me off the stand, or bid me say to their concealed opponent, ‘Thank you
for nothing. If others have yielded first, we shall owe nothing to
you.’”

“Well but, Allen, you don’t seem to me to know the difficulty I am in,
if you use my name. You don’t know how unpleasant——”

“Pardon me, sir, I do know. You and I are neither of us men of nerve,
Mr. Rowe, and so far, you have chosen your listener well. Clack would
have laughed in your face, by this time, and been half way to the
Spread-Eagle to tell the people there all that you have been saying; but
I have so far a sympathy with you that I know the misery of looking
round and seeing entanglement with one party or another on every
side—blame from one or another sure to come. I know the longing to be
somehow out of the scrape, the shrinking back with the hope of keeping
out of sight, the dread of every one that comes near lest some new
difficulty should be arising. I can pity you, sir, for all these
feelings, for I have felt them myself.”

“Have you? have you indeed?” replied Rowe, grasping his hand again.
“What a sad thing it is for you, then, to be a leader of a turn-out.”

“I am of a different opinion, sir. Because these feelings are natural to
some persons, it does not follow that they should be indulged. It will
not do to indulge them, sir, believe me. We have our duties as well as
men of our make on the field of battle; and we must surrender ourselves,
like them, to our duties, or be disgraced in our own eyes. Happen what
will within us or without us, it is for you and me to speak out, to act
openly, and bear the consequences. You will excuse my freedom.”

Another grasp of the hand, with a speech about the secretary’s
integrity; upon which Allen rose, saying,—

“Then as we are of one mind, sir, suppose we go together to the meeting,
and say what we have to say there, instead of shut up in this parlour. I
believe I can promise you a courteous hearing.”

“O no, no; that is quite out of the question. I have no offer, you know,
to make on behalf of the masters,—nothing to say that I should think of
occupying the meeting with.”

“Then you can have nothing to say to me, sir, since, as an individual, I
have no power to negotiate. Good morning, Mr. Rowe.”

“Stay a moment, Allen. You understand that the men are not to know of
this interview; and it is of more importance still that the masters
should not. Promise me, Allen.”

“I can promise no such thing,” said Allen, returning from the door. “I
regard your consent to be the second to raise wages as a concession, and
I was going to report it to Mr. Wentworth.”

“For God’s sake don’t!”

“I must,” said Allen, firmly; and all entreaty, all reproach, was in
vain.

“At least, don’t give up the name. The fact will do just as well without
the name. Give me your word to conceal the name till you see me again.”

Out of pure compassion, Allen yielded thus far. Mr. Rowe accompanied him
to the house-door, harping upon “the name, the name,” till Allen turned
round to say gravely,

“A promise once given is enough, sir, between honest men. I have given
you my word.”

“True, true, my good friend. It is only a trick I have got of repeating
my sentences.”

And the gentleman shut the door behind his guest, feeling very like a
child who has persuaded her maid not to tell her governess who broke the
china cup; knowing all the time that the mishap must come to light, and
trembling every time any one goes near the cupboard.

                         ---------------------

                              CHAPTER IX.

                           A PUBLIC MEETING.

“How much did you fall short to-day?” inquired Allen, as he joined in
with a group of committee-men going to the meeting.

“Sixty pounds; but we shall make it up before three days are over,
depend upon it; and, besides, the masters will yield as soon as Clack is
done for, you’ll see. Wentworth is before us, going to the meeting. But
what have you been about, Allen, playing truant on pay-day?”

“Preaching fortitude and giving a fillip to the faint-hearted.”

“As Christian a duty as feeding the hungry and easing the poor,”
observed a companion. “If Allen is absent from a good deed, you may be
sure he is doing a better.”

There was no part of Allen’s duty that he disliked more than opening the
weekly meetings. The applause discomposed him. He could not, like Clack,
make a deprecating flourish of the hands, or shake his head modestly, or
look round with a proud smile. He was very apt to fidget, and swing his
hat, and make a short, ungraceful bow. As soon as he found this out, he
adopted one posture, from which he determined not to move till the thing
was over. He folded his arms and dropped his head upon his breast, and
so stood as if facing a gust of wind, till the clapping had sunk into
silence.—This day, the clapping on his appearance was twice as long and
twice as vehement as usual, Clack’s former popularity being transferred
to himself. Mr. Wentworth appeared in time to share his honours, and to
relieve him from applause, which seemed as if it would never end. Clack
would fain have appropriated both series of cheers; but he could not
manage it. As soon as he began to bow and look flattered, there arose
cries of “Off, off!” which strengthened into groans when he attempted to
brave them. With a nervous sneer, the orator observed to those within
hearing that his time would soon come, when he would carry off more
cheers than any of them.

“Better put yourself under Allen’s wing, if you want to be clapped,”
observed Mr. Wentworth. “I conclude it was because I stood next to him
that they cheered me to-day, instead of groaning, as they did a week
ago. We must submit to be beholden to Allen—hey, Clack?”

With a look of ineffable contempt, the orator withdrew as far as he
could from Allen, without going out of sight, while Mr. Wentworth sat
down to take a pinch of snuff on the edge of the waggon in which the
speakers were stationed.

The object of the meeting was to obtain the opinions of the people on
certain questions to be proposed; and, in order to put Clack out of the
pain of suspense, his affair was the first brought on. Allen expressed
himself in the most moderate terms he could devise, saying that it
sometimes happened that the usefulness of an individual was not in
proportion to his zeal in the cause he had espoused, or to his desire to
fulfil its duties, especially where the likings of two opposite parties
had to be consulted; that it so happened, in the present case, that the
individual in question did not possess the confidence of the masters,
and that his remaining a member of the Committee might therefore prove
an obstacle in the way of an amicable agreement. It was for the meeting
to declare whether they were willing to take the chance of an
accommodation by naming some substitute for Clack, who might be equally
energetic in their service, and more agreeable to their employers. After
a pause, and with evident effort, he added, that if the conduct of the
person in question had been, in all respects, such as the Union could
approve, it would have gone hard with the committee before they would
have sanctioned his removal from office; but, as it seemed too evident
that the cause had received injury by his means in ways which he might
be spared the pain of pointing out, they might consider themselves
relieved from the perplexity of reconciling consideration for the
individual with a regard to the interests of the body.

A hubbub ensued; a strong party of Clack’s friends raising shouts on his
behalf, while opposing cries rose on all sides of “Down with the
blusterer!” “Who waylaid the carrier?” “He is none of us. The Union
keeps the laws.” “Law and concord! No Clack!”

Quiet was restored on Mr. Wentworth’s rising to explain that his being
present was not to be considered as a sign that the masters would yield
on Clack’s dismissal. He had no authority to confirm any such belief.

Applause,—and Clack doomed by an overwhelming majority; whereupon his
supporters made their way to the waggon, agreed with him that the
meeting was not worth addressing, even if he _had_ been allowed to
speak; and carried him off on their shoulders to fish for popularity in
the streets of Manchester, while the meeting conducted its affairs as
well as it could without him. So ended that matter, except that somehow
Clack and his party were forestalled in their return into the town, and
the walls everywhere presented, conspicuous in white chalk, the phrase
which still rang in their ears, “Law and Concord! No Clack!” An
extraordinary number of little boys too seemed to have taken the fancy
to mimick the action of weaving, with arm and foot, crying at the same
time

                      “Clickity, clickity, clack,
                      Lay him on his back!
                      Clickity, clickity, clack,
                      Away let him pack!”

Far more decorous was the meeting in their rear, while the queries were
dismissed, each in its turn.

“The case of Ann Howlett being admitted by all parties to be a hard one,
(her contract being for wages which would not support her,) was her
breach of contract sanctioned by the Union?”

Shouts of “No; we would have helped her to perform it!”

“If this breach of contract had been sanctioned by the Union, was it
thought lawful revenge for the committal of Ann Howlett to waylay the
carrier and strip his cart?”

Groans, and shouts of “No revenge!”

Some one near the cart having spoken to Allen, he put the question,—

“Supposing this attack to have no connexion with Ann Howlett’s affair,
does the Union sanction forcible attempts to prevent work being carried
into the country?”

Answer, “No. Law and Concord for ever!”

“If the men abide by the law, and the masters are found disposed to
concord, will the Union be disposed to concession?”

Mixed cries, the most distinguishable of which was, “Stick by the Union!
The Union for ever!”

Mr. Wentworth and Allen exchanged nods, as much as to say, “You
see”—“Yes, I see.”

“Supposing the Union to be preserved entire, are its members disposed to
any concession in respect of wages?”

Cries of “Equalization!”

“An equalization is, as the Committee knows, indispensable; but the
point on which the Committee has not yet received your instructions is
whether that equalization may be fixed below the highest rate, _viz._,
that which Elliott is now giving?”

The answers were at first hesitating, then confused, so that no one
prevailed.

“Don’t press for an answer yet,” said Mr. Wentworth. “I may tell them
something which may help their judgments.”

Way was made for Mr. Wentworth, and he presented himself to speak.

“Before you put this question to the vote, let me just mention a
circumstance or two that you may not be aware of, from your having been
lately out of communication with the factories. There are few things
that we hear more of than of the changes that all mortal things are
liable to; and these changes affect the affair we have in hand, like all
other affairs. We are told that every one rises from sleep in the
morning a different man from him who lay down at night; there having
been a waste and repair of the substance of which the bodily man is
composed. In the same manner, you may find that your strike is a
different thing to-day from what it was at its beginning. Some of its
parts have fallen off, and others have been added. Whether your body,
having undergone this change, be the more vigorous, like a man refreshed
with sleep, you know better than I. But further, whenever you return to
your work, you may find a factory a very different place on re-entering
from what it was on your leaving it. There has been much waste, I fear,
without any repair. You know what kind of waste I refer to. You have
heard of large orders, which we have been unable to execute, having been
sent to Scotland and elsewhere. You know that much of our capital, which
ought by this time to be returning to us again, has been for many weeks
locked up in our stocks of raw material. You know that the expense of
keeping on our establishments has not been repaid by the production of
goods for the market; or the cost of maintaining ourselves and our
families, by the profitable employment of our time and our wits. We have
been consuming idly, and so have you; and thus there must needs have
been great waste.—And what is it which has been thus wasted? The fund
which is to maintain you; the fund out of which your wages are paid.
Your strike has already lasted long enough to change our ground of
dispute. You will find that the question with the masters now is,
whether fewer of you than before shall be employed at the same wages, or
fewer still at higher wages, or as many as before at lower wages than
you have yet received. Keep on your strike a little longer, and the
question will be, how many less shall be employed, at how much less.
Keep it on long enough, and the question will be entirely settled; there
will be no wages for anybody. Do you understand me?”

The speaker took snuff while the murmur of disapprobation went round,
and then continued.

“I do not suppose, any more than you, that we shall come to this pass,
because your capital must be exhausted sooner than ours, and then you
must have bread, and will come to us for work before our fund for wages
is all wasted away; but the nearer you drive us to this point, the more
injury you do yourselves. Let me hear your objection, friend,” he
continued to a man in the crowd who looked eager to speak. “Where do you
think me wrong? You acknowledge that a strike is a bad thing, but
sometimes necessary to obtain a good one. Refusing wages altogether for
a time, is to be the means of securing better afterwards. Do I
understand you right? Why, that would be very true if you had the power
or were in the habit of keeping workmen and wages in proportion to each
other. If the masters had more capital than was necessary to pay you all
at the rate you have hitherto received, you might gain your point by a
strike, not as you sometimes do now, just for a little time till the
masters can shake themselves free of their engagement,—but permanently.
But this is not the case. The masters’ capital does not return enough to
pay you all at the rate you desire. If they are to keep their capital
entire, you must either take less wages, or fewer of you must take wages
at all. If you will all have the wages you desire, the capital which
pays them wastes away, and ruin approaches. This is the worst event that
could happen, as I am sure we shall all agree. Your alternative,
therefore, is to withdraw a portion of your people from taking wages, or
all to take less than you are striking for. You are not satisfied yet?
(speaking to the same man.) Well, let me hear. There are places where
there are no strikes, because the workmen get as high wages as they wish
for? Very true; there are such places, and London is one; concerning
which I heard, the other day, a case in point.

