Who Shall Take Care Of The Poor?
First Article.
The duty of caring for the poor, which Christ laid upon his church, has been assumed in modern times by the civil power; and governments have sought, by legislative enactments and political machinery, to fill the place of those ecclesiastical charities which disappeared in the convulsions of the sixteenth century. It is needless to say that their attempts have failed, and that the problem, "Who shall take care of the poor?" is still, in all Protestant countries, practically unsolved. We feel, therefore, that no apology is necessary for entering upon its discussion here, and that any light which may be thrown upon the subject by ourselves or others will tend to elucidate one of the most perplexed and difficult social questions of the present age.
There are certain fundamental principles which any examination of this subject, from a Christian point of view, must assume, and in accordance with which all Christian theories and practice concerning it must proceed.
These principles may be thus briefly stated:
I. That the care of the poor devolves upon those who continue the mission of Christ in the redemption of mankind and accept and obey his command, "Feed my flock;" upon those whose discipline of character, at once personal and corporate, enables them to help the helpless, to reform the vicious, and to conciliate the dangerous, while their organization affords a guarantee of persistence in these good works and of the proper use of the means confided to them; in a word, upon those who combine the attributes of a providence at once universal and discerning, with equity in administration and energy in execution.
II. That the principle of action, by which this work alone can be effected, is what may be termed "absorbent substitution," that is, the voluntary assumption of poverty out of practical sympathy with the poor.
III. That the legitimate effect of this action is to encourage, aid, and guide the poor to help themselves, and to infuse into them that love for their neighbor which, by this mediation, becomes reciprocal.
IV. That the established means by which this work must be performed are, first: The church in her collective capacity; second, the orders of charity; third, the variously constituted beneficial societies; fourth, the hand of private Christian charity, the latter of which, in the discussion of this question as a public one, does not, however, enter into our consideration. The three first mentioned are often found united in the same community: the church, represented by the congregation, containing Sisters of Charity or Mercy, and also assistant orders of pious persons, who, though bound by no vows, work in the world and aid the other orders with their purse and influence. Still, those who take the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and who, in organized communities, devote themselves to works of charity, must be regarded as the most perfect organs of this Christian work. And these become thus voluntarily poor, self-denying, and exclusive, because not only is the healthy soul fortified and preserved in spiritual power by privation of the pleasures of the senses, but poverty itself becomes ennobled by the assumption, and its degradation disappears.
Treating these principles, for the present, as self-evident, we now inquire:
Who are our poor, and how shall they be cared for?
Upon this question, the Catholic Church cannot limit her providential mission or assume a sectarian attitude. While preaching, by example, to the pious and humane of every creed, the zeal of active charity, she must extend her benefits to all those who need and seek her, without favor or distinction. This she must do to be consistent with her own historic record, and to fulfil the behest of her Lord.
Wherever Christian faith and love exist, "by their works ye shall know them." Charity is the test of the Catholic faith. Our Douay Catechism says that "the first fruit of the Holy Ghost is charity." Then it tells us what charity means, in the language of its effects, namely, "To feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit and ransom captives, to harbor the harborless, to visit the sick, to bury the dead:" a very matter of fact definition, but which implies that,
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
The practice of charity alone can reconcile mankind by dissipating schism, and by thus re-establishing their unison, secure the triumph of the Christian church over the world.
This universal unity of spirit employs in its methods of action many distinct organs and corresponding varieties of function, and the time-honored maxim, Una fides, una domus, "One faith, one house," and the obedience to constituted authority, bind in the circle of good-will those orders which, though each adopts a particular rule and special use, amicably co-operate in their separation, like the branches of the same vine.
Whatever principles of action experience has sanctioned in Catholic charities, commend themselves alike to all Christians.
"Why is it," asks Mrs. Jameson, "that we see so many women, carefully educated, going over to the Catholic Church? For no other reason than for the power it gives them to throw their energies into a sphere of definite utility, under the control of a high religious responsibility."
To each of the notable aspects of human affliction corresponds, in the history of Christendom, one or more orders consecrated to its relief, and, far from being confined to mere palliative expedients, organic efforts toward the radical cure of our social evils have been developed under the influence of the Catholic Church.
Distinctive characters of the Catholic orders, though not confined to them, are celibacy and community of property. A bond of union purely spiritual dissolves and replaces those ties which develop the personality of the individual.
No fair comparison can be instituted between Catholic and Protestant orders of charity, for the simple reason that marriage and the family, which perpetuate secular estates by entail or inheritance, or seek, in the exchange of love, an earthly heaven, act as effectual dissolvents on religious orders consecrated to a special work. The vitality of the Episcopalian charities, St. John's and St. Luke's, is now undergoing this experiment, to-wit: Can the requisite number of efficient nurses and officers be maintained without binding vows? Can the service of the order be organized with influences that shall counterpoise the temptations of worldly vanities and interests, the powerful attraction of the sexes, and the honorable ambition of becoming one's self a focus of social radiation?
