From other witnesses, however, of whom the ex perience was also great, the committee received affirmations of an opposite import. Mr John Coop er,, a visitor of the Spitalfields Benevolent Society, was asked, " From the observations you have made upon the state of poor families, do you think any • worthy families have recourse to begging in the " I have no idea at all, from what has ' come under my own observations, that, in any indi • vidual case, persons, that were worthy objects, how. ever distressed they were, have had recourse to street-begging." • Mr John Doughtry, a gentleman much in the habit of visiting the habitations of the needy, was asked, " In your opinion, do many worthy, honest, industrious persons have recourse to begging, or does this class of society consist chiefly, of the idle and profligate ?"—Ans. " The instances in which worthy, honest, industrious persons have recourse to begging are extremely rare. They will, in general, rather starve than beg. A person of veracity, who sometime ago visited 1500 poor families in the neighbourhood of Spitalfields, affirms, that, out of full 300 cases of abject poverty and destitution, and at least 100 of LITERAL WANT AND STARVATION, not a dozen had been found to have recourse to begging. Many of the most wretched of the above cases had been, not long before, able to sup port themselves in some comfort, but want of em ploy had completely ruined them. They were, at that moment, pressed by landlord, baker, and tax gatherer; had pawned and sold every thing that could be turned into money ; were absolutely without a morsel of food for themselves or family ; but still had not recourse to begging. As a general fact, the decent poor will struggle to the uttermost, and even perish, rather than This is heroism, in comparison with which, that of the Herculeses and the Hectors, ancient and mo dern, sinks into nothing ! What an admirable foun dation of virtue must be laid, in these minds, which even thus endure the horrors of death, approaching with all the torments of hunger and cold, rather than seek to relieve themselves by courses reputed dis graceful ! And how unworthily is this class ot' per sons traduced, by those who represent them as ca pable of being restrained by nothing but a dungeon or a bayonet; and who, by their ignorance of human nature, so cruelly prolong the needless miseries un der which it labours ! According to the experiment mentioned by Mr Doughtry, and it is upon a large scale, and a part of the population (the circumstances of the people in Spitalfields are not favourable to virtue) which may be reckoned below rather than above the common standard, out of 400 individuals, of the lowest or. der, 388 will consent to perish by hunger, rather than beg. In confirmation of this testimony, an ex traordinary fact has come to our knowledge. We have been informed by a gentlemen, whose know ledge of the circumstances and behaviour of the journeymen in the metropolis may be regarded as in a very unusual, or rather an unexampled degree, minute and correct, that, of this importanekportion of the labouring population, no one ever begs ; that such a thing as a journeyman• tradesman, or any of his family, begging, is almost unknown ; and may, with certainty, be pronounced as one of the rarest of contingent events. When it is considered to what an extraordinary degree most of the employments by which these men earn the means of subsistence are liable to fluctuation ; that thousands of them are for months together deprived of work, as was the case with thousands, for example, of the carpenters and bricklayers during the severe winter of 1815 ; that of those the whole must be reduced to the most cruel privations, and a great proportion actually starve unpitied, unheard of, and unknown; the reso lution by which they abstain from begging, should be regarded as one of the most remarkable pheno mena in the history of the human mind.
It may still be possible to reconcile these un doubted facts with the testimonies of Mr Martin and Mr Budd. It appears that a great proportion of the beggars to whom they allude are women, and women with families ; whose spirits, where they are left to themselves, are less able to support them, and to make the dread of disgrace an overmatch for the pains ' of hunger and the terrors of death. It appears, also, that a large proportion of them are the wives of soldiers, in the company of whom the sense of disgrace is apt to lose its pungency. People from
the country, simple, and without resources, add a portion to the number of those whose mendici ty cannot be regarded as the effect of vice. And it cannot, surely, be a source of wonder, that, out of so large a population. so great a portion of whom are liable to the extremity of want, there should be a few with whom the dread of disgrace should not be so powerful a motive as the love of food, and of life.
2. Of the number of beggars in the metropolis (and no attempt has been made to discover it in the rest of the country), the labours of the Committee have ascertained hardly any thing. At the time of the first inquiry, which was made by Mr Martin, 2000 cases presented themselves. This, by a vague estimate, he supposed might be about one-third of the whole ; and allowing at the rate of a child and a half to each principal, he conjectured that the whole number might be about 15,000. If this be supposed a tolerable approximation, with regard to .the metro polis, a comparison of the population of the metro polis with that of the whole country, will give an approximation to the number of beggars in the king dom.
3. With regard to the number of beggars, an im portant fact appears to be ascertained ; that it is gradually diminishing. Mr Martin said, " I do think that the number of beggars has something de creased since the first inquiry, nine years ago ; and I am very much confirmed in that opinion, by what persons have told me, that they have not seen so many as they did. 1 really think there are not se many by one-fourth." Sir N. Conant, of the Police office iu Bow-street, said, " I think the number of beggars was greater thirty years ago than now. I have acted as a magistrate for more than thirty years. —Do you mean in proportion to the popula tion ?---Greater in fact. I am sure, on my own recol lection and observation, that mendicity is a less nui sance now than it was thirty years ago." Sir Daniel Williams, a magistrate attending the Police-office in Whitechapel, was asked, respecting the beggars in that district, " Do you think the number has increased within any given period ?" - Ans. " I think, within the last two years, they have rather diminished." Mr John Stafford, chief clerk of the office in Bow-street, said, " It strikes me, from the knowledge I have had, having been chief clerk of the Police-office in Bow-street ever since the year 1803, that there are not the.same number of beggars about the streets that there used to be; I think the number is considerably decreased." This corresponds so fully with what strongly meets the observatien of every attentive man, and has been amply given in evidence before the Committees of the House of Commons, on the state of education, and the police of the metropolis, during the last session of Parliament, respecting the great improve ment in the morals and in the manners of the lower or ders, that it may be regirded as a fact of which as reasonable doubt can be entertained.
4. This is the little which appears to be known with regard to the proportion between the beggars from choice, and the beggars from necessity, and with regard to the number of the whole. We shall next speak of the arts by which it is understood that the trade of beggars is carried on. This ap. pears to be the grand subject of curiosity. There is a mystery about this, and a fancied ingenuity, . which those who wish for the marvellous are very -much stimulated to explore and to magnify. The fact, however, is, that -the contrivances, upon 'the whole, are few, and almost all of them obvious, and coarse. They are expedients for exhibiting as much as possible of the appearances of distress. Of these, rags and nastiness are one portion, which it surely requires but little ingenuity to display. The different kinds of bodily infirmity, chiefly those which incapacitate for labour, are the remaining portion. On this subject the most authentic details which have been collected, are those contained in the Report of the Connnittee on Mendicity. We shall select from the evidence, as far as it goes, the description of the principal arts ; and the intelligent reader will per ceive, that, with regard to invention, they are near the bottom of the scale.