If my reader will permit me to refer to my own labours, I would wish
to remind him of an old “Nut” of mine, in which I endeavoured to
demonstrate the defective morality and economy of our penal code--a
system, by which the smallest delinquent is made to cost the state
several hundreds of pounds, for an offence frequently of some few
pennies in value; and a theft of a loaf is, by the geometrical scale
of progressive aggrandisement, gradually swelled into a most expensive
process, in which policemen, station-houses, inspectors, magistrates,
sessions, assizes, judges, crown prosecutors, gaols, turnkeys, and
transports, all figure; and the nation is left to pay the cost of this
terrible array, for the punishment of a crime the prevention of which
might, perhaps, have been effected for two-pence.
I do not now intend to go over the beaten track of this argument; my
intention is simply to refer to it, and adduce another instance of this
strange and short-sighted policy, which prefers waiting to acting, and
despises cheap, though timely interference with evil, and indulges in
the somewhat late, but more expensive process of reparation.
And to begin. Imagine--unhappily you need exercise no great stretch of
the faculty, the papers teem with too many instances--imagine a poor,
woe-begone, miserable creature, destitute and friendless, without a
home, without a meal; his tattered clothing displaying through every
rent the shrunken form and wasted limbs to which hunger and want have
reduced him. See him as night falls, plodding onwards through the
crowded thoroughfares of the great city; his lack-lustre eye glazed
and filmy; his pale face and blue lip actually corpse-like in their
ghast-liness. He gazes at the passers-by with the vacant stare of
idiotcy. Starvation has sapped the very intellect, and he is like one
in some frightful vision; a vague desire for rest--a dreamy belief that
death will release him--lives in the place of hope; and as he leans over
the battlements of the tall bridge, the plash of the dark river murmurs
softly to his ear. His despair has conjured up a thousand strange and
flitting fancies, and voices seem to call to him from the dull stream,
and invite him to lie down and be at peace. Meanwhile the crowd passes
on. Men in all the worldliness of their hopes and fears, their wishes,
their expectations, and their dreads, pour by. None regard _him_, who
at that moment stands on the very brink of an eternity, whither his
thoughts have gone before him. As he gazes, his eye is attracted by the
star-like spangle of lights in the water. It is the reflection of those
in the house of the Humane Society; and he suddenly remembers that there
is such an institution; and he bethinks him, as well as his poor brain
will let him, that some benevolent people have called this association
by this pleasing title, and the very word is a balm to his broken heart.
“Humane Society!” Muttering the words, he staggers onwards; a feeling
too faint for hope still survives; and he bends his wearied steps
towards the building. It is indeed a goodly edifice; Portland stone
and granite, massive columns and a portico, are all there; and Humanity
herself is emblematised in the figures which decorate the pedestal.
The man of misery stands without and looks up at this stately pile; the
dying embers emit one sparky and for a second, hope brightens into
a brief flicker. He enters the spacious hall, on one side of which a
marble group is seen representing the “good Samaritan;” the appeal comes
home to his heart, and he could cry, but hunger has dried up his tears.
I will not follow him in his weary pilgrimage among the liveried menials
of the institution, nor shall I harass my reader by the cold sarcasm of
those who tell him that he has mistaken the object of the association:
that their care is not with life, but death; that the breathing man,
alive, but on the verge of dissolution, has no interest for _them_;
for _their_ humanity waits patiently for his corpse. It is true, one
pennyworth of bread--a meal your dog would turn from--would rescue this
man from death and self-murder. But what of that--how could such humble,
unobtrusive charity inhabit a palace? How could it pretend to porters
and waiting-men, to scores of officials, visiting doctors, and
physicians in ordinary? By what trickery could a royal patron be brought
to head the list of benefactors to a scheme so unassuming? Where would
be the stomach-pumps and the galvanic batteries for science?--where the
newspaper reports of a miraculous recovery?--where the magazine records
of suspended animation?--or where that pride and pomp and circumstance
of enlightened humanity which calls in chemistry to aid charity, and
makes electricity the test of benevolence? No, no; the hungry man might
be fed, and go his way unseen, untrumpeted--there would be no need of
this specious plausibility of humanity which proclaims aloud--Go and
drown yourself; stand self-accused and condemned before your Creator;
and if there be but a spark of vitality yet remaining, we 'll call
you back to life again--a starving suicide! No effort shall be
spared--messengers shall fly in every direction for assistance----the
most distinguished physician--processes the most costly--experiments
the most difficult--care unremitting--zeal untiring, are all yours.
Cordials, the cost of which had sustained you in life for weeks long,
are now poured down your unconscious throat--the limbs that knew no
other bed than straw, are wrapped in heated blankets--the hand stretched
out in vain for alms, is now rubbed by the jewelled fingers of a
west-end physician.
Men, men, is this charity?--is the fellow-creature nought?--is the
corpse everything?--is a penny too much to sustain' life?--is a hundred
pounds too little to restore it? Away with your stuccoed walls and
pillared corridors--support the starving, and you will need but little
science to reanimate the suicide.