Of course, it is not necessary to the effectiveness of a given service that it should always be rendered by the same individuals; but numbers avail not without discipline; and, while relays and successions are allowed, they must not be too frequent. The sacrifice of personal liberty, to a certain extent, is indispensable to the order and efficiency of co-operative charity. Hence it is not surprising that the first attempts in England to constitute Episcopalian orders of charity should generally have failed. This impulse was due to the humiliating lesson of the Crimean war, when Sisters of Charity and Mercy flocked from all Europe to the assistance of the French sick and wounded, when similar orders of the Greek Church came to befriend the afflicted Russian soldiers; but the English were perishing miserably, until their unlooked-for succor by the intervention of Miss Florence Nightingale and her heroic band.
The necessity thus apprehended, to fall back on the institutions of Catholicity, has recently occasioned the formation of orders, who take the vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Sisters of Mercy and Sisters of the Contemplative Life may be seen in London, repairing to chapel through deserted streets in the early morning hours. Will such vows, unsanctioned by the public opinion of Protestant countries, be really binding? How has it proved at Valle Cruce?
Oppressed and alarmed by the increase of pauperism, and the worse than inefficiency of her poor-rates and secular measures of pauper-relief, England now feels that she has committed something near akin to suicide in the destruction of her religious orders. No longer "merry and wise," her political economists are splitting hairs to find just what pittance may suffice to keep the poor from dying of hunger without making them more comfortable than others whose pride refuses alms, so as not to set a premium on idleness.
"The notion popularized by Cobbett," says Herbert Spencer, arguing the question, "that every one has a right to a maintenance out of the soil, leaves those who adopt it in an awkward predicament. Do but ask them to specify, and they are set fast. Assent to their principle; tell them you will assume their title to be valid; and then, as a needful preliminary to the liquidation of their claim, ask for some precise definition of it; inquire what is a maintenance. They are dumb! Is it, say you, potatoes and salt, with rags and a mud cabin? or is it bread and bacon, in a two-roomed cottage? Will a joint on Sundays suffice? or does the demand include meat and malt-liquor daily? Will tea, coffee, and tobacco be expected? and if so, how many ounces of each? Are bare walls and brick floors all that is needed? or must there be carpets and paper-hanging? Are shoes considered essential? or will the Scotch practice be approved? Shall the clothing be of fustian? If not, of what quality must the broadcloth be? In short, just point out where, between the two extremes of starvation and luxury, this something called a maintenance lies. How else shall we know whether enough has been awarded, or whether too much? One thinks that a bare subsistence is all that can fairly be demanded. Another hints at something beyond. A third maintains that a few of the enjoyments of life should be provided for. And some of the more consistent, pushing the doctrine to its legitimate result, will rest satisfied with nothing short of community of property."
What this argument renders most apparent is, the necessity for an umpire, or mediatorial power, between collective society and the individual or family requiring aid, a power sympathetic alike with those who have more, and with those who have less, than necessity demands, and whose social position shall derive, from a source superior to either, a prestige which will inspire confidence in its discretion and give a certain authority to its decisions. If personal beneficence or corporate guarantees suffice for the relief of sufferers, or to obtain for those able and willing the opportunity of suitable employment, the mediatorial power will not interfere. If, on the other hand, appeal be made to it, it may act either by the exercise of its own faculties, or as the trustee of social goods; a mutual intelligence bureau of higher grade than our ordinary business offices. Such a function the Catholic Church and its orders of charity fulfilled in England, and may yet fulfil in America.
Mr. John Stuart Mill well observes, that the state cannot undertake to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving indigent. It owes no more than subsistence to the first, and can give no less to the last. Since it must provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor—who have not offended is to give a premium to crime. Guardians and overseers are not fit to be trusted to give or withhold other people's money according to their verdict on the morality of the person soliciting it, and it would show much ignorance of the ways of mankind to suppose that such persons, even in the almost impossible case of their being qualified, will take the trouble of ascertaining and sifting the past conduct of a person in distress, so as to form a rational judgment on it. Private charity can make these distinctions, and, in bestowing its own money, is entitled to do so according to its own judgment.