“The money wages of skilled labour in London were higher from 1771 to
1793 than was ever known. They had been raised because prices were high.
They were afterwards somewhat lowered; but as prices fell in a greater
proportion after the war, the real wages of skilled labour are at
present higher than they had ever been. They cannot be lowered while, as
at present, there is an occasional deficiency of labour, since the men
would strike when most wanted by the masters, and the loss thus caused
would be greater than the gain of giving lower wages. In London there
are two seasons in every year; a slack season in which many workmen
remain unemployed; and a busy season in which they work overhours,
because there are not hands enough. Now, here, you see, lies their
advantage; in the supply of labour being limited. If it was the case
with them, as with you, that some of their class always remained
unemployed, the unemployed would undersell the busy, and wages would
fall. Then, as here, there would be strikes; and then, as here, strikes
would be of no avail. Where there are permanently fewer workmen than are
wanted the men hold the power. Where there is the exact number that is
wanted, the power is equal, and the contest fair. Where there are more
than are wanted, even to the extent of three unemployed to a hundred,
the power is in the masters’ hands, and strikes must fail. Must there
not be a larger surplus of unemployed labour than this in our
neighbourhood, and elsewhere, since wages are fallen too low to enable
the labourer to do more than barely exist? Allen, is there a silk
small-ware weaver present, do you suppose? They have just struck, I
find.”

Proclamation was made for a silk small-ware weaver, and several held up
their hands. In answer to questions, they stated that within two years
their wages had been reduced forty-five per cent. Two years before,
common galloon weaving was paid at the rate of 1_s._ 10_d._ per gross;
it was now reduced to 1_s._ 4_d._ per gross; and it was for an addition
of 2_d._ per gross that the men struck: little enough when it is
considered that, in the winter season, a weaver cannot average more than
twelve gross per week. As he has to pay for the hire of his loom, for
winding, for candle-light, and other expenses belonging to his work, he
has left only about 8_s._ a week for himself and his family.

“Could so dreadful a reduction have ever taken place,” continued Mr.
Wentworth, “if you had not undersold one another? And how are the
masters to help you if you go on increasing your numbers and
underselling one another, as if your employers could find occupation for
any number of millions of you, or could coin the stones under your feet
into wages, or knead the dust of the earth into bread? They do what they
can for you in increasing the capital on which you are to subsist; and
you must do the rest by proportioning your numbers to the means of
subsistence. But see how the masters are met! In Huddersfield the
masters are doing their utmost to extend their trade; but the multitudes
who are to subsist by it increase much faster. There are now thirteen
thousand work-people in that place who toil for twopence halfpenny a
day. At Todmorden, the most skilful work fourteen hours a day for the
pittance of one shilling. In the fair county of Kent there are thirty
thousand who earn no more than sixpence a day. Compare this state of
things with the condition of skilled labour wages in London, and see how
much depends on the due proportion of labourers, and the capital by
which they are to be fed. Would you could be convinced that your strike,
besides occasioning vexation and ill-will between the two parties,
besides inflicting distress upon yourselves, and inconvenience upon your
employers, cannot but be worse than in vain!”

During the last few sentences, several persons had been engaged in
conference with Bray, who leaned over a corner of the waggon to hear
what they had to say. He now came forward and placed himself beside Mr.
Wentworth, observing that all that had fallen from the gentleman seemed
pretty true and reasonable as far as it went, but that it did not at all
explain what course the people had now to pursue. It was poor comfort to
tell the people that wages could not be any higher on account of their
numbers, since it was not in their power to lessen those numbers.

“It is not with the view of giving present comfort,” replied Mr.
Wentworth, “that I represent what appears to me to be the truth: for
alas! there is but little comfort in the case any way. My object is to
prevent your making a bad case worse; and if it were possible, to
persuade you not to prepare for your descendants a repetition of the
evils under which you are yourselves suffering. All that you can now do,
is to live as you best may upon such wages as the masters can give,
keeping up your sense of respectability and your ambition to improve
your state when better times shall come. You must watch every
opportunity of making some little provision against the fluctuations of
our trade, contributing your money rather for your mutual relief in hard
times, than for the support of strikes. You must place your children out
to different occupations, choosing those which are least likely to be
overstocked; and, above all, you must discourage in them the imprudent,
early marriages to which are mainly owing the distresses which afflict
yourselves and those which will for some time, I fear, oppress your
children. You ask me what you must do. These things are all that I can
suggest.”

“But these things, sir, will not guard our children any more than
ourselves from the fluctuations in trade you speak of.”

“But they will prevent those fluctuations from being so injurious as
they now are. The lower wages are, the more are such fluctuations felt.
In India, where an average day’s wages are only three-pence, the people
live in the poorest possible manner,—such as the poorest of you have no
idea of. Any decrease of wages, therefore, makes the more weakly of the
labourers lie down and die. In Ireland, where the average is five-pence
a day, there is less positive starvation than in India, but more
distress on a fall of wages, than in England. In England, such
fluctuations are less felt than in old days, when the people knew
nothing of many things which you now call necessaries. The better the
state of the people, the better able are they to stand against the
changes to which all trades are liable; but the worst of it is that we
are all too little inclined to foresee the effects of these changes, and
to provide for them; and when we experience the necessary consequences
of a change which took place twenty years before, we are apt to suppose
these consequences arise from something amiss at the present time. When
a demand for any article of manufacture makes labour unusually
profitable, labourers provide for a great decline of wages in future
years, by bringing up large families to the same employment. During many
years, that is, while their children are growing up, they feel no ill
effects, and suppose that all is going on right. When a decline of wages
comes, they suppose it happens from some new circumstance, and not from
their own deed in overstocking the labour market. Again; it must be some
time before the effects of a decline in lessening the supply of labour
are felt. A part of the population perishes slowly from want and misery,
and others are made prudent in respect of marriage; but by the time
these checks are seen to operate, a new period of prosperity has
arrived, which is ascribed by the people to accident. It is this
impossibility of making the supply of labour suit the demand at a
moment’s notice, which makes fluctuations in trade so sensibly felt, for
good or for evil, by the labourer. Since he cannot, as you say, Mr.
Bray, diminish the number of workmen when trade is slack, and if he
wishes his descendants not to be plunged into degradation by extreme
poverty, he will do what in him lies to prevent population from
increasing faster than the capital which is to support it.”

Mr. Wentworth was encouraged to pursue his argumentative manner of
speaking by the attention of the people near the waggon. Some of them
had become a little tired of the weekly meetings at which their orators
had said the same things over and over again, and were pleased to be
reasoned with by one whom they esteemed, and to obtain, by these means,
a better insight into their affairs than was given them by leaders who
were all of one party. The more the present meeting assumed the
character of a conference, the more eagerly the most thinking men in the
crowd pressed towards the waggon, and cheered the questions and replies.
Those on the outskirts, who were more fond of noise and display, were at
liberty to come and go as they pleased; to listen to Mr. Wentworth, or
to follow Clack.

Bray now observed that population must increase rapidly indeed, as it
had outstripped the increase of capital in the cotton manufacture. He
believed so rapid an increase of capital had never been known before. To
this Mr. Wentworth replied by asking of the crowd whether there was any
one among them who had known James Hargraves. An old man stept forwards
and said that he was a native of Blackburn, and had been accustomed, as
a boy, to frequent Hargraves’ workshop; that he remembered seeing the
carpenter busy about his invention, and his own delight at having the
design of the spinning-jenny explained to him by the inventor; he saw
directly how eight threads could be spun instead of one, and thought it
a very fine thing, and had little notion how soon it would be so much
improved upon as that a little girl might work one hundred, or one
hundred and twenty spindles. When was this? Why, a few years after the
old king George began to reign; in 1767, he believed.

“When that king came to the throne,” observed Mr. Wentworth, “the whole
value of the cotton goods manufactured in this country was only
200,000_l._ a year.”

“There were very few people employed in it then,” interrupted the old
man. “We had no factories and no towns full of cotton-spinners and
weavers. My father used to take his work home to his own cottage, and
grow the flax that was then used for warp in his own garden, and set my
mother to card and spin the raw cotton for the weft. This, and getting
the warp from Ireland, was the way till Arkwright’s spinning frame came
into use.”

“Then was the time,” said Mr. Wentworth, “that the people in China and
in India had no rivals in the market for whatever was made of cotton. We
owe it to these machines, and the mule-jenny, and the power-loom that
came in afterwards, that though we have to bring our cotton from
thousands of miles off, and though the wages in India are, as I said,
only 3_d._ a day, we have beaten them in the competition, and can carry
back their cotton five thousand miles, made into a cheaper fabric than
they can afford. Such powers as these must make our capital grow; and
the fact is that the cotton manufacture is the chief business carried on
in the country, and that it has enabled us to sustain burdens which
would have crushed any other people. Instead of 200,000_l._, the annual
produce of the manufacture is now more than 36,000,000_l._ We have no
means of knowing how few persons were employed sixty years ago; but it
is reckoned that the manufacture now affords subsistence to more than
1,400,000 persons. This enormous population has arisen naturally enough
from the rise of the manufacture; but your present condition shows that
it has already gone too far; and it rests with yourselves to determine
whether the evil shall be found to have increased fifty years hence. And
now, Allen, you know the reason of the clause I added to your query in
the arbour.”

“Will our trade go on increasing?” was the next question asked.

“I hope and trust that it will, as we have got the start of our
competitors abroad; but it will probably increase at a slower rate; and
a succession of strikes may prove its destruction.”

Here the speaker abruptly ceased, and nothing could induce him to say
more. He let himself down from the waggon, and quietly made his way
through the crowd, thinking perhaps that the people would draw their
inferences from what he had said more freely in his absence.

The substance of Mr. Wentworth’s argument, and especially the last words
he spoke, left Allen and others thoughtful. They would not, on the
impulse of the moment, advise a compromise with the masters; but
appointed another general meeting for the next day, to take into
consideration some matters of important concern.

One matter of important concern was taken into immediate consideration,
however. As soon as Allen had turned his back, some members of the
committee recalled the crowd for a few minutes, related how Allen had,
from time to time, refused money in compensation for his services, and
moved that a suit of clothes should be voted to him. This was a present
which he could not refuse, if given under colour of enabling him to
appear more respectably as their advocate before the masters, and would
serve to make a proper distinction between such a sound friend to their
cause as Allen, and such a frothy fellow as Clack. The motion was
carried by acclamation; and as all Allen’s scruples were so forestalled
as that he could not decline the gift, he was, before nightfall, clothed
in a suit which must mark him out at the meetings as leader of the Union
proceedings.

                         ---------------------

                               CHAPTER X.

                            HOPE DECLINING.

Alas! what is so fleeting as popularity! Allen’s was in great part gone
before morning. Some mischievously disposed persons, who had marked what
impression had been made on the mind of the secretary by Mr. Wentworth’s
speech, and who had afterwards ascertained that he wished to propose a
compromise with the masters, took upon themselves to make known that the
favourite secretary had turned tail and meant to betray the cause. A
general gathering about the waggon of all who scorned to be betrayed was
advised, in order to keep his friends at a distance and to raise a hiss
with the more effect. When, confident of his reception, Allen advanced
with a smiling countenance, in order to express his gratification at the
mark of esteem he had received, he was startled by a burst of groans and
hisses. For a moment he looked about him to see if Clack or any other
unpopular person was standing near; but signs not to be mistaken
convinced him too soon that he was the object of the people’s dislike.
He coloured scarlet, and was about to cover his face with his hands, but
checked himself, and, by a strong effort, stood it out. Those who were
near him saw how the papers in his hand shook; but his countenance was
fixed and his attitude firm. After many vain attempts to make himself
heard, he stripped off his new coat, folded it up and placed it in the
hands of the committee-men near, and sent a messenger home for his
working dress. This he communicated to the meeting the first moment that
they would let him speak. He would not accept any gift from those to
whom his services were no longer acceptable. He was ready to resign his
office,—an arduous office, which they no doubt remembered had been
forced upon him,—as soon as they should direct him into whose hands he
should deliver his papers. In the meanwhile, he would proceed with their
business, forgetful of all personal considerations.

All propositions, whether made by himself or others, tending to a
compromise, were rejected, and the meeting, after a stormy discussion,
in which no point was settled, broke up. The whole affair put Clack and
his friends in glee, and filled wiser people with grief and apprehension
of the consequences.

The first consequence was that all the children were turned off. The
masters were bent on bringing the affair to a close as speedily as
possible; and, being disappointed in the hope that the men would propose
a compromise, endeavoured to drive them to it.

