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vestigated at still greater length, and with more happy success. In the meantime it is not to be denied, that, in general, throughout the body of

the protestant people of Britain, the continued prejudices against their catholic brethren were gradually but distinctly giving way.

CHAPTER V.

Report of the Committees on the Mendic'ty and Vagrancy, and on the Police of the Metropolis-State of Manners as illustrated in the Evidence led before these Committees.

AMONG the most interesting subjects which came this year under the attention of the House of Commons, were those investigated in the two several committees, on the mendicity and vagrancy, and on the police of the metropolis. A committee on the former of these subjects had sat during a considerable part of the last session, under the direction of Mr Rose, and this year the same branch of enquiry was conducted with equal diligence. The committee on the police, where Mr Bennet presided, were no less indefatigable, and, although in neither case did any immediate legislative enact ments ensue, yet the body of information collected was quite sufficient to shew the propriety, or rather the necessity, of some such measures. To what conclusion the legislature may come after a more ample consideration both of evils and of remedies, we cannot pretend to guess; but the minutes of the evidence led before the committees, contain many very curious facts, well worthy in the meantime of being recorded, were it only by reason of the light which they throw upon the manners of several numerous classes

of the inhabitants of the British metropolis.

From the evidence of a great number of intelligent magistrates, clergymen, and church-wardens, who, in virtue of their offices, had seen and known much of the indigent in their respective neighbourhoods, it was very clearly proved, that of that immense number of mendicants wherewith the streets of the metropolis are at all times infested, a very small proportion indeed, consists of persons reduced by calamity to the last state of penury, or willing to escape from it by the honest labour of their hands. The beggars in London (consisting on the most moderate computation of from 15 to 20,000 persons) are in general, according to this testimony, of the most abandoned character, indolent, vicious, profligate, who prefer their own degraded life to every other, because they consider it as a more lucra tive, lazy, and luxurious one than they could otherwise easily command. These voluntary outcasts are not, however, without some laws of society and social compact among themselves. The streets of the metropolis are portion

ed out in fragments to the different members of the community, who exchange their stations for the sake of varying the deception, or dispose of them for money as if they were free holds. The profits of their base traffic are such as to furnish no mean temp. tation to the lowest of the people. The reward of ordinary labour is despised by them, because it would appear they are accustomed to make five, six, ten, or twelve shillings a-day, and yet not suppose themselves possessed of any extraordinary good fortune. The system of lies and tricks, and feigned diseases, both bodily and mental, by which these persons practise so power fully upon the minds of the respectable inhabitants, opens up a view of wickedness not more novel than disgusting. Parents let out their children for hire, to be carried about in the arms of others, for the purpose of exciting compassion; others send forth children more advanced in growth to beg by themselves, and in order to enhance the violence of their importunitics, punish them at night with stripes and hunger, if they dare to return without the two or three shillings which it is supposed possible for them to gain during the day. Old women hold schools in the night to teach these young creatures the arts of cursing and reviling, the "language of the streets." The more skilful proficients in this shameful trade earn profits which it is difficult for us to believe possible; one violent man, a lame sailor, possessed of a pension from Greenwich Hospital, whose station is St Paul's Churchyard, confessed that thirty shillings aday are with him no unusual gain. And it is asserted that another artful beggar, a Negro, who had for many years infested Finsbury Square, retired at

last to the West Indies with a fortune of 1500%.

Gains so easily won are not often, however, so carefully preserved. The mode of living common amongst the mendicants, presents the strangest mixture of misery and extravagance that can well be imagined. Persons who spend the whole day in the cold, smarting under voluntary wounds, and shivering from voluntary nakedness, are sure to prepare themselves for these hardships by "a breakfast of beafsteaks and oyster sauce," and a "glass or two of heated spirits." One man confesses, that "he never takes the trouble to pocket copper, but always spends that as it comes in the ginshop." In the evening after their labours are concluded, the beggars assemble in public houses, some of these of no mean appearance, chiefly or exclusively frequented by persons of their profession. A parish officer of Whitechapel mentions, that he has been present at the banquets with which they regale themselves in a house in that parish known by the name of the Beggar's Opera. Hams and beef are their usual fare; its inmates never touch broken victuals, but throw away whatever is given them, or sell it to the dealers in dogs-meat. On great occasions their table is graced by a goose roasted with sausages, which in their cant is called "an alderman hung in chains;" and the evening uniformly closes in a scene of drunkenness and uproar. Some of the mendicants are provided with comfortable lodgings, but the greater part are less careful as to this, than as to their diet. Their general fashion is to sleep in houses set apart for their use, where a bundle of straw is retained for a penny by the night. In these habitations they are crowded

* "I have seen a woman sit with twins for ten years," said one witness," and they never exceeded the saine age."

together in such a noisome and offensive manner, that it is no wonder all manner of foul diseases are engendered within their walls. A witness asserts to the committee, that he has seen forty beggars, male and female, young and old, spending the night in "one large round bed," in a house in St Giles's! It is ascertained that a very large proportion, at least one fourth, of the whole of the beggars in London are Irish. These live together chiefly in the district which has last been mentioned, huddled together in immense multitudes, (700 in one small court for example) and presenting in the midst of London, and in the immediate neighbourhood of some of its most elegant squares and streets, a spectacle of vice and misery no less disgraceful to the police, than disagreeable to the inhabitants. To remove these objects of just condemnation, but certainly not the less on that account of just pity, from the habitations they have thus selected for themselves, in one great city, and disperse them among their native parishes, is the first ob ject in the eyes of every magistrate under whose inspection these cases come; but in comparatively very few instances can this be accomplished.

