Some of the witnesses, Mr Colquhoun in particu lar, bring forward a very important subject. They give the state of the criminal laws as one of the chief among the causes of mendicity.--" About 5000 individuals," he says, " are vomited out of the jails, without character. These people come on society, without any asylum provided for them. If such an asylum could be established, I think, in a very short time, it would relieve the town of a great many of the beggars." The operation of the penal laws upon the moral state of the people is a field of inquiry far too extensive to be introduced into the present ar ticle. That an ill-contrived system of correction for offences may degrade the minds of a people, de stroy their sensibility to moral considerations, render many of them incapable of that self-esteem, on which the abhorrence of becoming a beggar is founded, nobody can help perceiving. That a great part of the British system of penal law is infected with this tendency, has long been the complaint of discerning and philosophic minds. The public is not a little in debted to the popular writings of Mr Colquhonn, for the degree of attention from men in power which it cannot long be hindered from receiving. Another place in this work will be found for giving to the subject that degree of elucidation which it so highly deserves.
Of all the causes of beggary, war may undoubted ly be assumed as one of the most extraordinary. We have already seen in what manner the people con verted by it into soldiers swell the ranks of mendici ty ; but this is only a small part of the deplorable effects. It brings the condition of the whole of the labouring mass down nearer to the mendicant level ; and, of course, a new and additional portion down to it altogether. This it does by the consumption which it produces. Exactly in proportion as money is spent upon war, exactly in that proportion is the means of employing labour, that is, of buoying up the condition of the people, destroyed ; exactly in that proportion must the people, ceeteris paribus, sink. These are conclusions which may be regard , ed as scientific, and which will never be called in dispute except by those who are ignorant of the subject. It is not impossible for war to be accident ally accompanied with circumstances which counter balance this tendency, even in respect to wealth ; but this is exceedingly rare. The great men very often gain by war : the little almost always lose.
There is one other cause of mendicity, which it is incumbent to mention, because it really includes all the rest ; but it can be very little more than men tioned, as it is far too extensive for elucidation in this place. This cause is legislation,—bad legislation. An argument, which, though it is too general deeply to impress a mind unaccustomed to generalize, is in fact almost demonstrative, may be given in a few words. Perfect legislation, a legislation capable of turning to the best possible account the command which in this world man possesses over the, good things of life, would so conduct society, that, as there would be scarcely any individual who would not, by his moral qualities, deserve, so there would be not one who would be left without the means of corporeal well-being. If this proposition be cor
rect, it follows, as an unavoidable consequence, that every beggar who exists is, in some way or smother, the effect and consequence of bad laws. Exactly in proportion as we can make our laws do more of that which all laws ought to do, we shall diminish the number of those who approach the le vel of mendicity ; and at last dry up every source from which it springs. And in the meantime, ex actly in proportion as a greater number of the mass of any people are either at, or approach to, the level of mendicity, in that proportion infallibly may the laws be pronounced to be bad.
9. We have now stated what the present occasion • appears to require, on the subject of the causes of raesidicity. We proceed to the eects, which, being a much less complicated subject, will be much more quickly dispatched.
The effects may be considered as bad, first, in re spect to the beggar himself; next, in respect to the community. • - With respect to the beggar hinted& they are bad exactly in so far as he is less happy in that state, than he would have been in any other in which it is in his power to place himself If it was not in his power to have placed himself in a situation above safering to a greater degree for want of the means of well-being, he suffers nothing bodily ; perhaps he even gains, if the bodily pains of begging are less than those of the labour to which he would have been deemed. He may suffer in his mind, by the sense of degradation. But when that ceases to be an object, this pain is at an end. In as far as be is likely to be more intemperate as a beggar, he injures his health, and destroys the pleasures of sympathy. And in as far as he is less religious than he would otherwise have been, he is a loser in respect to the hopes which religion bestows.
If he has fallen to beggary, by his misconduct, from a superior state, in which he would have en joyed more happiness; of this loss, whatever it is, beggary is not the cause, but the previous miscon duct. The question is not, what he would have been, had he not lost what he has lost by miscon duct, but what, having made that loss, he can now do that would make him happier than begging. If a mind is well educated, and its sensibility to moral considerations acute, almost anything would render it happier than begging. If it is in the brutal state of an uneducated mind,--a mind which has never had its moral sensibility sharpened, few things would . render it happier that did -not afford it in greater plenty the means of sensual indulgence and ease.