THE LAST OF THE PAUPERS.
A pauper is generally imagined by foreigners to be a lantern-jawed, herring-paunched, emaciated and pallid wretch, cropped and shaven, clothed in pepper-and-salt ditto, and employed in crushing bones for manure and soup. Thanks to Free Trade and the Diggings—among second causes—this order of fellow Christians is now almost extinct. Our continental neighbours will find, on inquiry, that a wholly different appearance is for the most part presented by the remaining objects of British charity. Coats, waistcoats, and trousers—in some cases gaiters and breeches—of superfine black cloth, warm and comfortable to the feeling, sleek and glossy to the sight, envelope with liberal amplitude proportions which are plump, and perhaps corpulent. The nether extremities are encased in capacious and shiny highlows, sometimes silver-buckled. A goodly beaver hat with extensive brim shades the entire man from the rays which tend to liquefy the oleaginous part of him. This is the only badge of poverty that he bears about him; its form is suggestive of an emblem of manual labour—the Shovel.
His dietary is open to no objection in regard either to quantity or quality; except that, in both respects, it tends rather to produce plethora and engender gout. It is, in fact, discretional; for even when he enjoys an indoor maintenance, he receives a stipend in lieu of rations, and this sum is usually handsome enough to enable him to indulge in every delicacy of every season.
When he thus lives in the House—the Almshouse provided for him—he has the whole of it to himself, and is required to share it with nobody except his own family if he is blessed with one: so far, therefore, from being separated from his wife in a comfortless ward, he occupies a mansion which is the abode of domestic happiness.
His work is mostly as optional, conversely, as his victuals: so that he can eat and drink as much, and exert himself as little as he likes. The only employment obligatory upon him is light clerical duty, and the greater part of that he is permitted to delegate to somebody else. He is supposed, indeed, to be continually producing new editions of Greek Testament, biblical or patristic commentaries, confutations of Popery, apologies for Church-rates, and other works tending to the spiritual welfare of the nation; to the due performance of which tasks a necessary condition is learned leisure, accompanied by nutritious food and generous liquor.
This walking monument of beneficence—walking when he does not ride in a well-appointed carriage—is almost the only eleemosynary kind of person, except the actual mendicant, existing among Her Majesty's subjects. The funds which serve for the maintenance of the order of industrious poverty to which this useful member of society belongs, are derived from freehold and personal property together with rent-charges on land, amounting on the whole to £50,000,000. That all this property was granted by our ancestors for charitable purposes—to wit hospitals and schools—attests their munificence; whilst how prosperous we are is evident from the fact, that in order to use up all their bounty, we roll several hundred paupers into one.