The English vagrants sent by passes to their native districts, are indeed carried a stage or two from London, but as those to whom the business of conveying them is farmed out have no interest in the safe conclusion of their journey, they then very frequently make their escape, and return to the scene of their former depravities by some different route. The removal of the Irish is attended with still greater difficulties; for the seaports from which they are commonly and most conveniently embarked, are situated at a very consider

able distance from London, which circumstanceaffords, of course, every facility of escape to those who desire not the voyage. Neither has it been attempted (nor indeed is it easy to conceive by what means such an attempt could be made,) to prevent vagrants, who have submitted to one voyage homewards, from crossing the sea again to England the moment they please to do so. The apprehension of a mendicant, although for every such apprehension a statute reward of ten shillings is provided, is a matter of comparatively rare occurrence, and of some difficulty. The seizing of a beggar is always resisted by himself, and very frequently his part is taken by the byestanders. The reward, when he is finally seized, is diminished by the levying of fees in the office of the magistrate before whom he is brought. The purpose of the seizure is nullified by the facility with which magistrates dismiss offenders, whom it it so difficult a matter to dispose of; and still more by the facility of escape, to which allusion has already been made.

There is too much reason to suspect that a very considerable number of the mendicants in London are paupers belonging to the parishes of the metropolis, and farmed, as is the custom of most of these parishes, to persons who, having no object in view but gain, are very willing to allow their inmates to go out and beg for the sake of the consequent saving in the expenses of their own establishment. Another, and by far the most dangerous and offensive class of mendicants, consists of pensioners of Greenwich and Chelsea, men who scruple not in the less frequented outskirts of the city to be sometimes more than beggars.

Whether the evils implied in these

That is when the mendicant is begging out of his own parish. The reward is only five shillings when the transgression is committed within his own parish.

facts have for some years past been on the increase or the decrease, it is far from easy to form any opinion; an this point the most opposite statements were brought forward by gentlemen of high respectability, who had, as it seemed, enjoyed nearly equal opportunities of obtaining accurate information. The increased number of juvenile offenders, however, which was uniformly admitted in the evidence before the police committee, would lead to a suspicion, that the symptoms on which some persons thought there was a diminution in the number of mendicants must have been illusory. The use of ardent spirits has become every year more prevalent among the vulgar of all classes, and while that tendency continues, it is not likely that the sum of any species of misery or vice among them shall be lessened. Testimony, however, and that of the strongest kind, was borne to the partial efficacy of various benevolent schemes set on foot by the zeal of individuals for the reforming and reclaiming of the poor. The effects produced by attendance on Sunday schools, as it appeared from many pleasing examples cited to the committee, had been very generally of the most salutary nature, both on the pupils and on their parents. Neither had one great establishment for receiving vagrants, and supplying those willing to work with the means of labour, proved without benefit. Establishments of the same species, and upon a larger scale, were indeed among the few means of remedy hitherto tried, which it appeared probable the committee would in the end of their enquiries recommend to the adoption of the legislature.

The evidence brought before the committee on the police of the metro

polis, from the darker nature of the offences into which it was their purpose to investigate, was of a still more distressing nature. While it appeared from every testimony that the number of offences of the more violent and desperate kind had been for some years very much on the decrease, and that the institution of a regular horse patrole had almost entirely delivered the environs of the metropolis from the more daring species of depredators with which they had formerly been infested, there was no evidence of any proportionate diminution in regard to the less ferocious kinds of depravity-above all, there seemed to be but too much reason, as has already been stated, to conclude that the number of juvenile offenders and depredators had been remarkably on the increase. The practised thieves, grown skilful in avoiding by the manner of their offences the more terrible punishments of the law, have learned with equal success to transfer, in the greater number of instances, the risk of what does remain from themselves, to corrupted children, the instruments and companions of their guilt. Boys of twelve, nine, nay of six years, have been found capable, not of executing merely, but of planning and directing, the most cunning schemes of wickedness. With premature violence and deceit, these creatures have mingled premature desires. They game, they drink, they entertain mistresses of years proportionate to their own; they share all the vices of men, and in not a few cases, they have undergone the last severity of the law. Their instructors in the arts of wickedness, lead, like the mendicants whom we have already described, lives of merriment among themselves, cut off from all other society, except, as it would seem, that of the inferior officers

These creatures, sometimes of seven or eight years of age, they call by the cant name of "Flash-girls."

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