MENDICANCY. (See POOR AND POOR LAWS, ante.) Mendicants are practically all persons who gain a livelihood by beggary; a definition excluding those who are will ing to work but cannct, owing to lack of demand for labor; and those who temporarily receive assistance because of ill-health or other misfortune. The class we are consid ering does not exist in uncivilized or savage society. Yet among the least highly civil ized we find it flourishing—as in Egypt, and in the case of the lazzaroni of Italy. In large cities mendicancy has become an art, and professional beggars are found in London, Paris, and New York, who have amassed large sums of money by the constant pursuit of a trade which with them has ceased even tc be precarious. While we may pos sibly, with some degree of justice, find the origin of professional beggary in the course not only pursued by, but enjoined upon the orders of, mendicant friars in central and southern Europe, it is certain that the concentration of wealth, the decline in the value of money in the minds of those by whom it has been easily obtained, and the conse quent habit of lavish giving, must eventually have brought this condition into being, even though the church had not encouraged its establishment. Twenty-five years ago (1855) it was said by an English writer that a three days' rain about London would .at any time bring 30,000 coster-mougers, or venders of provisions, to the verge of fam ine. This is suL-gestive. The precarious character of the vocation of many of the lower classes of laboring people, and the imminent danger in which they constantly are, must be a grave temptation to the pursuit which we are considering. In thickly settled towns and cities the chances of gaining the necessities of life are certainly greater in this line than in many trades, It not liable to the fluctuations occasioned by fashion, or changing taste', 'by ihe MI-lattice of 'the keastifis, or by the other numerous vicissitudes which deprive ordinary trades of the element of certainty of return% The. professional beggar is not limited to any special range, but may vary his hunting,-ground by necessity, caprice, or accident, and be equally certain of success. Also there are peculiar attractions in mendicancy for the uneducated and unskilled, yet not lawle,s• portion of a population, in its comparative freedom from restraint; its opportunity for roving, and for a wild companionship with congenial spirits, precluded by the social order of a regular business life; and, finally-, the charm and satisfaction which it offers, " of gaining something for nothing; of living on humanity without labor yet without crime; of satisfying the stern natural sense of justice which exists in the bosom of the unfortunate aud the indigent, by making the rich support the poor—yet without com pulsion. It may also be considered as one of the compensating forces of the social organism, oucasioned by the reaction from extreme wealth to extreme poverty, and formulated in an unreasonable demand, answered by a groundless concession; in fact a. humanitarian paradox.
The difficulty of dealing with poverty justly, and with a due sense of its various. causes and results, has been a social problem ever since there has been any society; and. quite the most difficult part of this problem to handle wisely, or to control at all. has. been mendicancy. The same English writer to whom we have already referred, in. writing generally on the charities and•poor of London, says: "But the great problem Which perplexed our ancestors less than ourselves, only because in a less crowded state.
of society social evils were more easily dealt with, was mendicancy. In every commu nity there must always be some who cannot dig, and in the most primitive there are always some who will not, and are not ashamed to beg,. From the earliest times the sturdy inendieant has constituted himself the representative of the poor, in whose behalf: the Gospel pleads so authoritatively. In that claracter he lounged at the convent-grate, he devoured his dole at the baron's hall-door, lie clamored for alms at the church-porch, and in that capacity we presume he is accepted by the modern advocates (happily few in number) of indiscriminate alms-giving. But even in the most picturesque times, when he pretended to show the scallop-shell from the holy laud in his hat, or perhaps the scars of infidel sabers on his body, he was but a good-for-nothing vagabond." The enactment of the poor-law in queen Elizabeth's reign has been attributed to a necessity 'occasioned by the dissolution of the convents, which were supposed to feed the poor to. 'such an extent as to make the necessity when they ceased tp exist. That this was not. true is shown by the fact that acts for the suppression of mendicancy were passed _before the dissolution of the monasteries. The act of Elizabeth was passed from a desire . to effect a social reform, and similar acts were passed in succeeding reigns down to the present, and for the same reason. But though from time to time acts against able-bod ied pa.upers were multiplied, the vagrant continued to prefer idleness and independence to work or the poor-house, and by degrees the number of beggars swelled, till they exceeded the powers of the beadle and constable to arrest, and of the jail or poor-house. to contain, and actually acquired an almost legalized existence. At the close of the great European war the evil had reached its height; ostentatiously loathsome objects paraded the great thoroughfares; professional beggars, by a police of their own, quartered the. towns among them, and in 1818 an association was formed in Loudon to accomplish. what the state had failed in doing. This organization took the name of the society for the suppression of mendicity. A large staff of paid agents was engaged, and the com mittee for its manageme.nt counted among its members many naval and military men, trained to habits of order and system; and who, being without professional employ ment, brought their administrative talents to the service of the new society. This organ Ization did good work, and was the foundation of methods which have since been 'applied with success; and mendicancy has largely diminished. The reform movement in England in 1834, and new legislation, still further lessened the evil; yet so acute and well informed an observer as the rev. Charles L. Brace says that " the conclusion of ali European experience is that nothing can permanently affect the evil of mendicity but a general diffusion of prosperity, morality, and intelligence," certainly affording a gloomy outlook for the future, both in Europe and America; since concentration of ;wealth, rather than its diffusion, seems to have become the order of society; and the. probability of general "prosperity, morality, and intelligence," in the face of that tend ency, is, to say the least, remote.