of those poor housekeepers who apply to be “excused their rates” on the ground of poverty. All the schemes of the present day have one good point only, or it may be discovered by minute observation that СКАЧАТЬ