BEGGA R.
word literally means, one who begs. In a more restricted sense, it means one who begs the means of subsistence. Even this definition, however, is too ex tensive for the idea to which, in this article, we mean to confine it. The class, in fact, of the persons to whom the term beggar, in the most restricted sense, applies, cannot easily be separated by an exact line of distinction from the kindred tribes. You cannot define the beggar as one who asks the means of sub sistence, or money to purchase it, from passengers in the streets and highways; because there are people who beg from house to house. If you include those who beg from house to house, even that will not suf because there are persons who beg by letter, and have various means,- beside language, of bring= ing to the knowledge of others the tokens of real or fictitious distress. And, if you make a definition extensive enough to embrace all these classes, you will make it include persons whom no one regards as standing in the rank of beggars ; every person, almost, who, from any cause, is brought to re quire the assistance of others. It is not useless to contemplate how these classes run into one another ; because it teaches the necessity of delicate and cautious proceedings, when we take measures of cure ; especially if force enters at all into their com position.
1. Of the class of persons to whom, in the com mon use of language, the term Beggar is with pro priety assigned, there is one distinction which is obviously and commonly made ; that is, into those who beg from necessity, and those who beg from choice. In each of these divisions, there is variety. For a description of the field of we derive helps from the Report of a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in the year 1815, to inquire into the state of mendicity in the metro polis. The inquiry is very imperfect ; the interro gation of the witnesses superficial and unskilful; the information which they give not followed up, by ex ploring other and better sources, which they indi cate ; but, as people had been left to casual obser vation, to fancy, and conjecture before, the facts and conjectures which that Report lays before us are still the best information we possess.
Nothing more strongly indicates the deficiency of our knowledge upon this subject, than the different opinions which the Committee received on the pro portion between those who beg from necessity, and those who beg from choice. The persons examined were those of whom the Committee made choice, as having possessed peculiar opportunities of know ledge ; and- this was a point to which their inquiries were peculiarly directed. Yet one part of the wit
nesses strongly asserted, that a proportion as large as one half were beggars from necessity ; another part of them asserted that all beggars, with hardly any exception, prosecuted the occupation from choice.
Mr Martin, the conductor of an inquiry into the state of mendicity in the metropolis, under instruc tions from his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, which inquiry extended to about 4500 cases, stated, as " the general result of his information, that beggary is, in very many cases, perhaps in about half the cases of 'those who beg, the effect rather of real distress, than of any voluntary desire to impose. So far from having found, amongst those who have attended at the of fice, any reason to think that the whole was a matter of imposition, I have (says he) found cases of the most acute suffering, which have long been conceal • ad, of some of the beggars, who belonged to parishes in the metropolis, who have not made their cases properly known to the parish-officers, and who have ventured to slip out of their parishes, not so much because they wished to impose, as because they were driven by distress to beg." Mr Martin ground . ed this conclusion also upon the general fact, that the number of women was much greater than that of men, and that of married women greater than that of single. " Men," he remarks, "etre stronger than women, have morn resources, and are better able to provide for themselves; and single women are more eligible for service than married, and usually have. only themselves to maintain." The Rev. Henry Budd, who had been fourteen years Chaplain to Bridewell Hospital, to which the Freater number of the persons taken up for begging in the streets of London are committed, was asked, " Have you ever known a worthy person begging in the streets ?"—" Yes ; I have known many that I should call worthy ; and, I think I could mention some who have come up from the country distressed for want of work. They think London is paved with gold, or presents opportunities the country does not ; and they find themselves here without friends. I have met with many whom I considered, very worthy." Of these two witnesses, the personal experience in the case was equal, or probably superior to that of all the rest taken together.