This was thought by some parents far from being the worst thing that had
happened. While the Committee shook their heads over this weighty
additional item of weekly charge, many tender mothers stroked their
children’s heads and smiled when they wished them joy of their holiday,
and bade them sleep on in the mornings without thinking of the factory
bell.—It was some days before the little things got used to so strange a
difference from their usual mode of life. Some would start up from sound
sleep with the question, “Father, is it time?” Some talked in their
sleep of being too late, and went on to devour their meals hastily, as
if their time was not their own.—It would have amused some people and
made others melancholy to watch the sports of these town-bred children.
One little girl was seen making a garden;—that is, boring a hole between
two flints in a yard with a rusty pair of scissors and inserting therein
a daisy which by some rare chance had reached her hands. Others
collected the fragments of broken plates and teacups from the kennels,
and spread them out for a mock feast where there was nothing to eat. The
favourite game was playing at being cotton-spinners, a big boy frowning
and strutting and personating the master, another with a switch in his
hand being the overlooker, and the rest spinners or piecers, each trying
which could be the naughtiest and get the most threats and scolding.
Many were satisfied with lolling on the stairs of their dwellings and
looking into the streets all day long; and many nursed their baby
brothers and sisters, sitting on the steps or leaning against the walls
of the street. Hannah Bray, when not abroad with her father, took pains
to stir up her little neighbours to what she called play. She coaxed her
father into giving them a ball, and tried to teach the children in the
next yard to play hide and seek; but she often said she never before saw
such helpless and awkward people. They could not throw a ball five feet
from them, or flung it in one another’s faces so as to cause complaints
and crying-fits. In hiding, they always showed themselves, or came out
too soon or not soon enough, or jostled and threw one another down; and
they were the worst runners that could be conceived. Any one of them
trying to catch Hannah looked like a duck running after a greyhound.
Hannah began with laughing at them all round; but observing that her
father watched their play with tears in his eyes, she afterwards
contented herself with wondering in silence why some children were so
unlike others.

The affairs of all concerned in the strike looked more and more dismal
every day. There were more brawls in the streets; there was less peace
at home; for none are so prone to quarrel as those who have nothing else
to do, and whose tempers are at the same time fretted by want. All the
men who were prone to drink now spent hour after hour at the alehouse,
and many a woman now for the first time took to her “drop of comfort” at
home. Many a man who had hitherto been a helper to his wife and tender
to his children, began to slam the door behind him, after having beaten
or shaken the little ones all round, and spoken rough words to their
trembling mother. While she, dashing away her tears, looked for
something to do, and found one thing that she would wash if she had fuel
and soap, and another that she would mend if she had material and
cotton.—Now was the time to see the young woman, with the babe in her
arms, pushing at the curtained door of the dram-shop, while her husband
held it against her,—he saying,—“Well, I tell you I’m coming in five
minutes; I shan’t be five minutes,”—and she plaintively replying, “Ah, I
know, you always say so.”—Now was the time to see the good son pacing
slowly to the pawnbroker’s to pledge his aged mother’s last blanket to
buy her bread. These were the days when the important men under the
three balls civilly declared, or insolently swore, that they could and
would take no more goods in pawn, as their houses were full from top to
bottom, and there was no sale for what they had encumbered themselves
with. Never before had they been so humbly petitioned for loans,—a
mother shewing that her winter shawl or her child’s frock would take
very little room,—or a young girl urging that if a pawnbroker did not
want her grandmother’s old bible he could get more for it at a
book-stall than she could. These were the times for poor landlords to
look after their rents, and for hard landlords to press for them. These
were the days for close scrutiny to be made by the Union Committee
whether men’s wives were really lying-in, and whether each really had
the number of children he swore to; and, therefore, these were the times
when knaves tried to cheat and when honest men were wounded at having
their word questioned. Now was the time when weak-minded men thought
themselves each worse off than his neighbour. Many landlords were
pronounced the hardest that ever owned two paltry rooms; many an
applicant was certain the committee had been set against him by some
sneaking enemy. In the abstract it was allowed, however, that the
sneakers had the most to bear. Hare, for one, was in the depth of
distress. Opposition was made, week after week, to his having any relief
from the committee because he was not a hearty member of the Union; and
on one occasion, when he had with the utmost difficulty obtained an
extra shilling for his lying-in wife, and had failed in his plea that he
was dunned for rent, he found on returning home that his landlord had
sent in the officers during his absence, who had taken away all the
little he possessed, but the mattress on which his wife lay. It was laid
on the floor, the bedstead being gone; and the children and their mother
were left crying within four bare walls.—Allen, to whose knowledge this
hard case was brought, could do little to relieve it; but he almost
succeeded in convincing his nervous wife that their own sufferings were
light in comparison. Yet they had many painful sacrifices to make,—the
more painful to Allen because his wife was not convinced that they were
necessary. She urged that he might now ask for some of the money the
Committee had formerly offered him, since his services had not been
repaid even in empty good-will, to the degree that he deserved. It was
his duty, she thought, to demand more than the common weekly allowance;
and the least he could do for his children was to take the suit of
clothes back again which he had thrown away in a pet. Failing in her
arguments, she had recourse to two measures,—one of action and the other
of persuasion. She went secretly to the Committee, and asked in her
husband’s name for the clothes, which she sold on her way home, trying
to persuade herself that she was only doing a mother’s duty in providing
her children with bread; and then she assailed her husband on the
subject of taking work at the master’s prices. She knew that he now
wished for a compromise and thought the strike had been continued too
long, and she would not see why he was bound to wait till the Union
viewed the matter as he did. She thought it very cruel to talk of
honour, and very absurd to plead duty when he knew that his family were
in want, and could not deny that it was not by his own choice that he
had filled so conspicuous a station. It made Allen very miserable to
hear her talk in this manner, sobbing between almost every word she
said; especially when little Martha looked wistfully from one to the
other, not understanding the grounds of the dispute, but hoping that it
would end in father’s leaving off walking about the room in that manner,
and in mother’s stopping her sobs, and in there being something better
than those nasty potatoes for dinner. Once or twice she tried to make
her bulfinch sing so loud that they could not hear one another speak;
but this did not do, for her mother twitched off her apron and flung it
over the cage, so that the poor bird cowered down in a corner for the
whole day afterwards.

One morning when Allen had persuaded his wife that he was immovable, and
that the best thing she could do was to go out and buy some potatoes
with what money they had, he came and leaned over the table to see
Martha feed her bird.

“You are as fond of that bird as ever, Martha.”

“Yes,—and I have so much time to teach him things now.”

“Had you rather play with him or be at the factory all day?”

“I don’t know. My knees are so much better since I have been at home,
and I like playing with Billy; but mother has got to cry so lately; and,
father, we are all so tired of potatoes, we don’t know how to eat them.”

“Poor child! I wish we could give you anything better. But, Martha, do
you think you could bear to stay at home without Billy?”

Martha’s countenance fell.

“You see, my dear child, we have sold almost everything we have; and
when we can scarcely get food for ourselves, it does not seem to me
right to keep animals to feed. This was why I sold the dog so many weeks
ago.”

“But, father, it is only just a halfpenny now and then. Mother has
always found me a halfpenny now and then for Billy.”

“A halfpenny is as much to us now, child, as a guinea is to some people;
besides we could get money by Billy. Ah! I knew it would make you cry to
say so.”

And he left her and walked about the room in the way which it always
frightened Martha to see. She sobbed out a few words,—

“I can’t—I can’t help crying, father, but I don’t mean—I wish you would
take Billy and sell him.”

“Listen to me, my dear child,” said Allen sitting down by her, and
putting his arm round her waist. “You were always a very good little
girl in working industriously as long as you had work. Now you cannot
earn money by working, but you can get some by giving up your bird. Now,
you know I always tried to make you as comfortable as I could when you
earned money, and I promise you, that I will do the same if you will let
me sell your bird. The very first money that I can properly spare, when
better days come, shall go to buy you a bird, and this very bird if we
can get it back again.”

Martha thanked him, and said the bird should go for certain; but if this
very bird could not be got back again, she would rather have a triangle
like Hannah’s, and then, she thought, they might all grow rich. Allen
smiled and said they would see about that when the time came; in the
meanwhile, if Billy was to go, the sooner the better, and all the more
as she had just cleaned the cage; and he took his hat.

Martha struggled with her tears, and asked if she might go too. Her
father thought she had better not; but she said nobody could make Billy
sing all his songs so well as herself; so her father kissed her, and let
her follow him down stairs, asking Field’s wife who happened to be in
good humour, to have an eye to the children till their mother came home.

It was a sad trial to Martha to hear the bird-fancier speak slightingly
of her pet, and remark that the cage was very shabby. She had a great
mind at first to make Billy seem dull, which she knew how to do: but
remembering that this would punish nobody but her father, she put away
the evil thought, and made Billy sing his best songs in his clearest
tone. The bargain was made; her father bade the bird-fancier pay the
money into her hand, and whispered that he wished he had anything which
would sell for so much. When they were on the threshold, she once more
turned round. The man was twirling the cage in a business-like manner,
between his hands. “O, once more!” cried Martha, running back. Once more
Billy fluttered at the sight of her, and put out his beak between the
wires to meet her lips; and then she went away without looking back any
more. Every day for the next fortnight, however, little Martha lingered
about the bird-fancier’s door, doing all she could without being
observed, to set Billy singing. One day she was remarked by her parents
to be very silent; and after that she went out less. She had missed
Billy, though his empty cage still hung in the shop; and having made
bold to ask, had found that he was sold to a country customer; really
gone for ever. This hope destroyed, Martha tried to comfort herself, as
she had proposed, with visions of a triangle.

                         ---------------------

                              CHAPTER XI.

                          FINAL DELIBERATION.

The spirits of the people were sunk, not only by poverty, but by a more
bitter disappointment than had attended any former strike. The
Combination Laws having formerly been the great object of dread and
hatred, it had been too hastily supposed that the repeal of these laws
would give all that was wanted; whereas the repeal only left the people
free to make the best bargain they could for their labour, without its
having any thing to do with the grounds of the bargain. The repeal could
not increase the supply of capital, or diminish the supply of labour; it
could not therefore affect the rate of wages.

One more event was looked to with hope; the arrival of the delegates who
had travelled in search of support. They had remitted money as they had
received it, and the remittances had fallen off much of late; but it was
still hoped that the messengers might bring such assurances of sympathy
and support, as might justify the people in holding out a little longer.
These men, who returned nearly all at the same time, were met some miles
out on the road, greeted with cheers, carried to the Committee-room, and
with difficulty left alone with the Committee to tell their business.

These men brought advice and intelligence so various as might have
perplexed the most discerning and prudent of all managers of public
affairs. There were exhortations from some places to hold out to the
very last shilling; and from others to retreat, while retreat could be
managed with honour. Some distant friends gave them a kindly warning to
look for no more contributions from that quarter; and others were sorry
to send so little at present, but hoped to raise such and such sums
before they should be much wanted. Some sent word that it had always
been a bad case which they could not in conscience support, while so
many more promising needed help; others declared that if ever there was
a righteous cause, this was it, and that they should brand with the name
of traitor the first who quailed. While the members of the Committee
sighed and inquired of one another what they were to think of such
opposite advice, and each delegate was vehement in urging the superior
value of that which he brought, Allen proposed that they should abide by
the advice of the London delegates, who had been in communication with
persons who understood more of the matter in hand, than any who occupied
a less central situation. All agreed to this, and the consideration of
the matter was deferred till the next morning, when the delegates were
expected to have arrived from London.

Every member of the Committee was in his place the next morning, and the
expected messengers appeared at the foot of the table, and delivered in
their report, which was brief enough. Their London friends believed
their strike to be in a hopeless condition, and advised their making the
best terms they could with their masters, without any further waste of
time and capital. Not that all combinations were disapproved of by their
London advisers; there were cases in which such union was highly
desirable, cases of especial grievance from multiplication of
apprentices, or from unfair methods of measuring work, or from gross
inequality of wages, &c.; but for a general and permanent rise of wages,
no strike could ultimately prevail, where there was a permanent
proportion of unemployed labour in the market. A proportion of three per
cent. of unemployed labour must destroy their chance against the
masters.

“Just what Wentworth told us,” observed a committee-man. “Pray did you
inquire whether it is possible to get a rate of wages settled by law?”

“Of course, as we were instructed so to do; and the answer is what you
probably expect,—that unless the law could determine the amount of
capital, and the supply of labour, it cannot regulate wages. The law
might as well order how much beef every man shall eat for his daily
dinner, without having any power to supply cattle. If there be not
cattle enough, men cannot have law beef. If there be not capital enough,
men cannot have law wages.”

“Besides,” observed the other delegate, “wages-laws involve the same
absurdity as the combination laws we are so glad to have got rid of.
Every man who is not a slave has a right to ask a price for his labour;
and if one man has this right, so have fifty or fifty thousand. What is
an innocent act in itself, cannot be made guilt by being done by
numbers; and if Government treats it as guilt, Government treats those
who do it as slaves. Government then interferes where it has no
business. This was the argument in the case of the combination laws, and
it holds in this case too: Government is neither buyer nor seller, and
has nothing to do with the bargain; and having nothing to do with it,
could neither pass a just wages-law, nor enforce it when passed, any
more than in the case of the combination laws, which we all know to have
been unjust and perpetually evaded.”

As it was now clear that the turn-out must come to a speedy end, the
committee decided to waste no more time in discussion, but to proceed to
immediate action. Allen begged to produce the accounts, which were
balanced up to the present day, and the sight of which would, he
thought, quicken their determination to let all get work who could. He
had for some time found it difficult to get a hearing on the subject of
the accounts, as his brethren were bent on holding out, and would listen
to nothing which opposed their wishes; but they were now completely
roused. “How much have we left?” was their first question.

