Punch or The London charivari: Punch or The London charivari (5.1843)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

93

hirrh regard for their own goods and carcases. To legalise the murder of
the unfortunate paupers may be supposed to have been a measure which
naturally occurred to their minds; but it would have been difficult to
draw the line exactly between rich and poor, and to fix the property
qualification at which life should be entitled to protection. For this
reason, probabl\r, this scheme was never put into practice ; but so far was
it approximated to, that every possible temptation was held out to the
needy mother to destroy her offspring, which if she did, the act was
followed by this useful consequence, that she herself was hanged ;
the population thus being reduced by two. The discouragement of vacci-
nation amongst the inferior classes would also perhaps have been tried
by these humane system-mongers ; but the disease is no respecter of
persons. There was no help but to keep body and soul together ; and
barely to do this and no more was the principle of Political Economy.
But further, it was an object of that science to prevent poverty ; to deter
people from getting poor ; for its professors quietly assumed that a man's
■' indigence was owing to his own fault. The corollary of this proposition
was, that nobody had any business to be born necessitous, or weak in
mind and body, or to fall sick, or break his leg, or lose his eye-sight, or
j labour under any natural disadvantage, or meet with any accident
which might hinder him from getting his bread ; that all such things,
which the ignorance of mankind had before regarded as misfortunes,
j were crimes and vices, deliberately committed by an abuse of free-will.
This dogma would, in these millennial times, undoubtedly qualify its pro-
pounder for Bedlam; but our ancestors had a great many notions, and
did a great many things, which we should now attribute to insanity. It is
difficult, when we look at an old picture of a State Procession or a Lord
Mayor's Show, not to conclude that the actors in such exhibitions were not
derano-ed. This, however, is a wide digression ; for your turtle-eaters
and beef-eaters were anything but german to the workhouse.

In order to effect the very benevolent object of preventing poverty, the
Political Economists hatched a certain enactment, which was called the
New Poor Law. The Old Poor La.w (we do not mean the Statute Law,
but a law much older than that—a law then upwards of eighteen hundred

But this was not all. The board provided by the Samaritans of the
New Poor Law for the distressed was admirably matched by the lodging.
The Union Workhouse was made to look externally as much like a jail as
possible, and its interior arrangements were just such as were calculated
for the accommodation of the rogue. It had dungeons for turbulent
maturity, and whips for obstreperous youth. Thus it was very judiciously
rendered just the sort of place that nobody who had the least notion of
comfort would choose to live in. Its incommodiousness was enhanced, too,
byr several very ingenious expedients. For example, was any wretched
inmate detected indulging in the solace of a morsel of tobacco, he was
instantly deprived of the luxury ; nor was the benevolence of the friendly
visitor permitted to sweeten the cup of Misery with a lump of sugar.
But the masterpiece of cleverness in the workhouse system was the
separation of husband from wife ; for nothing would have tended more to
lighten their affliction than mutual sympathy—and this would have been
anything but desirable. And the bitter tears, perchance of an aged, fond,
couple, now for the first time separated since the days of their youth,
were a highly instructive example to the beiiolder.

It must be added, that the persons confined—for confined they were—
in the workhouse, were obliged to have their heads cropped, and to wear
a dress of shame, for the more forcible impression of others with the dread
of coming to their condition.

Such was the English Tartarus. Its Pluto was the minister who pre-
sided over it for the time being ; and its Cerberus, the triple-headed monster
in which was vested the Poor Law Commission. Nor must we omit to
mention a great fat, ill-favoured, surly-looking, red-nosed whelp, his
offspring; namely, the Beadle.

As Hercules of old dragged Cerberus from his den, so did he, by main
force, drag the Cerberus of England, in spite of his barking and biting,
into the light of day. He revealed the secrets of the prison-house ; he
thundered them into the ears of the nation ; nor did he relax his exertions
till his shout, " Down with the inhuman Poor Law !" was re-echoed from
John o'Groat's House to the Land's End. The cruel enactment was
repealed ; mercy was at length shown to the naked and hungry ; and from

years'standing), bade, that if one's brotherman were hungry, he shouldfeed
him, and if thirsty, that he should give him drink, and the food and drink
were to be what he would cater for himself; his self-love being the
measure of that which he was to bear to his neighbour. Water-gruel,
I therefore, for instance, was not exactly the sort of aliment which Christian
charity would have prescribed to want ; it entered not into the dietary of
the Old Poor Law ; but it was a staple article in that of the New : more-
i over it was very strong of the water. The remainder of the bill of fare
was of nearly similar quality, the whole of it constituting a " coarser kind
; of food" than that used by human beings in general. For the Political
I Economists very sagaciously divined that rather than be reduced to live
■ on the " coarser kind of food," a man would strain every nerve; they
I also wisely perceived that the said food bad the recommendation of being
| cheap as well as nasty.

that instant, to the shame and confusion of the Political Economists, tho
nation began to prosper. The gift to the poor proved to be a profitable
loan.

Hercules had now performed his second set of Twelve Labours ; but he
determined to do a baker's dozen. His last achievement was—

LABOUR THE THIRTEENTH,

Concerning which we shall be brief. Hercules, by way of a finish to
his great actions, paid the National Debt. This tremendous task he
effected, by persuading the proprietors of Punch generously to devote
one-tenth of their returns to that truly patriotic purpose.

The success of Hercules's Labours rendered England an example to the
world ; and very happily the world took it ; hence the universal peace
and happiness in the midst of which we are now living.