It is admitted to be right that human beings should help one another; and the more so in proportion to the urgency of the need. In all cases of helping, we distinguish the consequences of the assistance itself, and the consequences of relying on the assistance. The former are generally beneficial, but the latter for the most part injurious; so much so, in many cases, as greatly to outweigh the value of the benefit. There are few things more mischievous than that people should rely on the habitual aid of others for the means of subsistence, and unhappily there is no lesson which they more easily learn. The problem to be solved is, how to give the greatest amount of needful help with the smallest encouragement to undue reliance on it. Energy and self-dependence are, however, liable to be impaired by the absence of help as well as by its excess. It is even more fatal to exertion to have no hope of succeeding by it than to be assured of succeeding without it. When the condition of any one is so disastrous that his energies are paralyzed by discouragement, assistance is a tonic, not a sedative. It braces instead of deadening the active faculties, always provided that the assistance is not such as to dispense with self-help by substituting itself for the person's own labor, skill, and prudence, but is limited to affording him a better hope of attaining success by those legitimate means. This accordingly is a test to which all plans of philanthropy should be brought, whether intended for the benefit of individuals or of classes, and whether conducted on the voluntary or the government principle.
Overlooking the spiritual forces which religious charity brings to bear in elevating the moral tone of character, Mr. Mill finds the foregoing principles well applied by the English Poor-Law of 1834, because, while it prevents any person, except by his own choice, from dying of hunger, it leaves their condition as much as possible below that of the poorest who find support for themselves. Mr. Mill's logic here seems to arrive at the reductio ad absurdum; for the state of these poorest of the working poor, whom pride forbids to claim pauper relief, is too distressing for charity, acting only below that level, to be of any avail. Usually inclined to the most liberal and humane views, Mr. Mill has here given way to a Protestant prejudice, which regards as ill-advised the more whole-souled Catholic style of charity. The following extract from De Vere's work shows the contrast, and affords a good answer to this overcautiousness about doing too much. All depends upon the spirit in which charity is bestowed; it should be cordial, not humiliating and distressing:
"Most of the Sisters are from the class of servants and needle-women; but there are many who, having been brought up to enjoy all the comforts and even elegances of life, have willingly renounced all to make themselves the humblest servants of the poor, to wash, and cook, and beg for those who have been beggars all their lives. The secret of all this lies in this, that the Sisters see, in their poor, Jesus Christ himself, to wait on whom must be their highest glory. From this, then, springs the most delightful interchange of feeling between the Sisters and their pensioners; for these poor people reverence with the liveliest gratitude those who seem to them as the angels of God sent to redeem them from all their misery and wretchedness, to comfort their bodies, and enlighten their souls. The change wrought in the old people after they have been with the Sisters a little while, is said to be most remarkable. From being fractious, complaining, and idle, they grow cheerful and contented in the highest degree, and every one is anxious to do something to contribute to the common stock. 'Our houses, our Sisters,' they say—a type of the perfect union which reigns amongst them. Everything is done by the Sisters to cultivate a spirit of cheerfulness; they are treated as children, and every opportunity is embraced of making them a little festival. The beautiful simplicity of childhood seems to return in all its fulness to these poor creatures, whose lives have been spent in vice and misery. From a state approaching to brutality, they revive even to gayety. Well may they say as they do, 'We never were happy until we came here.' On great occasions they sing and dance, and the Sisters join with them. When the anniversary of the house of Rouen was lately celebrated, the old woman who had been the first pensioner was crowned as the queen of the day, and her lowly seat decked with flowers, whilst her aged companions cheered her with the heartiest good will.
"The tender regard with which the Sisters cherish the poor on whom they wait, calls forth the best feelings of their hearts, so long dead to every human charity. They respond by the most refreshing cordiality; but truly hearts could not resist the winning kindness with which they are invariably treated. One little incident may illustrate how above all selfish considerations the law of kindness prevails: One old woman was anxious to be received among the 'Little Sisters' somewhere in France. Her case well deserved the privilege, but the old woman insisted on bringing also into the house her hen and her sparrow. Without these companions, she would not enter; she would rather forego the advantage offered to her. The old woman, her hen, and her sparrow were all admitted together, anything rather than lose an opportunity of doing good.
"Selfishness cannot long exist where such examples of self-denial are ever present in these Sisters. They take the worst of everything for themselves. Even in the longest established houses there are no chairs except for the old people; the Sisters 'sit upon their heels.' A Jesuit father, on one day visiting one of the houses, found the Sisters just sitting down to dinner. They had nothing to drink out of but odd and broken vessels, mustard-pots, jam-pots, etc.; all in such a dilapidated condition that the good father hastened off the very first penitent, who came to him for confession, with an injunction to buy a dozen of glasses and send them to the house of his 'Petites Sceurs.' Such is their voluntary poverty!
"Every time a house is opened, so soon as a sufficient number of poor are collected, a retreat is preached. The fruits of these retreats, in those who have been so long absent from the sacraments, is wonderful. Thus the house is furnished with those who serve to set a good example to all those who are afterward admitted.