“Left!” exclaimed Allen. “You know I have been telling you for this
fortnight past that we are deficient 70_l._, without reckoning the bills
for advertisements, which had not then come in, and which, I am sorry to
say, swell the amount considerably.”

This declaration was received with murmurs, and on the part of some,
with loud declarations that there must have been mistake or bad
management.

Allen passed his hand over his forehead, while enduring the bitter pang
caused by this outcry; but he recovered himself instantly.

“There are the accounts,” he said. “See for yourselves whether there has
been any mistake, and bring home to me, if you can, your charge of bad
management. You pressed the task upon me in the first instance against
my will; you referred it to my disinterestedness to resume it, when,
fearing that I had lost the confidence of the people, I would have
resigned it. At your call, I have done my best, and—this is my reward!”

There was a cry of “Shame, shame!” and two or three friends rose in turn
to say for Allen what he was too modest to say for himself; that the
unthankful office had been repeatedly forced upon him, because there was
no other man who could discharge it so well; that he had never been
detected in a mistake, never found in the rear of his business, never
accepting fee or reward, never—

This eulogium was interrupted by objections. He _had_ erred in involving
the Union with the editor of a newspaper, who now unexpectedly brought
an enormous charge for the insertion of notices, intelligence, &c.,
which it had been supposed he was glad to print gratuitously. Allen
_had_ also claimed fee and reward in a way which, to say the best of it,
was shabby.

Allen calmly related the facts of the transaction with the editor,
leaving it to his judges to decide whether the misunderstanding arose
from carelessness on his part, or from some other cause. As to the other
charge, what fee or reward had he taken?

“The clothes, the clothes!” was the cry. “To send for them privately to
sell, after pretending to give them back in the face of the people. Fie!
Shabby!”

Allen looked on his thread-bare dress with a smile, supposing this a
mistake which a moment would clear up. He went to the press belonging to
the committee, where the clothes had been deposited, and flung open the
doors. He looked very naturally surprised at their having disappeared,
and turned round with an open countenance to say,

“I see how it is. Some dishonest person has used my name to obtain
possession of the clothes. I give you my word of honour that I have
never seen the clothes, or known that they were not here, since the hour
that I gave them back in the face of the people.”

All believed him, and some had consideration enough to command silence
by gesture; but before it could take effect, the fact was out, that
Allen’s own wife was the “dishonest person.” While he silently walked to
the window, and there hid his face in his hands, his friends called on
business which attracted attention from him. It was pay-day, and what
was to be done? What funds were in hand?

Allen returned to his seat to answer this question; and, as all were
just now disposed to do as he pleased, he carried his point of honesty,
and obtained authority to lessen the allowance one-half, and give advice
to every applicant to attend the afternoon meeting for the purpose of
voting for the dissolution of the strike.

Of these applicants, some were glad, and some were sorry to receive the
advice of the paymaster; but there was a much greater unity of opinion
about the reduction of the allowance. Some murmured, some clamoured,
some silently wept, some sighed in resignation; but all felt it a great
hardship, and wondered what was to become of them either way, if it was
true, as Mr. Wentworth had said, that the wages-fund of the masters and
the Union-fund of the men were wasting away together. Some were ready
with bad news for Allen in return for that which he offered to them.

“You will be worst off, after all, Allen; for there is not a master that
will give you work.”

“Did you hear, Allen, what Elliott said about you? He hopes you will go
to him for work, that he may have the pleasure of refusing you.”

“Mortimer has got a promise out of his cowardly partner, that he will
not let you set foot on the premises, Allen, on account of the part you
have taken.”

“They say, Allen, that you are a marked man in Manchester, and that no
master in any trade will take you in among his men. What do you think of
doing, I wonder?”

This question Allen could not have answered if he had wished it. It was
again put to him by his wife, who waited for him in the street to tell
him through her tears all the evil-bodings which a succession of Job’s
comforters had been pouring into her ears since the news of the probable
dissolution of the strike had got wind. “What do you think of doing, I
wonder?” was still the burden of her wail.

“Do you know that man?” replied her husband, pointing to a wasted and
decrepit man who was selling matches; “that man was once a well-paid
spinner. He lost his health in his employment, and now, at forty years
of age, is selling matches from door to door. He has submitted to God’s
will. I too will submit to sell matches, if it be God’s will that I
should lose my good name as innocently as that man has lost his health.”

“I told you how it would be. I told you—” cried Mary.

“I too foresaw it, Mary, and prepared myself for much;—but not for all.”

He reproached her no further for the injury she had done to his good
name than by declaring his unalterable will that not an article should
be purchased by her beyond a bare supply of daily food till the clothes
were bought back again and restored to the Committee, or their full
value, if they could not be recovered.

                         ---------------------

                              CHAPTER XII.

                             HOPE EXTINCT.

There had been a lingering hope among some who would fain have stood out
longer, that this day’s post would have brought the wherewithal to build
up new expectations and prolong the struggle. The wiser ones had
resolved that not even the receipt of 200_l._ should shake their
determination to return to work; but there was no question about the
matter, for no money came.—A prodigious amount of business was done in
the few hours preceding the final meeting. The masters met and settled
that they would give no more than the medium wages,—that is, the rate
given by Wentworth; Elliot carelessly consenting to lower his, and
Mortimer being with difficulty persuaded to raise his. Rowe was
consulted only as a matter of form, and the other firms had to make
slight differences or none at all. They agreed to yield the point of
their men belonging to the Union, since it appeared vain to contest it
while of importance, and needless when not so.—The men settled that they
must agree to a medium rate of wages, and make what they could of having
obtained an equalization, such as it was, and of being permitted to
adhere to the Union.—Clack agitated for his own private interest,—to get
himself appointed to some salaried office in the Union, as he was no
more likely to obtain employment from the masters than Allen.—So much
was settled beforehand as to leave little to be done at the meeting but
to make a public declaration of agreement.

With dark countenances and lagging steps the people came,—not in proud
procession, with banners and music and a soldier-like march, but in
small parties or singly, dropping into the track from by-streets and
lanes, and looking as if they were going to punishment rather than to
consultation. There was a larger proportion than usual of ragged women
and crying babies; for, as the women had been all along opposed to the
strike, they were sensible of a feeling of mournful triumph in seeing it
dissolved. Bray was present, without his pipe and his bells, for this
was no time for lively music; but he carried his drum to be used as a
signal for silence if the speakers should find any difficulty in
obtaining a hearing. He beat a roll between each proposition submitted
and agreed to; and thus did his last service to the turn-out he had
watched from its commencement.

Proposed:—That as the masters are represented to be inclined to
concession, the men shall do their part towards promoting an adjustment
of their differences, agreeing to take such and such a rate of wages,
provided that the masters pay all alike, and that the men be not
disturbed in their peaceable adherence to the Union.—Agreed.

Proposed: that the men shall set apart a portion of their weekly
earnings, as soon as able to do so, and in proportion to the size of
their families, in order to liquidate the debt incurred on account of
the strike now about to be closed.—Murmurs.

Allen came forward to state the gross amount of subscriptions and
expenses, intimating that the account-books would be left at the
Committee-room for one month, open to the inspection of all who could
prove themselves to belong to the Union. It would be seen through what
unavoidable circumstances a debt had been incurred, and how essential it
was to the honour of the body that it should be liquidated as soon as
possible.

No reasonable exception could be made to any of the items of
expenditure. The people could only wonder that there should be such
crowds of children to receive pay, so many lying-in women to be
relieved, so many sick persons to be aided, and so much to pay for
printing and advertising. They could not deny that the expenses of the
Committee had been very small.

This explanation finished, Allen’s part was done. He had neither faults
of his own nor favours of theirs to acknowledge. He spoke not of
himself, but, when he had rendered his account, gravely made his bow and
retired.

Clack then came forward, and, supported by a powerful party of friends
near the waggon, succeeded in obtaining the public ear. With more
success than delicacy, he enlarged upon his public services, pleaded his
betrothment to one who was now suffering under the persecution of the
masters, as a title to their support, as well as the certainty that he
should not again be employed by any firm in Manchester. He declared that
were it only through zeal for their rights, he would marry Ann Howlett
as soon as she came out of prison——

“If she will have you,” cried somebody; and the crowd laughed.

Clack repeated his declaration without noticing the doubt, and moreover
declared his willingness to travel into every county in England,
Scotland, and Ireland, in behalf of the Union. He boasted of his
connexions in all places, and pointed out the wisdom there would be in
employing him as a missionary of the Union, in preparation for any
future struggle.—This proposal went a degree too far in impudence, or
Clack might, perhaps, have gained his object; for he seemed to have
recovered his hold on the people in proportion as that of better men had
been weakened. A plain statement from the Committee that, as they were
in debt, they had no power at present to appoint a missionary, served,
however, to disappoint Clack’s hopes. He skilfully laid hold of the
words “at present,” and left it an understood matter between himself and
the people that the office was to be his by and by.

Within half an hour, not a trace of the meeting was left but the
trampled grass and the empty waggon. The people seemed to try who could
flee the fastest, some to obtain the first access to the masters, some
to get out of sight of a scene which had become disagreeable, and some
few to talk big at the Spread-Eagle of what might have happened if this
cowardly Committee would but have stood out a little longer.

Allen’s steps were directed to Mr. Wentworth’s counting-house. “I will
ask work of him and of him only, in this line,” thought he. “If I fail,
I must take to some other occupation. They can hardly be all shut
against an honest man.”

“I am sorry for you, Allen,” was Mr. Wentworth’s reply when, with some
difficulty, Allen had made his way through a crowd of people on the same
errand with himself. “But you shall pronounce upon the case yourself. I
can employ now only two-thirds of the number who turned out from me. Of
these, at least half left me unwillingly, and have therefore the first
title to employment; and the rest have worked for my firm for many
years. At the best, I must refuse many whose services I should be glad
to keep; judge then whether I can take on a stranger, be he who he may.”

Allen bowed and had no more to say.

“If the firm you worked under cannot take you on, I fear you have little
chance, Allen; for all are circumstanced like myself, I believe.”

Allen shook his head, and would trespass no longer on Mr. Wentworth’s
time.

In the street he met Bray, who was looking for him to say farewell,
while Hannah was doing the same to little Martha. Where were they going,
and why so soon?

There was nothing to stay for now, Bray thought; for he had no liking to
see honest men stand idle in the labour-market, except by their own
choice. Choice made the entire difference in the case. As for where he
was going,—he and Hannah must find out where people were most fond of
street music and dancing, and would pay the best for it. And this put
him in mind of what he had to say. He was as much obliged as Hannah
herself, and more, by the hospitality with which she had been received
at Allen’s house; but his friend could not suppose he meant his daughter
to be any charge upon the family in times like these. On this account,
and for old friendship’s sake, and from the sympathy which one
proscribed man should feel for another, he hoped Allen would do him the
favour to pocket this little bit of paper and say no more about
it.—Allen agreed so far as to defer saying much about it till better
times should come. He only just told Bray that the bank note was most
acceptable at present for a very particular purpose, wrung his friend’s
hand, and ran home to fetch his wife, that the suit of clothes might be
rebought without loss of time. They proved a dear bargain; but that was
a secondary consideration, poor as Allen was. He went to rest that
night, satisfied that his honour was redeemed, and that his wife would
scarcely venture to put it in pawn again.

His wife said to herself that she had no idea he could have been so
stern as he was all this day; she scarcely knew him for William
Allen.—Many people made the same observation from this time forward. His
sternness only appeared when matters of honour were in question, and no
one who knew by what means he had been made jealous on this point
wondered at the tone of decision in which a once weak and timid man
could speak. But there were other circumstances which made them scarcely
able to believe him the same William Allen. He no longer touched his hat
to the masters, or appeared to see them as they passed. He no longer
repaired to the Spread-Eagle to hear or tell the news, or to take part
in consultation on the affairs of the workmen of Manchester, though he
was ever ready to give his advice with freedom and mildness when called
upon. He stated that he was a friend to their interests, and therefore
anxious to avoid injuring them by being one of the body. He would not
even represent his children, who grew up one after another to be
employed in the factories, while their father toiled in the streets with
his water-cart in summer and his broom in winter; enduring to be pointed
out to strangers as the leader of an unsuccessful strike, as long as his
family were not included with himself in the sentence of proscription.

When will it be understood by all that it rests with all to bring about
a time when opposition of interests shall cease? When will masters and
men work cheerfully together for their common good, respect instead of
proscribing each other, and be equally proud to have such men as
Wentworth and William Allen of their fellowship?

          _Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume._

                         ---------------------

COMMODITIES, being produced by capital and labour, are the joint
property of the capitalist and labourer.

The capitalist pays in advance to the labourers their share of the
commodity, and thus becomes its sole owner.

The portion thus paid is WAGES.

