DILIGENCE IN DOING GOOD.
Thomas Wright, of Manchester, is a worn but not a weary man of sixty-three, who has for forty-seven years been weekly servant in a large iron foundry, of which he is now the foreman. His daily work begins at five o'clock in the morning, and closes at six in the evening; for forty-seven years he has worked through twelve hours daily, to support himself and those depending on him. Those depending on him are not few; he has had nineteen children; and at some periods there have been grandchildren looking to him for bread. His income never has attained two hundred pounds a year. This is a life of toil. Exeter Hall might plead for him as a man taxed beyond the standard limit; but he had bread to earn, and knew that he had need to work for it: he did work with great zeal and great efficiency, obtaining very high respect and confidence from his employers. A man so laboring, and leading in his home an exemplary, pious life, might be entitled to go to bed betimes, and rest in peace between these days of industry and natural fatigue. What could a man do, in the little leisure left by so much unremitting work? Poor as he was—toiling as he did, a modest man of humble origin, with no power in the world to aid him but the wonderful spiritual power of an earnest will—Thomas Wright has found means, in his little intervals of leisure, to lead back, with a gentle hand, three hundred convicted criminals to virtue; to wipe the blot from their names and the blight from their prospects; to place them in honest homes, supported by an honest livelihood.
Fourteen years ago Mr. Wright visited, one Sunday, the New Bailey Prison, at Manchester, and took an earnest interest in what he saw. He knew that, with the stain of jail upon them, the unhappy prisoners, after release, would seek in vain for occupation; and that society would shut the door of reformation on them, and compel them, if they would not starve, to walk on in the ways of crime. The jail-mark branding them as dangerous, men buttoned up their pockets when they pleaded for a second trial of their honesty, and left them helpless. Then, Thomas Wright resolved, in his own honest heart, that he would visit in the prisons, and become a friend to those who had no helper.
The chaplain of the New Bailey, Mr. Bagshawe, recognized in the beginning the true practical benevolence of the simple-minded visitor. On his second visit a convict was pointed out, on whom Mr. Wright might test his power. It was certain power. From the vantage-ground of a comparative equality of station, he pleaded with his fellow workman for the wisdom of a virtuous and honest life. Heaven does, and Earth should, wipe out of account repented evil. Words warm from the heart, backed with a deep and contagious sense in the hearer of the high-minded virtue shown by his companion, were not uttered, like lip-sympathy, in vain. Then Thomas Wright engaged to help his friend, to get employment for him; and, if necessary, to be surety with his own goods for his honorable conduct. He fulfilled his pledge; and that man has been ever since, a prosperous laborer, and an upright member of society.
So the work began. So earnest, so humble; yet, like other earnest, humble efforts, with a blessing of prosperity upon it. In this way, during the last fourteen years, by this one man, working in the leisure of a twelve hours' daily toil, hundreds have been restored to peace. He has sent husbands repentant to their wives; he has restored fathers to the fatherless. Without incurring debt, supporting a large family on little gains, he has contrived to spare out of his little; contenting himself with a bare existence, that he might have clothes to give and bits of money, where they were required to reinstate an outcast in society.
Mr. Wright is a dissenter—free, of course, from bigotry; for bigotry can never co-exist with charity so genuine. Although a dissenter working spiritually in the prison, he never comes into jarring contact with the chaplain. He makes a point of kindling in his outcast friends a religious feeling; but that is not sectarian; he speaks only the largest sentiments of Christianity, and asks only that they attend, once every week, a place of worship, leaving them to choose what church or chapel it may be. And, in the chapel he himself attends, wherever his eye turns, he can see decent families who stand by his means there; men whom he has rescued from the vilest courses, kneeling modestly beside their children and their wives. Are not these families substantial prayers?
Very humbly all this has been done. In behalf of each outcast in turn, Mr. Wright has pleaded with his own employer, or with others, in a plain, manly way. Many now work under himself, in his own place of occupation; his word and guarantees having been sufficient recommendation. Elsewhere, he has, when rebuffed, persevered from place to place, offering and laying down his own earnings as guarantee; clothing and assisting the repentant unemployed convict out of his own means, as far as possible; speaking words, or writing letters, with a patient zeal, to reconcile to him his honest relatives, or to restore lost friends. Bare sustenance for his own body by day, that he might screw out of himself little funds in aid of his good deeds—and four hours' sleep at night, after his hard work, that he might screw out of his bed more time for his devoted labor—these tell their tale upon the body of the man, who still works daily twelve hours for his family, and six or eight hours for his race. He is now sixty-three years old, and working forward on his course worn, but unwearied.
No plaudits have been in his ear, and he has sought none. Of his labor, the success was the reward. Some ladies joined; and working quietly, as he does, in an under-current of society, after a while, he had from them the aid of a small charitable fund, to draw upon occasionally in the interest of the poor friends for whom he struggled. Prison Inspectors found him out, and praised him in reports. At first there were a few words, and a note told of "this benevolent individual. His simple, unostentatious, but earnest and successful labors on behalf of discharged prisoners are above all praise." After a few years, the reports grew in their enthusiasm, and strung together illustrations of the work that has been done so quietly. Let us quote from this source one or two examples:
"Five years ago I was," owns a certain G.J., "in the New Bailey, convicted of felony, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment. When I was discharged from prison, I could get no employment. I went to my old employer, to ask him to take me again. He said, I need not apply to him, for if he could get me transported he would; so I could get no work until I met with Mr. Wright, who got me employed in a place, where I remained some time, and have been in employment ever since. I am now engaged as a screw-cutter—a business I was obliged to learn—and am earning nineteen shillings and twopence a week. I have a wife and four children, and but for Mr. Wright, I should have been a lost man."
Others tell how they were saved by the timely supplies of Mr. Wright's money, which "kept their heads above water" till they obtained the trust of an employer. Another, after telling his career, adds: "I am now, consequently, in very comfortable circumstances; I am more comfortable now than ever I was in my life; I wish every poor man was as comfortable as I am. I am free from tippling, and cursing, and swearing; have peace of mind, and no quarreling at home as there used to be. I dare say I was as wicked a man as any in Manchester. I thought if I could once get settled under such a gentleman as Mr. Wright, I would not abuse my opportunity, and all I expected I have received. I have got Bibles, hymn-book, prayer-book, and tracts; and those things I never had in my house since I have been married before. My wife is delighted. My boy goes to school, and my girl also."
Were the spirit of Mr. Wright diffused more generally through society, the number of fallen men—who, being restored with all due prudence to a generous confidence, "would not abuse their opportunity"—would tell decidedly on the statistics of our criminal courts and prisons. To labor as Mr. Wright has done, must be the prerogative of few, though all the indolent may note, by way of spur, how much a man, even like Thomas Wright, poor, humble, scantily instructed, may beget of good out of an earnest will.