"Nothing can exceed the gratitude of these poor creatures when reconciled with God. They embrace the Sisters with tears. 'It is seventy-five years since I drew near to God,' said one; 'and now I am going to receive him to-morrow.' A poor barber who had lost the use of his hands through rheumatism, and, being unable to exercise his profession, had fallen into such a state of destitution that he was thankful to accept an asylum in one of the houses of the 'Little Sisters,' was observed, after his confession, to be looking at his hands. 'What are you doing?' was asked of him. 'I am looking at the finger of God,' he replied. This spirit of resignation and gratitude is nearly universal, and the Sisters are not without their consolation even in this world."
To the special ministry of the Sisterhoods of Charity have been assigned the sick, infirm, and aged poor, whom all regard as proper objects of relief and pious care. We have shown, in our October number, how well they satisfied alike the Christian and the economic need. Mrs. Jameson, in the work there referred to, [Footnote 273] has strongly contrasted the conditions of the "English workhouse system" (which is the same as ours) with the religious management not only of the sick-poor, but also of the criminal and most degraded classes. Take, for instance, the Austrian prison at Neudorf. This prison is an experiment which as yet had only had a three years' trial when Mrs. Jameson visited it, but had already succeeded so well, both morally and economically, that the Austrian government was preparing to organize eleven others on the same plan. It began by the efforts of two humane ladies to find a refuge for those wretched creatures of their own sex who, after undergoing their term of punishment, were cast out of the prisons. They obtained the aid of two Sisters of a religious order in France, devoted to the reformation of lost and depraved women. Government soon enlarged their sphere of action, and confided to them the administration of a prison, penitentiary, and hospital, with several buildings and a large garden.
[Footnote 273: Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant.]
"In its management, I found more than two hundred criminals, separated into three classes. The first class consisted of desperate characters, the refuse of the prisons at Vienna, who are brought under a strong armed guard, bound hand and foot. Their appearance was either stupid, gross, and vacant or frightful from the predominance of evil propensities. The second class, drafted from the first, were called the penitents, and showed, in the expression of their countenances, an extraordinary change from the newly arrived. They were allowed to assist in the house, to cook and to wash, and to work in the garden, which last was a great boon. There were more than fifty of these, and they were, at least, humanized. The third class were the voluntaries who, when their term had expired, preferred remaining in the house and were allowed to do so. Part of the profit of their work was retained for their benefit.
"Twelve women, aided by three chaplains, a surgeon, and a physician, none of whom resided in the establishment, managed the whole. They had dismissed the soldiers and police-officers, finding that they needed no other means of constraint than their dignity, good sense, patience, and tenderness. There was as much of frightful physical disease as there was of moral disease, crime, and misery. Two Sisters acted as chief nurses and apothecaries. The ventilation and cleanliness were perfect. When I expressed my astonishment that so small a number of women could manage such a set of wild and wicked creatures, the answer was, 'If we want assistance, we shall have it; but it is as easy with our system to manage three hundred as one hundred or as fifty. The power is not in ourselves, it is granted from above.' Here men and women were acting together; and in all the regulations, religious and sanitary, there was mutual aid, mutual respect, and interchange of experience; but the Sisters were subordinate only to the chief civil and ecclesiastical authorities; the internal administration rested with them."
The "Little Sisters of the Poor" have inspired the following remarks, which apply to many other orders actively engaged in works of charity:
"Their records demonstrate that religious institutions do, effectually and cheaply, what the clumsy and lifeless machinery of the state does at an enormous cost and peril, with a very questionable preponderance of gain over loss. Charity is a religious work, and these orders are specially qualified, as religious, to lead the charity of the country; they have a special vocation and a supernatural aim; they unite the strongest motives for individual exertion with the highest development of the co-operative system; they are free from the impediments of other parties; what they give establishes no legal or political right, yet it recognizes a moral claim and provides for a human want. In addressing the statesmen of this country, we can prove that one thousand dollars a year, thus wisely spent in well-organized charity, goes twice as far as two thousand dollars a year spent with a blundering alternation of prodigality and cruelty, such as characterizes the management of our secular charities. Organic bodies contain within themselves a principle of endless adaptation. The church, herself an organic body, is the fruitful mother of all such organizations as the moral needs of man require; nor is there any reason to doubt that she can help the modern pauper as readily as the captives, the lepers, and the laborers in mines for whom her mediaeval orders worked. The recent institution of the 'Little Sisters of the Poor' derives a peculiar interest from the mode in which it approaches that special trial of modern society, pauperism, and it may, with the divine blessing, advance from its present humble beginning to enterprises which, alike on the ground of theology and of sound political economy, are beyond the efforts of the most beneficent governments now existing."
The gospels abundantly attest the loving and tender behavior of Christ toward the poor and the afflicted of every class. It is important to note how lively and loyal is the tradition of this conduct in the Christian church, from its earliest periods to our own day. It was a favorite turn in the mediaeval legends of charity that our Lord should reveal himself, even in the body, to those who had, for his love, consoled some poor object of compassion. It is written of St. Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary, that she kept always near her, and herself served, thirteen sick poor, in memory of Christ and the twelve apostles.