REAL WAGES are the articles of use and consumption that the labourer
receives in return for his labour.

NOMINAL WAGES are the portion he receives of these things reckoned in
money.

The fund from which wages are paid in any country consists of the
articles required for the use and consumption of labourers which that
country contains.

THE PROPORTION OF THIS FUND RECEIVED BY INDIVIDUALS MUST MAINLY DEPEND
ON THE NUMBER AMONG WHOM THE FUND IS DIVIDED.

The rate of wages in any country depends, therefore, not on the wealth
which that country contains, but on the proportion between its capital
and its population.

As population has a tendency to increase faster than capital, wages can
be prevented from falling to the lowest point only by adjusting the
proportion of population to capital.

The lowest point to which wages can be permanently reduced is that which
affords a bare subsistence to the labourer.

The highest point to which wages can be permanently raised is that which
leaves to the capitalist just profit enough to make it worth his while
to invest his capital.

The variations of the rate of wages between these extreme points
depending mainly on the supply of labour offered to the capitalist, the
rate of wages is mainly determined by the sellers, not the buyers of
labour.

Combinations of labourers against capitalists (whatever other effects
they may have) cannot secure a permanent rise of wages unless the supply
of labour falls short of the demand;—in which case, strikes are usually
unnecessary.

Nothing can permanently affect the rate of wages which does not affect
the proportion of population to capital.

Legislative interference does not affect this proportion, and is
therefore useless.

Strikes affect it only by wasting capital, and are therefore worse than
useless.

Combinations may avail or not, according to the reasonableness of their
objects.

Whether reasonable or not, combinations are not subjects for legislative
interference; the law having no cognizance of their causes.

Disturbance of the peace being otherwise provided against, combinations
are wisely therefore now left unregarded by the law.

The condition of labourers may be best improved,—

1st. By inventions and discoveries which create capital.

2d. By husbanding instead of wasting capital:—for instance by making
savings instead of supporting strikes.

3d. BY ADJUSTING THE PROPORTION OF POPULATION TO CAPITAL.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------

              PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES, STAMFORD-STREET.

                            COUSIN MARSHALL.

                         ---------------------

                               CHAPTER I.

                          A VERY HOT MORNING.

The gray light of a summer’s morning was dawning on the cathedral towers
of the city of ——, when Mr. Burke, a surgeon, returned on horseback from
the country, where he had been detained by a patient till past midnight.
It was Sunday morning, and he was therefore less surprised than grieved
to see what kind of people they were who still loitered in the streets,
and occasionally disturbed the repose of those who slept after their
weekly toils. Here and there lay on a door-step, or in the kennel, a
working man, who had spent his week’s wages at the alehouse, and on
being turned out when the clock struck twelve, had sunk down in a
drunken sleep. Farther on were more of the same class, reeling in the
middle of the street, or holding by the walls of the houses, with just
sense enough to make their way gradually homewards, where their wives
were either watching anxiously, or disturbed with miserable dreams on
their account. The sound of the horse’s hoofs on the pavement roused the
watchmen, of whom one rubbed his eyes, and came out of his box to learn
the hour from the church clock, while another began to make a clearance
of the tipplers, bidding them move on with threats which were lost upon
their drowsy ears. One of these guardians of the night, however, was too
far gone in slumber to be roused like the rest. Perhaps his own snoring
prevented his hearing that any one passed by. Mr. Burke tickled this
man’s ear with his riding whip, and asked him the meaning of certain
clouds of dun smoke which were curling up, apparently at some little
distance, between the gazers and the pale eastern sky. The watchman’s
wit served him just so far as to suggest that there ought to be no smoke
in that direction at this hour of a Sunday morning, and that he supposed
smoke must come from fire. Upon this hint, Mr. Burke rode off at full
trot, through such byways as would lead him most directly to the spot.
Before he got there, however, his fears were confirmed by the various
methods in which information of a fire is given. Rattles were sprung in
quick succession, shouts and whoops were echoed from street to street, a
red blaze was reflected from every chimney, and glittered like the
setting sun on the windows of the upper storys, and the clangor of bells
followed in less time than could have been supposed possible. Window
after window was thrown up, as Mr. Burke passed, and nightcapped heads
popped out with the incessant inquiry—“Fire! Where?”

This was what Mr. Burke was as anxious as any one to know, and he
therefore increased his speed till he arrived on the spot, and found
that it was not a dwelling-house, but a large grocery warehouse, that
was in flames. Having satisfied himself that no lives were in danger,
and that every one was on the alert, he hastened homewards to deposit
his horse, and quiet his sister’s alarms, and returned to give
assistance.

When he came back, two or three engines were on the spot, but unable to
work from a deficiency of water. The river was not far distant; but so
many impediments arose from the disposition of some of the crowd to
speculate idly on the causes of the fire, and of others to bustle about
without doing any good, that the flames were gaining ground frightfully.
As more gentlemen arrived, however, they assisted Mr. Burke in his
exertions to form two lines down to the river side, by one of which the
full, and by the other the empty, buckets might be passed with
regularity and speed. Meanwhile, the crowd felt themselves at liberty to
crack their jokes, as nothing but property was yet at stake.

A child clapped its hands in glee, as a pale blue flame shot up where
there had been no light before.

“That’s rum,” said a man. “If there be raisins beside it, ’tis a pity we
are not near enough to play snap-dragon.”

“There will be a fine treat for the little ones when all is cool again,”
observed another. “A fine store of lollipops under the ruins. Look how
the hogsheads of sugar light one after another, like so many torches!”

“They say tea is best made of river water,” said a third; “and it can’t
but boil in such a fire; so suppose you fetch your tea-service,
neighbour.”

“Rather tea than beer,” replied another. “Did you taste the beer from
the brewery fire? Pah! ’twas like what sea-water will be when the world
is burnt.”

“I missed my share then,” answered the neighbour; “but I got two or
three gallons of what was let out because the white-washer’s boy was
drowned in it. That was none the worse, that I could find out. My wife
was squeamish about it, so I had it all to myself. Heyday! what’s this
about? Why, they won’t let a man look on in peace!”

The constables were now vigorously clearing a space for the firemen, as
there was some apprehension that the flames were spreading backwards,
where there were courts and alleys crowded with dwellings of the poor.
The fear was soon perceived to be too well founded. From an arched
passage close by the burning building there presently issued a
half-dressed woman with two children clinging to her, a third girl
shivering and crying just behind, and a boy following with his arms full
of clothes and bedding. Mr. Burke was with them instantly.

“Have the houses behind caught fire?”

“Ours has, sir; and it can’t be saved, for there is no way to it but
this. Not a thing could we get out but what we have on; but, thank God,
we are all safe!”

“O, mammy, mammy!” cried the elder girl. “She has not been out of bed
this week, sir. She’ll die with cold.”

Mr. Burke had observed the ghastly look of the woman. He now bade her
compose herself, and promised that the children should be taken care of,
if she would tell him where she wished to go. She answered doubtfully
that her sister lived in the next street.

“O, not there, mother!” said the boy. “Let us go to John Marshall’s.”

“’Tis too far, Ned. My sister will surely take us in at such a time as
this. Lord have mercy! The flames dizzy one so!”

And the poor woman fell against the wall. Mr. Burke raised her, and
bidding Ned go before to show the way, he half led and half carried her
the short distance to her sister’s house, the little ones running
barefooted, holding by the skirts of his coat. On their way, they met a
man whom the children proclaimed with one voice to be John Marshall.

“I was coming to you,” said he, supporting the widow Bridgeman on the
other side. “This is a sad plight I see you in, cousin; but cheer up! If
you can get as far as our place, my wife bids me say you will be kindly
welcome.”

Mr. Burke thought the nearest resting-place was the best; and Marshall
yielded, hoping the sister’s door would be open, as it ought. It was but
half open, and in that half stood the sister, Mrs. Bell, arguing with
Ned that the place was too small for her own family, and that his mother
would be more comfortable elsewhere, and so forth. Mr. Burke cut short
the argument by pushing a way, and depositing his charge upon the bed
within. He then gave his name to the amazed Mrs. Bell, desired her to
lend the children some clothing, and to keep her sister quiet till he
should come again, sent Marshall for his wife, who would apparently
nurse the widow Bridgeman better than her own sister, and then returned
with Ned to see if any of the widow’s little furniture could be saved.
Before they reached the spot, however, the tenement was burned to the
ground, and the two or three next to it were pulled down to stop the
fire, so that nothing more was to be done.

The widow seemed at first so much revived by the treatment which Mr.
Burke ordered, and her cousin Marshall administered, that there was room
for hope that the shock would leave her little worse than it found her;
and the benevolent surgeon went home at six o’clock to refresh himself,
bearing tidings to his sister, not only that the fire was extinguished,
but that it appeared to have done no irreparable mischief beyond the
destruction of property. He was not fully aware, however, in how weak a
state his patient had previously been.

“Mammy!” said little Ann Bridgeman, who sat on a low stool, with a blue
apron of her aunt’s over her shoulders, her only covering except her
shift, “Mammy, there goes the church bell.”

“Hush!” said Jane, the eldest, who was more considerate.

“Mammy is awake,” persisted Ann, looking again into the curtainless bed
to see that the widow’s eyes were open. “Do you hear the bell, mammy?
And we cannot go to church.”

“’Tis a strange Sunday, indeed, my child,” replied her mother. “When I
prayed last night, after all our work was done, that this might be a day
of rest, I little thought what would happen.”

Her cousin, Mrs. Marshall, came to her and begged that she would try to
rest, and not to trouble herself with uneasy thoughts.

“My mind is so tossed about!” replied the poor woman. “It distracts me
to think what we are to do next. And there sit the poor children without
so much as a petticoat to wear; and the room is all as if the fire was
roaring about me; and a letter from my husband, the only one I ever had,
that I thought to have carried to my grave with me, is burned; and I
might as well have saved it, if I had had a minute’s thought; and——”

The sick woman burst into a hysterical cry which shook her frame so,
that her cousin began to think how she could calm her. She ventured on a
bold experiment when she found that her patient’s talk still ran upon
the letter, and that the consolations of Mrs. Bell, who now came to the
bedside, only made the matter worse.

“Well now, I wonder,” said Mrs. Bell, “that you should trouble yourself
so about a letter, when you will be sure to remember what is in it. One
would think it was a bank note by the way you cry after it.”

“A bank note!” cried the poor woman. “I would have set light to my house
with a handful of bank notes, if I had had them, sooner than lose that
letter; and yet nobody would think so by the way I left it behind me.
There it was in the box with my rent, and with my mother’s gold thimble,
nigh at hand as I got out of bed, and I might just as well have saved
it. O Lord! what a wretch I am!” she cried. “Take the children away!
Don’t let them come near me any more. Lord forgive me! Lord have mercy
upon me!” and she raved fearfully.

“She’s out of her senses,” said Mrs. Bell, “and all for that trumpery
letter. I’ll make her believe we have found it.”

“And so make her worse than ever when she discovers the trick,” said
Mrs. Marshall. “No, that won’t do.” And she turned to the sick woman,—“I
say, Mary, you would not mind so much about the letter if you were to
see your husband very soon, would you?”

“Surely no,” replied the widow, looking perplexed, but immediately calm.
“But my husband is gone, long ago, is not he? But perhaps I am going
too. Is that what you mean, cousin Marshall?”

“I don’t know whether you be or no, Mary; but you have no strength for
raving as you did just now. If you wish to live for your children’s
sake, you must be quiet.”

“I was thinking a deal about dying last night, and what was to become of
the children; but I forgot all about it to-day. Poor things! they have
no friends but you two,” looking from Mrs. Bell to her cousin Marshall.
“You will see to them, I am sure. You will not cast them out upon the
world; and depend upon it, it will be repaid to you. I will pray God day
and night, just as I would here, to watch over them and reward those
that are kind to them; particularly whichever of you takes Sally; for I
am much afraid Sally will go blind.” As she gazed earnestly in the faces
of her relations, Mrs. Bell tried to put her off with bidding her make
her mind easy, and trust in Providence, and hope to live. Her cousin
Marshall did better.

“I will take charge of Sally and of one of the others,” said she. “I
promise it to you; and you may trust my promise, because my husband and
I have planned it many a time when we saw what a weakly way you were in.
They shall be brought up like our own children, and you know how that
is.”

“God bless you for ever, cousin! And as for the other two——”

“Leave that to me,” replied Mrs. Marshall, who saw that the patient’s
countenance began to resume its unsettled expression. “Leave it all to
me, and trust to my promise.”

“Just one thing more,” said the widow, starting up as her cousin would
have retired. “Dear me! how confused my head is,—and all because you
have moved the bed opposite the window, which my head never could bear.
Listen now. In the cupboard on the left side the bed,—at least, that is
where it was,—you will find a japanned box that I keep my rent in. At
the bottom of that box there is a letter——”

“Well, well, Mary. That will do by-and-by.”

