case, after it has been visited and reported upon by the officer six several times, in the same way, and for the same reasons as class number one, must be carried forward in the chairman’s Diary to that board day in the summer months which has been appropriated for the class. This class would undergo revision twice in the year. The reports of the officer would especially refer to the circumstances of relations, and state the assistance which they do or are able to render. All this would become matter of routine.
The third class differs from the two former, in respect that the individuals who compose it are not aged, but are likely to be permanent burdens on parishes, from malformation of brain, or a disturbance in the sensuous system. They are idiotic, fatuous, blind, deaf or lame, or permanently disabled by chronic disease. It has been said that the workhouse is the best place for such persons; and in some localities it may be so. But there are places, where benevolent expedients have been adopted, which have saved these unfortunates from that stagnation of soul approaching melancholia, to which they would have been otherwise doomed. They may now hold converse in books. They are taught trades. They receive assistance which enables them to enter fields of competition with their more perfectly organised fellows. But this aid is often-times withheld, or it is insufficient, and so they become chargeable to parishes.
The fourth class consists of those widows with families upon whom the officer, after a series of visits, is enabled to report facts which must satisfy the guardians that she is industrious, temperate, and of strict probity. Her thoughts as a wife were confined to two great domestic questions, – how can my husband’s income be economised, without making his home no home? and how can I qualify my children to fill their appointed stations in life? During the lifetime of her husband, her mind was so entirely absorbed by her household and family duties, that now she feels and acts like one who has just been disturbed from a long and troubled dream. Death has now turned the channel of her ideas. The change was one of bitter suffering. And now she must provide bread for her children by her own “hand-labour,” – without the habitude of labour. Death acts thus daily; and yet the number of widows so circumstanced, who apply for parochial relief, bears a very small proportion to the total number of persons thus bereaved. The fact is curious; and as sound methods of dealing with pauperism can be discovered only from a minute and comprehensive knowledge of the anatomy and pathology of the lower classes of society, the facts must be studied. The widows who compose this class were, previous to their marriage, either trusted servants in quiet families, daughters of respectable shop-keepers, or younger daughters of widows with small annuities: and their husbands were probably members of religious communities. Suppose the condition of the widow to have been that of a decent servitude. She performed her duties with credit; and her name is not forgotten. During the state of wifehood, intercourse was kept up by the exercise of kindly greetings on the one side, and respectful inquiries on the other. Her present circumstances excite sympathy. “Something must be done for poor Ann!” But she desires to subsist by labour rather than by gifts of charity. This is thought of by the reflecting patron, who knows full well how benefits unearned weaken the moral powers. But there are many ways by which the feeling of charity may be manifested without moral injury. A son may be in chambers, and who can so well clean and arrange them, as the nurse of his infancy? She may be intrusted with the care of an office; or she may be recommended to friends, who have hitherto taken labour from the labour market, at the lowest market price, and are just beginning to perceive that the moral qualities manifested in a prudent carriage, strict honesty, and taciturnity with respect to private affairs, are valuable, and have yet to learn that they are not common, and to be obtained must be paid for. The recommendation is well-timed. And although this friend of the family may miss the moral points of the matter, and would, if the patroness had not fixed her wages, by the force of example, tell the widow how little she gave the other “person,” and offer the same. The widow’s eyes now sparkle. She has reason to be grateful, and is not absolutely dependent. She is now in a fair way to gain an honest livelihood. The parish has not once been thought of. Then she may be a member of a religious body: which congregation is not a question of moment. As a member of the Established Church she has many advantages. Did you, reader, ever hear of a member of the Society of Friends being an applicant for parochial relief? The question may be repeated with respect to the Jews; not, however, with the expectation of an universal negative; but, having regard to the precariousness of their callings, the answer must be —No! The widow is a Wesleyan methodist. She is united with a religious body which includes within its pale many of those who compose the middle – or rather the lower middle – and lower classes of society. The members of it are closely cemented together – spiritually and temporally. As a member of a “class meeting,” her hopes and fears, her temptations, and trials, are known; not only to the members of her own section, but to the minister, and the members of the congregation. It may be true that the class system engenders spiritual pride and hypocrisy: that is not in point. We are dealing with facts. And it is a fact, and one which might be predicated from the circumstances, that the frequent meeting together of persons in nearly the same social position, to converse and advise upon practical religious matters, from which personal interests and temporalities, when they bear down the spirit, cannot be excluded, does exert an important influence on the fortunes of the distressed. In the Church of England, a minister may not mix so freely with his flock. His social position – his language, is different. But although that sense of common interest and common danger, which opens the flood-gates of the soul, and allows it to pour forth an uninterrupted tide of emotion, cannot exist when one order of mind stammers to another order of wind, yet there are compensating circumstances. Learning does not necessarily enervate the active powers. And in these latter we find a common ground of meeting, chords which vibrate sympathetically. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” Then the clergy are the almoners of the rich. These influences, with many kindred ones, might be investigated with advantage; but enough is said to indicate why this class of poor, who at first sight appear so helpless, are not sustained by the poor-rate. But they are sometimes applicants, and as such form a class. It happens that, from the number of her family, her wants are greater than her limited connexions can relieve; or she may be alone. It must be again repeated, that the duty of a board of guardians is not only to relieve destitution, but likewise to check pauperism. This being so, the widow must not be allowed to sink so low as to drive hope away. Her projects, her means, and her actual necessities must be ascertained. Relief in money is the best mode of relief to this class; and it should be given liberally. It will not be given in vain. Of course there are many in this class not gifted with an active temperament, or a strong, mind. To such the warning from the chairman, that parochial assistance can only be temporary, must be frequently given: and sometimes her views and progress may be scrutinised and commented upon. The relief would be continued from time to time and in descending amounts, until it vanishes altogether. By this method of treatment an increase of expenditure may be occasioned for a time; but the widow will be delivered from her affliction, and her children’s names permanently erased from the black roll of pauperism.
The fifth class includes those widows who have, throughout their lives, been accustomed to labour. They have not the advantages of the former class, as regards connexions. They have been “dragged”4 up. As an infant, “it was never sung to: no one ever told it a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or die, as it happened. It had no young dreams: it broke at once into the iron realities of life. The child exists not for the very poor as any object of dalliance; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured to labour. It is the rival, till it can be the co-operator, for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his diversion, his solace; it never makes him young again, with recalling his young times. The children of the very poor have no young times. It makes the very heart bleed to overhear the casual street-talk 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