"Among the sick was a poor little leper named Helias, whose condition was so deplorable that no one would take charge of him. Elizabeth, seeing him thus abandoned by all, felt herself bound to do more for him than for any other; she took and bathed him herself, anointed him with a healing balm, and then laid him in the bed, even that which she shared with her royal husband. Now it happened that the duke returned to the castle whilst Elizabeth was thus occupied. His mother ran out immediately to meet him, and when he alighted she said, 'Come with me, dear son, and I will show thee a pretty doing of thy Elizabeth.' 'What does this mean?' said the duke. 'Only come,' said she, 'and thou wilt see one she loves much better than thee.' Then, taking him by the hand, she led him to his chamber and to his bed, and said to him, Now look, dear son, thy wife puts lepers in thy bed without my being able to prevent her. She wishes to give thee leprosy, thou seest it thyself.' On hearing these words, the duke could not repress a certain degree of irritation, and he quickly raised the covering of his bed; but, at the same moment, the Most High unsealed the eyes of his soul, and, in place of the leper, he saw the figure of Jesus Christ crucified extended on his bed. At this sight he remained motionless, as did his mother, and began to shed abundant tears without being able at first to utter a word. Then, turning round, he saw his wife, who had gently followed in order to calm his wrath against the leper. 'Elizabeth,' said he, 'my dear, good sister, I pray thee often to give my bed to such guests. I shall always thank thee for this, and be thou not hindered by any one in the exercise of thy virtue.' Then he knelt and prayed thus to God, 'Lord, have mercy upon me a poor sinner. I am not worthy to see all these wonders.'" [Footnote 274]
[Footnote 274: Montalembert, Life of St. Elizabeth.]
For the many illustrations of the wonderful diffusion of benevolence in the early ages of the Christian church, in contrast with the truculent spirit of the contemporaneous paganism, see Rev. Dr. Manahan's Triumph of the Catholic Church, etc.
We recall here the mention of John, Patriarch of Alexandria, who asked of his clergy a register of all the poor and destitute in that city. "Go," said he, "and get me a full list of my masters."
From the Theodosian code, it appears that the church owned large vessels, employed either in bringing to some dioceses provisions for their own flocks, or in sending help to the most afflicted communities, from Egypt even unto Gaul.
"The Cenobites, or Monks of the Desert," says St. Augustine, "used to freight these ships of charity with grain, obtained by them in exchange for the mats and baskets which they manufactured." The vast hospital, founded by St. Basil, of Cappadocia, near Caesarea, is called by St. Gregory" a new city built for the sick and poor."
Hospitals were so great an innovation on the customs of the ancient classic world, that the Emperor Julian, surnamed "The Apostate," tried in vain to introduce them. Repelling the Christian doctrine, he was sensible of the influence of Christian charity, and would fain have engrafted on the pagan stock this fruit of another dispensation.
Why are the poor and afflicted especially given in charge to the church, and why does the Christian see them with quite other eyes than those of mere benevolence? Why is Christ identified, in his birth and companionship, with the poor? Why are the most suffering classes the first objects of his care and mediation?
If it is written that "He who shall give to one of my disciples only so much as a cup of cold water in my name, shall not lose his reward," it is also written that the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, are all our brethren in Christ. It is by virtue of that susceptibility, which the exercise of charity develops in us, that we become consciously "members one of another in the body of Christ."
Jesus Christ came to awaken in humanity a conscience including our neighbor, a conservative instinct embracing the relations of the individual with the species, unlimited by family, clan, or nation; and which transcends the analysis of a Malthus, a Locke, or a La Rochefoucauld. [Footnote 275]
[Footnote 275: That Sister of the Poor, whom you pass in the street with her basket, and perhaps look down upon as on a creature of inferior grade, is living closer to the heart of universal love, is deeper in celestial wisdom than the proud philosopher; leads a life more heroic in its abnegation and humility than the general with his bloody laurels. This is so, because the divine influx of life moulds the will and the affections, and moves the bowels of compassion long before the brain matures its schemes of action.]
The suffering persons or classes are the atoms, the organs, or the local points where the life of humanity is threatened or compromised; thither, with unwonted energy, must its vital resources be directed; and how directed? Here we find the contrast between the spirit of Christ and that of pagan or schismatic countries. Ignoring the true unity of man, paganism merely suppressed the effects of misery by suppressing the person of the miserable. It did not consider that the spirit of cruelty, developed or encouraged in this elimination, is itself a living cause and propagator of human misery. Religious sympathy alone could quicken the intelligence to this perception, and find something precious in the life of the wretch rescued from his wretchedness; find beneath the rags, the dirt, and the chains, beneath ignorance, the vices, and diseases, that "a man's a man for a' that." Again, Christianity discerned precious discipline of virtue in the exercise of charity, and practised it no less for the sake of the giver than that of the receiver. This is a practical commentary on the axiom of human unity or solidarity, anticipating the fuller light which may be expected from a knowledge of our ulterior destinies.