“Let me finish, cousin. Give that letter to Ned, and bid him keep it,
because——”

“Aye, I understand. Because it is his father’s writing, and the only one
you ever had.”

“Why, you know all about it!” exclaimed the widow, smiling, with a look
of surprise. “I did not know I had ever told anybody. Well, now, I can’t
keep awake any longer; but be sure you wake me in time in the morning. I
must be up to wash the children’s things, for they want them sadly.”

She dropped asleep instantly when her cousin had hung a shawl at the
foot of the bed to hide the strange window. Ned had gone some minutes
before for Mr. Burke, who pronounced, on seeing her, that she would
probably never wake again. This proved true; and before night she was no
more.

The fire created a great sensation in the city. The local newspapers
described it as the most awful that had occurred in the place within the
memory of man; and the London prints copied from them. Strangers came in
from the country to visit the smoking ruins, and the firm to whom the
warehouses belonged were almost overwhelmed with sympathy and offers of
assistance. Mrs. Bell was disposed to make a profit out of all this. She
would have stationed Ned, in a tattered shirt, on the ruins of his
mother’s dwelling to beg, and have herself carried about a petition in
behalf of the orphan children. The funeral, at least, ought, she
thought, to be paid for by charity; but there was no moving the
Marshalls on any of these points. They were so sure that the widow would
have died, at all events, in a very short time, that they could not see
why the fire should throw the expense of her funeral on the public; and
even Mrs. Bell could not pretend that anything of much value had been
lost in the fire except the rent, which would never be called for. The
Marshalls countenanced Ned’s dislike to go near the idle boys who were
practising leaping on the ruins, and found it a far more natural and
pleasant thing to dress the little Bridgemans in some of their own
children’s clothes and take them home, than to appeal to strangers on
their behalf.

“You may do as you please, neighbour,” cried Mrs. Bell, after an
argument upon this subject. “If you choose to burden yourselves with two
children in addition to your own five, it is no concern of mine; only
don’t expect me to put any such dead-weight upon my husband’s neck.”

“Your husband earns better wages than mine, Mrs. Bell.”

“And that is what makes me wonder at your folly in not sending the
children to the workhouse at once. No need to tell me what a little way
a man’s wages go in families like yours and mine.”

“You have a good deal of help in other ways to make out with, indeed,
neighbour,” observed Mrs. Marshall. “You have found the gentry very kind
to you this year; so much so that I think the least you can do is to
keep these children from being a burden on the rates, for the little
time till they can shift for themselves.—I believe you bought neither
coals nor blankets last winter.”

“Bless your heart, cousin, the coals we got did not last half the winter
through; for my husband likes a good fire when he can get it, and always
expected to find one in the grate when he came home from the Leopard,
however late at night it might be; and I had to sell one of the blankets
presently. The other, on the bed there, is the only one we have till
winter, when I hope to get a new one, if the ladies are not too
particular about my having had two already. But, really, it tries one’s
patience to wait upon them ladies. Do you know I am disappointed again
about the bag of linen against my confinement. I may be down any day
now, and every bag is engaged, so that they can’t promise with any
certainty. So I must just take my chance for getting through somehow.”

“And how is your baby provided?”

“O, they gave me a few trifles for it, which will do till I get about
again, and can carry it to show how poorly it is off.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Marshall, “I do wonder you can bear to live from hand
to mouth in that way. You got your first set of baby-linen at the same
time that I did, and with your own money; and why yours should not have
lasted as well as mine, I can’t think. Mine are not all worn out yet,
and I always managed to replace, by timely saving, those that were.
However, if you can’t clothe your own children, I don’t wonder so much
that you will not feed your sister’s. Poor things! must they go to the
workhouse?”

“Unless you choose to take them all, cousin. So wonderful a manager as
you are, perhaps you might contrive it.”

Mrs. Marshall shook her head mournfully. She had not lodging room for
more than two girls among her own, and could not have engaged that her
husband’s rent should be ready if more than two in addition were to
share their daily meals. As it was, they must give up one dish of meat a
week, and make some other reductions of the same kind.

“Better ask the gentry to help you, at once,” said Mrs. Bell; “but I
suppose you are too proud?”

“We will try what our own charity can do before we ask it from those who
have less concern in the matter,” said Mrs. Marshall. “There is one
thing I mean to ask, however, because I cannot anyhow get it for them
myself; and that is, to have them taught like my own children. Poor
Sally must learn to knit while she has some eyesight left.”

“Which of the others do you mean to take?” enquired Mrs. Bell, as if
quite unconcerned in the matter.

Mrs. Marshall called in the four children from the next room to consult
them, to her cousin’s utter amazement. She told them the plain
truth,—that she had promised their mother to take charge of two of them,
and that one of the two should be Sally; that the other two must live in
the workhouse till they could earn their own subsistence; and that she
wished them to agree with her which had best remain with her and Sally.
Ned looked at his aunt with tears in his eyes; to which she answered by
promising to see him sometimes, and to bring him some gingerbread when
she had a penny to spare. Ned, who was too old to be spoken to in this
way, brushed his sleeve across his eyes, and observed to cousin Marshall
that Jane had better go with him to the workhouse, because she was the
oldest and would be soonest out of it, and because Sally liked to have
little Ann to do things for her that she could not see to do herself.
Cousin Marshall was quite of this opinion; and so the matter was
settled.

A long private conversation followed after Mrs. Bell had left the room;
if conversation it might be called which consisted of sobs and tears on
the part of the children, and exhortations and pity on that of their
friend.

“Remember, Ned,” said she, “the one thing you must be always thinking
about after you go into the workhouse is how soon you can get out again.
It is God’s will that has taken your mother from you, and that has made
your relations poor, and so we must try and not think your lot a
disgrace; but it will be a disgrace if you stay long. Keep this up in
Jane’s mind too, for I am afraid of her forgetting it, as she is rather
giddy.—I am not sorry, Jane, to see you cry so much, because I hope it
will make you remember this strange day. I have heard of workhouse
frolics, my dear. Never let me hear of them from you. You will have a
service, I hope, in a few years, and you must try to make yourself fit
to live with a different sort of people from those you will find in the
workhouse.”

Mrs. Bell, who had come back in time to hear the last few words, began
to tell all she had heard about the pleasant kind of life people might
lead in a workhouse if they chose; but her cousin cut her short by
bidding the children take leave at once.

Few events wrung tears from this stout-hearted woman; but she kept her
apron to her eyes the whole way home, and could not speak to any body
all day.

                         ---------------------

                              CHAPTER II.

                              AN INTERIOR.

Miss Burke had gone into the country the morning after the fire, and
remained some weeks. When she returned, she inquired of her brother what
had become of the family who had been burnt out. She was an occasional
visitor at the workhouse school, and besides knew some of the elderly
paupers, and went to see them now and then. Her visits were made as
disagreeable as possible by the matron, who hated spies, as she
declared, and had good reasons for doing so; many practices going
forward under her management which would not bear inspection. She was
sometimes politic enough to keep out of sight, when she was aware that
something wrong had already met the lady’s eye; but she more frequently
confronted her near the entrance with such incivility as might, she
hoped, drive her away without having seen anything. The master was an
indolent, easy man, much afraid of the more disorderly paupers, and yet
more of his wife. He seldom appeared to strangers till called for; but
was then quite disposed to make the best of everything, and to agree in
all opinions that were offered. There was little more use, though less
inconvenience, in pointing out abuses and suggesting remedies to him
than to his wife; yet Mr. Burke and his sister conscientiously
persevered in doing this,—the gentleman from the lights he obtained in
his office of surgeon to the workhouse infirmary, and the lady, from her
brother’s reports and her own observations.

Miss Burke’s first inquiry at the workhouse gate was for nurse Rudrum.
The porter’s office consisted merely in opening the gate; so that when
the lady had entered the court, she had to make further search. The
court was half-full of people, yet two women were washing dirty linen at
the pump in the midst. Several men were seated cutting pegs for the
tilers and shoemakers, and others patching shoes for their
fellow-paupers; while several women stood round with their knitting,
laughing loud; and some of the younger ones venturing upon a few
practical jokes more coarse than amusing. At a little distance, sat two
young women shelling peas for a grand corporation dinner that was to
take place the next day, and beside them stood a little girl whose
business was apparently to clean a spit on which she was leaning, but
who was fully occupied in listening to the conversation which went on
over the pea-basket. This group looking the least formidable, Miss Burke
approached to make her inquiry. Being unperceived, the conversation was
carried on in the same loud tone till she came quite near, when one of
the young women exclaimed,

“I don’t want to hear any more about it. I wonder you had the heart to
do it.”

“To do what?” asked Miss Burke. “Something that you do not look ashamed
of,” she continued, turning to the first speaker.

“Lord, no,” said the girl with a bold stare. “It is only that a young
mistress of mine, that died and left a child a week old, bade me see
that it was taken care of till her husband came back, who was gone
abroad; and I could not be troubled with the little thing, so I took it
direct to the Foundling Hospital; and I heard that the father came home
soon after, and the people at the hospital could not the least tell
which was his child, or whether it was one that had died. I kept out of
the way, for I could not have helped them, and should only have got
abused; for they say the young man was like one gone mad.”

“And was it out of your own head that you took the child there, or who
mentioned the hospital to you?”

“I knew enough about it myself,” said the woman with a meaning laugh,
“to manage the thing without asking anybody. It is a fine place, that
Foundling Hospital, as I have good reason to say.”

“Pray find the matron,” said Miss Burke to the little spit-cleaner, who
was listening with open mouth; “and ask whether Miss Burke can be
admitted to see nurse Rudrum. I think,” she continued, when the little
girl was out of hearing, “you might choose your conversation better in
children’s company.”

“And in other people’s company too,” said the other sheller of peas.
“I’ve not been used to such a place as this, and I can’t bear it.”

“You’ll soon get used to it, Susan, my love,” replied the bold one.

“Where do you come from, Susan, and why are you here?” inquired Miss
Burke.

With many blushes, Susan told that she was a servant out of place,
without friends and with no one to give her a character, her last master
and mistress having gone off in debt and left her to be suspected of
knowing of their frauds, though she had been so ignorant of them as not
to have attempted to secure her own wages. It was a hard case, and she
did not know how to help herself; but she would submit to any drudgery
to get out of the workhouse.

“And who are you?” said the lady to the other. “Are you a servant out of
place too?”

“Yes.”

“And without a character?”

“O yes, quite,” said the woman with a laugh. “It is well for me that
there are some places where characters don’t signify so much as the
parson tells us. Susan and I are on the same footing here.”

Susan rose in an agony, and by mistake emptied the shelled peas in her
lap among the husks.

“There! never mind picking them out again,” said the other. “If I take
such a trouble, it shall be for my own supper, when the rest are done.”

“So you really think,” said Miss Burke, “that you and Susan are on the
same footing because you live under the same roof and sit on the same
seat? I hope Susan will soon find that you are mistaken.”

At this moment appeared Mrs. Wilkes the matron, shouting so that all the
yard might hear.

“Is it nurse Rudrum you want? She is out of her mind and not in a state
for prayer. Gentlefolks are enough to send poor people out of their
minds with praying and preaching.”

“I am not going either to pray or preach,” replied Miss Burke; “and you
well know that it is some years since nurse Rudrum was in her right
mind. I only ask the way to her.”

“Yonder lies your way, madam. Only take care of the other mad people,
that’s all.”

Surprised and vexed to perceive Miss Burke persevering in her purpose,
notwithstanding this terrifying warning, she continued,

“Remember, if you please, that the doctors don’t allow their patients to
be made methodists of; though God knows how many are sent here by the
methodists. You’ll please to take it all upon yourself, ma’am.”

Miss Burke, not seeing how all this concerned herself and nurse Rudrum,
who were about equally far from methodism, pursued her way, as well as
she could guess, to the right ward.—She could not easily miss it when
once within hearing of nurse Rudrum’s never-ceasing voice, or the tip
tap of her ancient high-heeled shoes, which she was indulged in wearing,
as it was a fancy not likely to spread. Nurse was employed as usual,
pacing to and fro in the ward appropriated to the harmless insane,
knitting as fast as her well-practised fingers would go, and talking
about Jupiter.

“Miss Burke, I declare,” cried she, as soon as her visitor appeared.
“You are welcome, as you always are—always very welcome; but,” and she
came nearer and looked very mysterious, “you are come from them people
at a distance, I doubt. Now don’t deny it if you be. If they have
practised upon me, you didn’t know it; so no need to deny it, you know.”

“I am come from Mr. Earle’s, nurse; and Mr. Earle sent his love to you,
and hopes you will accept some tea and sugar; and the young ladies will
come and see you when they visit me, and in the meanwhile they have sent
you a Sunday shawl.”