Wherever the church has nobly filled her part as the social conscience of Christendom, (a function for which the confessional so well adapts her,) she has been the intelligent mediator between those who need to give or to serve, and those who are really in need; she has maintained a social equilibrium while averting the jealousies and hatreds of classes, and by her enlightened and judicious distribution has prevented charity from ministering to vices and imposture.
"The poor ye shall have always with you." The worst prejudices only will interpret this saying of our Lord so as to discourage our efforts to eliminate, from the condition of the poor, its actual vices, disgraces, and miseries. This once effected by means, the success of which experience has verified, there remains an honorable poverty due to the disinterested devotions of science, art, and social affections, in which the love of our neighbor, under divers forms, absorbs cupidity and the cares of self-preservation. The church has always encouraged vows of voluntary poverty, and directed the zeal which animated them to Christian uses. She has permitted the rich to expiate their crimes by sharing their fortunes with the poor, even by soliciting alms for them; and we are told that Roman nobles have been seen, during this very year, thus begging in the streets of Rome. To a noble poverty belong the first years, and often the whole life, of the inventor, of the true artist, of all whose originality of conception or fidelity to the ideal transcends prudential economy. We may glance but in passing at that "Bohemia," where floating wrecks mingle in disorder with germinal forces of the social future. In proportion as the constitution of societies shall be perfected in kind and useful labors, those in whose characters friendship predominates, whether attached to holy orders like the Trappists and Sisters of Charity, or simply members of the church of Christ, will content themselves with the common minimum, and work in their elected spheres without care for any other material compensation. To such has Christ said: "Take no care what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed," etc. "Consider the lilies," etc. We shall not confound these noble poor with paupers, a term which comprehends indifferently the victims of misfortune, of vice, and of disease; deficient in faculties either corporeal or mental, or in consistency of purpose, principle, and will. Pauperism is not to be regarded as a state of suffering to which the Christian should be resigned; far from being an expiation of sin, it is not only humiliation, but degradation and perversion, and owes its parasite existence to the absence or decline of Christian life.
The Catholic Church commenced an exterminating war on pauperism in those fraternal associations which sprang from the breath of the Saviour, and which its religious orders have never intermitted. Disbanded by the persecutions of the Roman empire, they rallied to works of charity; and, gradually obtaining spiritual ascendency over Europe, organized agriculture and the arts of peace. In the sixth century, the Benedictines and Columbans reclaimed the soils of Europe from their wilderness, and their peoples from the worst of barbarism.
The monasteries and convents, considered from the point of view of political and social economy, were agricultural, scientific, and domestic associations, with fields, gardens, and orchards, libraries, laboratories, and workshops, provided with all the means and facilities known in their age and country for the subjection of nature's resources to the progressive evolution of humanity. Fusing the nobles and the people, absorbing, in the sentiment of our common fatherhood in God and brotherhood in Christ, the invidious distinctions of caste, reconciling again in their administration the behests of spiritual culture with the exigencies of material existence and refinement of taste in letters and the arts, the monastic orders were for Christendom a most benign providence. Their charities never have been limited to the necessities of mere subsistence, like the secular dolings out of so-called modern charity. Hearts must respond to the needs of hearts, and brains to those of brains; in other words, the organization of Christian charity essentially embraces social life and education, intellectual and moral culture, as well as the conditions of labor, of remuneration, of lodging, of clothing, and nourishment, comprised in the guarantee of access to the soil. By separating the material from the spiritual elements of charity, Christendom retrogrades into paganism; less brutal, less ferocious, the economic (?) workhouse system is colder and still more inhuman than those methods of summary destruction by which Greece removed her supernumerary helots, or Rome her infirm poor.
"It is not without a mingled shame and fear," says Mrs. Jameson, of the English workhouse, "that I approach this subject. Whatever their arrangement and condition, in one thing I found all alike—the want of a proper moral supervision.
"The most vulgar of human beings are set to rule over the most vulgar; the pauper is set to manage the pauper; the ignorant govern the ignorant; every softening or elevating influence is absent or of rare occurrence, and every hardening and depraving influence continuous or ever at hand. Never did I visit any dungeon, any abode of crime or misery, in any country, which left me the same crushing sense of sorrow, indignation, and compassion—almost despair—as some of our English workhouses. Never did I see more clearly what must be the inevitable consequences where the feminine and religious influences are ignored; where what we call charity is worked by a stern, hard machinery; where what we mean for good is not bestowed but inflicted on others in a spirit not pitiful, nor merciful, but reluctant and adverse, if not cruel. Perhaps those who hear me may not all be aware of the origin of our parish workhouses. They were not designed as penitentiaries, although they have really become such. They were intended to be religious and charitable institutions, to supply the place of those conventual hospitals and charities which, with their revenues, were suppressed by Henry VIII.
"The epithet 'charitable' could never be applied to any parish workhouse I have seen. Our machine-charity is as much charity, in the Christian sense, as the praying-machines of the Tartars are piety.
"These institutions are supported by a variable tax, paid so reluctantly, with so little sympathy in its purpose, that the wretched paupers seem to be regarded as a sort of parish locusts, sent to devour the substance of the rate-payers; as the natural enemies of those who are taxed for their subsistence, almost as criminals; and I have no hesitation in saying that the convicts in some of our jails have more charitable and more respectful treatment than the poor in our workhouses. Hence, a notion prevails among the working-classes that it is better to be a criminal than a pauper—better to go to a jail than to a workhouse.
"Between the poor and their so-called guardians, the bond is anything but charity.
"A gentleman who had served the office said to me: 'I am really unfit to be a poor-law guardian; I have some vestige of humanity left in me!' Under these guardians, and in immediate contact with the poor, are a master and a matron, who keep the accounts, distribute food and clothing, and keep order. Among them some are respected and loved, others hated or feared; some are kindly and intelligent, others of the lowest grade. In one workhouse the master had been a policeman, in another the keeper of a small public-house, in another he had served in the same workhouse as porter. The subordinates are not of a higher grade, except occasionally the school-master and school-mistress, whom I have sometimes found struggling to perform their duties, sometimes quite unfitted for them, and sometimes resigned to routine and despair.
"In the wards for the old and the sick, the intense vulgarity, the melancholy dulness, mingled with a strange license and levity, are dreadful. I attribute both to the utter absence of the religious and feminine element.
"But is there not always a chaplain? The chaplain has seemed to me in such places rather a religious accident than a religious element. When he visits a ward to read and pray once a week, perhaps there is a decorum in his presence; the oaths, the curses, the vile language cease; the vulgar strife is silenced, to recommence the moment his back is turned. I remember one instance in which the chaplain had requested that the poor, profligate women might be kept out of his way. They had, indeed, shown themselves somewhat obstreperous and irreverent. I saw another chaplain of a great workhouse so shabby that I should have mistaken him for one of the paupers. In doing his duty, he would fling a surplice over his dirty, torn coat, kneel down at the entrance of a ward, hurry over two or three prayers, heard from the few beds nearest to him, and then off to another ward. The salary for this minister for the sick and poor was twenty pounds a year. This, then, is the religious element; as if religion were not the necessary, inseparable, ever-present, informing spirit of a Christian charitable institution, but rather something extraneous and accidental, to be taken in set doses at set times. This is what our workhouses provide to awaken the faith, rouse the conscience, heal the broken spirit, and light up the stupefied faculties of a thousand unhappy, ignorant, debased human beings congregated together.
"Then as to the feminine element in a great and well-ordered workhouse, under conscientious management, (to take a favorable specimen,) I visited sixteen wards, in each ward from fifteen to twenty-five sick, aged, bedridden, or helpless poor. In each ward all the assistance given and all the supervision were in the hands of one nurse and a helper, both chosen from among the pauper women supposed to be the least immoral and drunken. The ages of the nurses might be from sixty-five to eighty years; the assistants were younger.
"The number of inmates under medical treatment in the year 1854 in the London workhouses was over 50,000, (omitting one, the Marylebone.) To these there were 70 paid nurses and 500 pauper nurses and assistants, (not more than one fifth of the number requisite for effective nursing, even if they were all able nurses.)
"As the unpaid pauper nurses have some additional allowance of tea or beer, it is not unusual for the medical attendant to send such poor feeble old women as require some little indulgence to be nurses in the sick wards."
Such is the standard of qualification, and as for their assistants, Mrs. Jameson found some of them nearly blind and others maimed of a limb. She remembers no cheerful faces; their features and deportment were melancholy, or sullen, or bloated, or harsh, and these are the nurses to whom the sick poor are confided!
"In one workhouse the nurses had a penny a week and extra beer; in another the allowance had been a shilling a month, but recently withdrawn by the guardians from motives of economy. The matron told me that while this allowance continued, she could exercise some control over the nurses, she could stop their allowance if they did not behave well; now she has no hold on them! They all drink. Whenever it is their turn to go out for a few hours, they come back intoxicated, and have to be put to bed in the wards they are set over!"
Mrs. Jameson speaks of bribery as the only means by which some of the bedridden patients could obtain help.
"Any little extra allowance of tea or sugar, left by pitying friends, went in this way. One nurse made five shillings a week by thus fleecing the poor inmates. Those who could not pay this tax were neglected, and implored in vain to be turned in their beds. The matron knows that these things exist, but has no power to prevent them; she knows not what tyranny may be exercised in her absence by her deputies, for the wretched creatures dare not complain, knowing how it would be visited upon them."