A dozen curtseys, and “My duty to them, my duty and many thanks; and I
dare say it is because they are so sorry about them people at a distance
that practise upon my ancle, without so much as shaking their heads.”

“O, your ancle! I was to ask particularly how your ancle is. You seem
able to walk pretty briskly.”

“That’s to disappoint ’em, you see,” and she laughed knowingly. “I only
tell _you_, you know, so you’ll be quiet. They can’t touch me anywhere
else, because of Jupiter in my cradle.”

“What was that, nurse?”

“O that was when they made me a watch-planet; and a fine thing it was to
keep me from harm,—all except my ancle, you see. It was Jupiter, you
know; and I feel it all over me now sometimes,—most in my elbows. It was
only Jupiter; none of the rest of them. That was my mother’s doing; for
Jupiter is the most religious of all the planets.”

And so she ran on till her visitor interrupted her with questions about
some of her companions in the ward.

“Aye—a queer set for me to be amongst, a’n’t they? That poor man! Look
at his sash;” and she giggled while she showed how a poor idiot was
fastened by a leathern belt to a ring in the wall. “He spins a good deal
as it is; but if he could walk about, he would do nothing. He has no
more sense than a child, and people of that sort are always for tramp,
tramp, tramping from morning till night, till it wearies one’s ears to
hear them.”

And nurse resumed her walk. When she returned to the same place, she
went on,—

“If these people could be made to hold their tongues, they would be
better company; but you never heard such a clatter; they won’t hear one
speak. That girl sings to her spinning-wheel the whole day long, and she
has but one tune. They say I am growing deaf; but I’m sure I hear that
song for ever, as much when she is not singing as when she is. But do
you think that I am growing deaf, really now?”

Miss Burke could only say that when people got to nurse’s age, and so
on.

“Well now, ’tis only because of Jupiter,—listening as a watch-planet
should, you know. You should have heard his music last night;—that that
I used to sing to the little Earles, when master Charles was afraid to
go to bed alone because of the ghost-story I told him; and I put him to
bed in Miss Emma’s room for once, and nobody knew: so don’t tell my
mistress, for she never forgave such a thing.”

Miss Burke smiled and sighed; for this master Charles was now a man of
forty, and Mrs. Earle had been in her grave nearly twenty years. As the
visitor was about to take leave, nurse laid her hand on the lady’s arm,
drew up her tight little person to its best advantage, and gravely said,

“One thing more, Miss Burke. You will give me leave to ask why I am
detained in this place, among idiots and dolts that are no companions
for me? This is a poor reward for my long service, and so you may tell
Mr. Earle.”

“We hoped you had everything comfortable, nurse. You always seem in good
spirits.”

“Comfortable! You mean as to tea and sugar and shawls; but what is that
compared with the company I keep? The Earles don’t know what they miss
by what they do. Many a time I would go and see them, and carry them a
piece of gingerbread, if I was not prevented.”

“Well, nurse, you shall come and see them at our house by and by. In the
meanwhile,—you know the boys in the yard are very rude, and they are too
apt to teaze old people. We think you are more comfortable out of their
way.”

Nurse still looked haughty and dissatisfied.

“Besides,” continued Miss Burke, “watch-planets are not common, you
know; and who knows how they might be treated in the world?”

“True, true, true,” cried the delighted old woman. “There are but two in
the world besides me, and they are at Canterbury, where my mother lived
nurse twenty years. ’Tis only them that study the stars that bow before
watch-planets. Well! we shall all study the stars up above, and then
will be the time for us watch-planets.”

So saying, nurse Rudrum returned to the track she had worn in the floor,
and Miss Burke heard the well known pit pat all the way down stairs.

The lady now turned into the school, where she was equally welcome to
mistress and scholars, especially after an absence of some duration, as
now. The mistress, Mrs. Mott, was not exactly the person the ladies
would have appointed to the office, if the choice had been left to them;
but, all things considered, the appointment might have been worse
filled. Mrs. Mott, a starched, grim-looking personage, had kept a dame
school in a village for many years, during which time she had acquired a
very high opinion of herself and her modes of tuition;—an opinion which
she continued to instil into the guardians of the poor, by whom she was
appointed to her present office; their choice being also aided by the
consideration that Mrs. Mott must have parish assistance at all events,
and might as well do something in exchange for it. The ladies who
interested themselves about the children, seeing that the choice lay
between having no school at all and having Mrs. Mott for a
schoolmistress, made the best of the latter alternative.

When the lady entered, Mrs. Mott was doing what she rather prided
herself upon,—carrying on two affairs at once. She was fixing work for
the girls,—plying her needle as fast as possible—and leading a hymn
which the children sang after her, kneeling on their benches, with their
hands clasped before them, and every little body rocking from side to
side to mark the time. When it was over, and the children scrambled down
into their seats, a universal grin of pleasure greeted Miss Burke from
her old acquaintance, and a stare of wonder from the new comers who yet
knew her only by reputation. Mrs. Mott, meanwhile, went on drawing out
her thread most indefatigably, and murmuring as if under some emotion.

“Good morning, Mrs. Mott. It is some time since I saw you last.”

“Time, madam! Aye: time is given, time is given where all else is given.
’Tis ours to seize it ere it flies.”

“How are your family, Mrs. Mott? I hope your sons are doing better.”

“Son, madam, son! I suppose you don’t know that the Lord has made choice
of Jack?”

Miss Burke was much concerned; and tried to hear the story
notwithstanding a hubbub at the bottom of the school, which at length
roused the teacher’s wrath.

“Tommy bit Jemmy,” was the reply of twenty little voices to the inquiry
of what was the matter.

“Tommy is a bad boy and must be punished,” was the verdict; and the
sentence speedily followed. “We are going to prayers, and I will have no
disturbance while prayers are going on; but I will have justice. So, as
soon as prayers are over, Jemmy shall bite Tommy in whatever part he
chooses.”

Miss Burke considered how she might best interfere with the process
without setting aside the mistress’s authority. She waited till prayers
were over, and then called the two boys before her. She represented to
the sobbing culprit the enormity of biting human flesh, and then asked
Jemmy if he had any urgent desire to bite Tommy.

“I don’t want to bite him, unless I’m bid,” was the reply.

“Very well; then, suppose you forgive him instead. This will make him
very careful not to hurt you another time. Will it not, Tommy?”

Tommy agreed, and words instead of wounds were exchanged.

The next inquiry was for the Bridgemans. Ned was called out of the ranks
of departing school-boys, and Jane was sent for, being detained from
school this day to help to prepare for the corporation dinner. On her
appearance, she was recognized as the cleaner of spits, who had listened
so eagerly to the praises of the Foundling Hospital. Miss Burke told
them how she had heard of their circumstances, and her intention to
visit them from time to time. She asked them if they were happy.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Jane, readily; “a deal happier than we thought.”

Ned, however, only bit his lip to keep back his tears. Miss Burke framed
her speech to suit both.

“You know,” she said, “that we all consider that you are here only for a
time, and we trust a short time. It has pleased God to take from you
your natural protectors and teachers; and children like you must be
taken care of, and taught, before you can find a way in the world. But,
if you choose, you may soon make yourselves fit for a better and a
happier place than this; and the more cheerfully you set about it, Ned,
the more quickly you will learn. You, Jane, should seek out the more
sober and quiet young women to talk to, instead of listening to the
foolish gossip that goes on in the yard. Has Susan been kind to you?”

“She always keeps by herself when she can, ma’am.”

“She will be kind to you, however, I am sure, if you deserve it; and I
believe she can teach you many things you will like to learn.”

In order to unloose Ned’s tongue, the lady made several inquiries about
their comforts. They had nothing to complain of but that they did not
like milk-broth, which composed their dinner twice a week, and that the
workhouse dress was very hot and heavy. The first evil could not be
helped—the other seemed very reasonable; and Miss Burke determined to
urge an objection to it through her brother, as it appeared that a thick
woollen dress was the most liable to dirt of any that could be fixed
upon, and the most unseemly when worn into holes; besides this, the
children were exposed to colds from the temptation to throw off the
dress when heated, and from exchanging it for their own old clothes on
Sundays and holidays. Jane had, as her brother declared, been scarcely
ever without colds since she entered the workhouse, as cousin Marshall
had been kind enough to provide her with a complete suit on her
entrance, which Jane was fond of wearing whenever she went to church, or
to the gardens, or——”

“To the gardens! What gardens?”

The public tea-gardens, where the girls and boys were treated very often
on Sundays, sometimes under guidance, and sometimes without any. Jane
was very eloquent in describing these frolics, and others which took
place within the walls.

Miss Burke had little hope of counteracting such influences as these by
an occasional visit; but she now said what she thought most likely to
impress the mind of the poor girl, and then proceeded to find Susan, in
order to recommend Jane to her care. She was glad to see Wilkes, the
master, unaccompanied by his wife, and conversing with a gentleman whom
she knew to be one of the visitors. Before she reached them, she
perceived that Ned was following her with a wistful look.

“Have you anything more to say to me?” she inquired.

“Only, ma’am, that perhaps you may know when we may get out. I should
like to see the time when we shall get out.”

“I wish I could tell you, my dear boy; but I can only guess, like you. I
guess it will be when Jane is fit for service, and you for labour in the
fields or elsewhere.”

“I can labour now,” said the boy, brightening. “If they would try me, I
am sure I could dig all day.”

“Be patient, Ned; and then, if you turn out a clever workman when the
right time comes, who knows but you may not only keep out of the
workhouse yourself, but prevent somebody else from coming in?”

Ned smiled, pulled his forelock, and went away cheered.

Mr. Nugent, the visitor, met Miss Burke with an observation on the
improvement of workhouses which rendered them accessible to female
benevolence; whereas they were once places where no lady could set her
foot. Miss Burke gravely replied that there was much yet for benevolence
to do. The necessary evils of a workhouse were bad enough; and it was
afflicting to see them needlessly aggravated,—to see poverty and
indigence confounded, and blameless and culpable indigence, temporary
distress, and permanent destitution, all mixed up together, and placed
under the same treatment. These distinctions were somewhat too nice for
the gentleman’s perceptions; at least, while announced in abstract
terms. He stood in an attitude of perplexed attention, while Wilkes
asked whether she would have the paupers live in separate dwellings.

Miss Burke observed that the evil began out of the workhouse; and that
the want of proper distinctions there made classification in the house
an imperative duty.

“We are too apt,” she said, “to regard all the poor alike, and to speak
of them as one class, whether or not they are dependent; that is,
whether they are indigent or only poor. There must always be poor in
every society; that is, persons who can live by their industry, but have
nothing beforehand. But that there should be able-bodied indigent, that
is, capable persons who cannot support themselves, is a disgrace to
every society, and ought to be so far regarded as such as to make us
very careful how we confound the poor and the indigent.”

“I assure you, ma’am,” said Wilkes, “it grieves me very much to see
honest working men, or sober servants out of place, come here to be
mixed up with rogues and vagabonds.”

“But they are all indigent alike,” observed Mr. Nugent, “or your honest
labourers would not have to come here.”

“All indigent, certainly, sir; but not all alike. We have had cottagers
here for a time, after losing cows and pigs by accident; and even little
farmers after a fire on their premises; and labourers, when many
hundreds were turned off at once from the public works. Now, this sort
of indigence is very different from that which springs out of vice.”

“It seems to me,” said Miss Burke, “that as wide a distinction ought to
be made between temporary and lasting indigence, and between innocent
and guilty indigence, within the workhouse, as between poverty and
indigence out of it; and as the numbers are, I believe, very unequal, I
should think it might easily be done. I suppose, Mr. Wilkes, those who
require permanent support, the invalids and the thoroughly depraved, are
few in comparison with those who come in and go out again after a time.”

“Very few indeed, ma’am. Mr. Nugent knows that our numbers are for ever
varying. One year we may have seven hundred in the house, and another
year not so much as three hundred. It seems to me the surest way of
making the industrious into vagabonds, and the sober into rogues, to mix
them all up together; to say nothing of the corruption to the children.”

“I heard the other day,” said Mr. Nugent, “that few of the children who
have been brought up here turn out well. But it can’t be helped, madam.
The plan of out-door pay must have its limits, and our building a new
house for the moral or immoral, is out of the question in the present
state of the funds. The rate has increased fearfully of late, as your
brother will tell you. I confess I do not see what is to become of the
system altogether, if we go on as we have been doing for the last five
years.”

Miss Burke observed that she was far from wishing to urge any new
expenses. She rather believed that much money would be saved by enabling
the industrious to pursue their employments undisturbed, and by keeping
the young and well-disposed out of the contagion of bad example. She
pointed out the case of Susan as one of great hardship, and that of
little Jane as one of much danger. Wilkes confirmed the fact of Susan
being a good girl, and a well-qualified servant, and told that the other
woman had been discharged from various services for theft and other
crimes.