In some workhouses many who can work will not; in others the inmates are confined to such labor as is degrading, such as is a punishment in prisons, which excites no faculty of attention, or hope, or sympathy, which contemplates no improvement, namely, picking oakum, etc., and this lest there should exist some kind of competition injurious to tradesmen.
As to the "out-door relief" at certain workhouses, Mrs. Jameson says it was distributed to creatures penned up for hours in foul air, who waited sullenly for the bread doled out with curses. She complains again here of the system which brings a brutal and vulgar power to bear on vulgarity or brutality, the bad and defective organization to bear on one bad and defective, "so you increase and multiply and excite, as in a hot-bed, all the material of evil instead of neutralizing it with good, and, thus leavened, you turn it out on society to contaminate all around."
Rev. J. S. Brewer, a workhouse chaplain, in his lectures to ladies on practical subjects, writes of the insensible influence which the mere presence of ladies, their voice, their common words, their ordinary manners, their thoughts, all that they carry unconsciously about them, can exercise on the poor; but this applies to real ladies, cultivated, gentle, well-born, well-bred. There are no people more alive to gentle blood and gentle manners than the English poor. He confirms in other respects the preceding remarks of Mrs. Jameson, and says of the children:
"The disorderly girls and boys of our streets are mainly the produce of the workhouse and the workhouse schools. Over them the society has no hold, because they have been taught to feel that they have nothing in common with their fellow-men. Their experience is not of a home or parents, but of a workhouse and a governor, of a prison and of a jailer."
Nature exhibits two contrasted methods for controlling that tendency to increase of population beyond a due proportion to the means of subsistence, which seems to justify in the eyes of some political economists the partial destruction of the species by war. One of these methods is extermination; the other, elevation. Malthus says, in substance: I would share all my having with the poor. I would proclaim this the duty of the rich, were it possible, by even enforcing and continuing the most liberal distribution of goods, while all were working faithfully to increase the yield of the earth as fast as the mouths that consume it would multiply; but extensive observation and experience proves that, the easier life is made for the poor, the faster they increase; this increase is at a ratio so much greater than the means of subsistence are capable of reaching, that we should soon be all paupers unless we restrain each local population within the ratio of its provisions.
Malthus understood that high-toned character and uncommon force of will were essential to the perfection of such restraint. He invokes the influence of the church and of education to this effect. One step further, however, in the filiation of ideas would have led him to perceive a supreme harmony in the equilibrium between population and subsistence, arising out of the perfection of organic types and individual characters; so that quality is the cure of quantity.
If it be true, as travellers affirm, that in Europe the temperate are divided from the intemperate populations by a curve which, commencing at the eastern extremity of France, intersects Berlin and terminates at Sevastopol, being the northern limit of the vine-growing countries; then, a fortiori, will the greatest temperance be found among peoples whose refinement not only rejects distilled liquors but the coarser qualities of wine, and will have either the very best or none.
This law is universal. Compare the order of mammifers, a high type like man or the elephant, with a low type like the rabbit or mouse. Species are more prolific with each grade in their descent. Now compare the order of mammifers with the order of fishes, passing through the birds and reptiles, embracing all vertebrate animals; still the lower are more prolific, and consequently more subject to destruction. Now compare the vertebrate type with the insect, passing through the articulate. Still the same increase of numerical ratio down the scale of life; and when we reach polyps and plants, every section, every bud, may become a complete organism, and multiplication takes place by several methods at once—seeds, tubers, roots, suckers, buds, etc. Follow this law in the science of breeding. Even among fish, the fat and well-conditioned breed but slowly, and "ponds of misery" are kept for breeding carps. The history of the turf verifies similar facts in the physiology of the horse.
We no longer wonder that the hovels of the suffering poor should swarm with children; but the analogies of the animal kingdom encourage us to believe that social and industrial procedures, which convert these children into Christians and launch them in the path of a general prosperity, will itself tend to reduce the ratio of their increase by a method more expedient than those of war, pestilence, or famine.
In conclusion: If the first of these natural methods of checking population be adapted to the world of the fall—a world of selfishness and sin—the other method is adapted to the world of the redemption—a world of Christian co-operation and love of our neighbor. By the first method, population is reduced so effectively that the most agreeable portions of the earth's surface remain almost untouched by human culture. When, by the triumph of true religion, wars and their consequences cease to vex humanity, population may increase until it covers the area of the habitable globe, without danger of starving itself, without sinking into pauperism. The numerical population of the world may increase while its actual ratio of propagation is diminished, and is harmonized with its capacity of production. Such is the logic of charity, which in relieving suffering aims at the spiritual elevation of character and the permanent protection of mankind.