Mr. Nugent who, in the midst of his talk about improvement, disliked
trouble and innovation, related that an attempt at classification had
once been made by building a wall across the yard, to separate the men
and women; but that the wall had been pulled down in a riot of the
paupers, after which it was considered too formidable an undertaking to
rebuild it.

Miss Burke thought, on her way home, that classification must begin
among the guardians of the poor, before much reformation could be looked
for. The intrepid and active among the gentlemen, if separated from the
fearful and indolent, might carry the day against the ill-conducted
paupers; but such a result was scarcely to be hoped while the termagant
Mrs. Wilkes monopolized all authority within the walls, and the majority
of the guardians insisted on the let-alone plan of policy being pursued;
a plan under which everything was let alone but the rates, which
increased formidably from year to year.

                         ---------------------

                              CHAPTER III.

                             TEA AND TALK.

Mr. Burke came in earlier than usual this evening, the first time since
his sister’s return that he could enjoy her society in peace. When he
arrived wet and chilly from a stormy ride, and found a little fire, just
enough for a rainy summer’s evening, burning brightly in the grate, the
tea apparatus prepared, his slippers set ready, his study gown awaiting
him, and a pile of new medical books laid within reach, as if to offer
him the choice of reading or conversation, he wished within himself that
Louisa would leave home no more till he was married, if that time should
ever come. This wish was pardonable; for he was, to use his own
expression, so accustomed to be spoiled by his sister that he scarcely
knew what comfort was while she was away.

“Any notes or messages for me, Louisa?” he inquired, before resigning
himself to his domestic luxuries.

“Alas, yes!” she replied, handing him two or three from their appointed
receptacle.

“These will all do to-morrow,” he cried; “so make tea while I change my
coat.” A direction which was gladly obeyed. On his return he flung the
books on a distant table, stretched himself out with feet on fender,
coaxed his dog with one hand, and stirred his steaming cup with the
other.

“I wish I were a clergyman,” were his first words.

“To have parsonage comforts without getting wet through in earning them,
I suppose,” said Louisa, laughing.

“You are far from the mark, Louisa.”

Louisa made many guesses, all wrong, about capricious patients,
provoking consulting physicians, unpaid bills, jealous competitors, and
other causes of annoyance.

“No, no, dear. It is a deeper matter than any of these. The greatest
question now moving in the world is, ‘What is charity?’”

“Alas, yes! And who can answer it? Johnson gave a deficient answer, and
Paley a wrong one; and who can wonder that multitudes make mistakes
after them?”

“A clergyman, Louisa, a wise clergyman who discerns times and seasons,
may set many right; and God knows how many need it! He will not follow
up a text from Paul with a definition from Johnson and an exhortation
from Paley. He will not suppose because charity once meant alms-giving
that it means it still; or that a kind-hearted man must be right in
thinking kindness of heart all-sufficient, whether its manifestation be
injurious or beneficial. He will not recommend keeping the heart soft by
giving green gooseberries to a griped child,—as he might fairly do if he
carried out Paley’s principle to its extent.”

“A professional illustration,” replied Louisa. “You want me to carry it
on unto the better charity of giving the child bitter medicine. But,
brother, let the clergyman preach as wisely and benignantly as he may,
why should you envy him? Cannot you, do not you, preach as eloquently by
example?”

“That is the very thing,” replied her brother. “I am afraid my example
preaches against my principles.—O, dear, if it was but as easy to know
how to do right as to do it!”

“What can have wounded your conscience to-day?” replied Louisa. “You are
generally as ready in applying principles as decided in acting upon
them. What can have placed you in a new position since morning?”

“Nothing: but my eyes are more opened to that in which I already stood;
and really, Louisa, it is a very questionable one. I will tell you.—I am
a medical officer of various charities which would be good if benevolent
intention and careful management could make them so, but of the tendency
of which I think very ill. The question is whether I am not doing more
harm than good by officiating at the Dispensary and Lying-in Hospital,
while it is clear to me that the absence of these charities would be an
absence of evil to society?”

“You must remember, brother, that your secession would have no other
effect than to put another medical officer in your place. I am afraid
you are not yet of consequence enough,” laughing, “to show that these
institutions must stand or fall with you.”

“That argument of yours, Louisa, has done long and good service to many
a bad cause. I can allow it no more weight with me than with a
discontented Catholic in good old Luther’s days. No; my plea to my own
doubts has hitherto been that my office gave me the opportunity of
promoting my own views both among the benefactors and the poor; but I
begin to think I may do so much more effectually by resigning my office
in those charities which I consider to be doing harm, openly stating my
reasons, of course.”

“Have you long meditated this, brother?”

“Yes, for several months; but a particular circumstance has roused my
attention to-day. These anniversary times always disgust me,—these
stated periods for lauding the benevolent and exhibiting the benefited.
I am sure the annual dinner would be better attended by the subscribers
to the Dispensary, for instance, if the custom of parading round the
room as many of the patients as could be got hold of were discontinued.
But it is the matter of fact of the Report, and the way in which it is
viewed by the patrons, that has startled me to-day. I was referred to,
as usual, by the secretary and one or two more for information
respecting certain classes of patients, and I was shown the Report which
is to be read after dinner to-morrow. You will scarcely guess what is
the principal topic of congratulation in it.”

“That Lord B—— takes the chair to-morrow, perhaps? Now, do not look
angry, but let me guess again. That the subscriptions have increased?”

“Aim in an opposite direction, and you will hit it.”

“That the funds are insufficient? Can this be it?”

“Just so. The number of patients has increased so much, that a further
appeal is made to the public in behalf of this admirable charity, which
has this year relieved just double the number it relieved ten years
ago.”

“I thought,” said Louisa, “that its primary recommendation, ten years
ago, was that it was to lessen the amount of sickness among the poor.”

“True,” replied her brother; “and upon this understanding many
subscribed who are now rejoicing over the numbers of the sick. If the
plague were to visit us, they might see the matter in its right light.
They would scarcely rejoice that five hundred more were brought to the
pest-house daily.”

“But how comes the increase?” inquired Louisa. “I understand it in the
case of the Lying-in Charity, which seems to me the worst in existence,
except perhaps foundling hospitals; but this is different——”

“From all other institutions, it is to be hoped,” interrupted her
brother. “It is dreadful to see the numbers of poor women disappointed
of a reception at the last moment, and totally unprovided. The more are
admitted, the more are thus disappointed; and those who are relieved
quit the hospital in a miserable state of destitution.”

“Probably, brother. What else could be expected under so direct a bounty
on improvidence—under so high a premium on population? But how do you
imagine the number of sick increases so fast? Are your Dispensary
patients in due proportion to the general increase of numbers in the
place?”

“Alas, no! They are much more numerous. Not only do numbers increase
very rapidly; but from their increasing beyond the means of comfortable
subsistence, the people are subject to a multitude of diseases arising
from hardship alone. It would make your heart ache if I were to tell you
how large a proportion of my Dispensary patients are children born puny
from the destitution of their parents, or weakly boys and girls, stunted
by bad nursing, or women who want rest and warmth more than medicine, or
men whom I can never cure until they are provided with better food.”

“How you must wish sometimes that your surgery was stocked with coals
and butcher’s meat!”

“If it were, Louisa, the evil would only be increased, provided this
sort of medicine were given gratis, like my drugs. There is harm enough
done by the poor taking for granted that they are to be supplied with
medicine and advice gratis all their lives: the evil is increasing every
day by their looking on assistance in child-birth as their due; and if
they learn to expect food and warmth in like manner, their misery will
be complete.”

“But what can we do, brother? Distress exists: no immediate remedy is in
the hands of the poor themselves. What can be done?”

“These are difficulties, Louisa, which dog the heels of all bad
institutions.—We must do this. We must make the best of a vast amount of
present misery, thankful that we see at length the error of having
caused it. We must steadily refuse to increase it, and employ all the
energies of thinking heads and benevolent hearts in preventing its
recurrence, and shortening to the utmost its duration. Here is ample
scope for all the tenderness of sensibility which moralists would
encourage, and for all the wisdom which can alone convert that
tenderness into true charity.”

“What should be our first step, brother?”

“To ascertain clearly the problem which we are to solve. The grand
question seems to me to be this—_How to reduce the number of the
indigent?_ which includes, of course, the question, How to prevent the
poor becoming indigent?”

“If this had been the problem originally proposed, brother, there would
have been little indigence now: but formerly people looked no further
than the immediate relief of distress, and thought the reality of the
misery a sufficient warrant for alms-giving.”

“And what is the consequence, Louisa? Just this: that the funds raised
for the relief of pauperism in this country exceed threefold the total
revenues of Sweden and Denmark. Aye; our charitable fund exceeds the
whole revenue of Spain; and yet distress is more prevalent than ever,
and goes on to increase every year. The failure of British benevolence,
vast as it is in amount, has hitherto been complete; and all for want of
right direction.”

“Well, brother, how would you direct it? How would you set about
_lessening the number of the indigent_?”

“I would aim at two objects: increasing the fund on which labourers
subsist, and proportioning their numbers to this fund.—For the first of
these purposes, not only should the usual means of increasing capital be
actively plied, but the immense amount which is now unproductively
consumed by the indigent should be applied to purposes of production.
This cannot be done suddenly; but it should be done intrepidly,
steadily, and at a gradually increasing rate. This would have the
effect, at the same time, of fulfilling the other important object,—that
of limiting the number of consumers to a due proportion to the fund on
which they subsist.”

“You would gradually abolish all charitable institutions then——O no! not
all. There are some that neither lessen capital nor increase population.
You would let such remain.”

“There are some which I would extend as vigorously and perseveringly as
possible; viz. all which have the enlightenment of the people for their
object. Schools should be multiplied and improved without any other
limit than the number and capabilities of the people.”

“What! all schools? Schools where maintenance is given as well as
education?”

“The maintenance part of the plan should be dropped, and the instruction
remain.”

“But, brother, if one great evil of gratuitous assistance is that the
poor become dependent upon a false support, does not this apply in the
case of a gratuitous education?”

“The time will come, I trust, Louisa, when the poorer classes will
provide wholly for themselves and their families; but at present we must
be content with making them provide what is essential to existence. To
enable them to do this, they must be educated; and as education is not
essential to existence, we may fairly offer it gratis till they have
learned to consider it indispensable. Even now, I would have all those
pay something for the education of their children who can; but let all
be educated, whether they pay or not.”

“The blind, and the deaf and dumb, I suppose, among others?”

“Yes; and in these cases I would allow of maintenance also, since the
unproductive consumption of capital in these cases is so small as to be
imperceptible, and such relief does not act as a premium upon
population. A man will scarcely be in any degree induced to marry by the
prospect of his blind or deaf children being taken off his hands, as the
chances are ten thousand to one against any of his offspring being thus
infirm. Such relief should be given till there are none to claim it.”

“I heard the other day, brother, of a marriage taking place between a
blind man and woman in the asylum at X——.”

“Indeed! If anything could make me put these institutions on my
proscribed list, it would be such a fact as that. The man could play the
organ, and the woman knit, and make sash-line, I suppose?”

“Just so; and they could each do several other things, but, of course,
not those common offices which are essential to the rearing of a family.
It struck me immediately as a crime against society. Well—what other
charities should stand?”

“Whatever else I resign, Louisa, I shall retain my office at the
Casualty Hospital. I hope this kind of relief will be dispensed with in
a future age; but the people are not yet in a condition to provide
against the fractures, wounds and bruises which befall them in following
their occupations. This institution may rank with Blind Asylums.”

“And what do you think of alms-houses for the aged?”

“That they are very bad things. Only consider the numbers of young
people that marry under the expectation of getting their helpless
parents maintained by the public! There are cases of peculiar hardship,
through deprivation of natural protection, where the aged should be
taken care of by the public. But the instances are very rare where old
people have no relations; and it should be as universal a rule that
working men should support their parents, as that they should support
their children. If this rule were allowed, we might see some revival of
that genial spirit of charity and social duty among the poor, whose
extinction we are apt to mourn, without reflecting that we ourselves
have caused it by the injudicious direction of our own benevolence.—This
reminds me of the Bridgemans. Mark how those poor children are disposed
of. Two are taken care of by distant relations who have never in their
lives accepted charity, except the schooling of their children. A nearer
relation, who has, to my knowledge, uselessly consumed many a pound of
the charitable fund, sends the other two to the workhouse.”

“A case very appropriate to what you have been saying, brother. But how
is poor Sally? Can nothing save her sight?”

“Nothing, I fear. I have already spoken of her case to several governors
of the Blind Asylum, where I hope she may be received on the first
vacancy. The Marshalls are too sensible, I am sure, not to see the
advantage of getting her placed there; and it may be the means of
releasing one of the others from the workhouse.”

Louisa now related her morning’s adventures. Her brother smiled as he
warned her that she would, no doubt, be pronounced an eccentric young