"Charity begins at home," says, or rather said, an admirable old proverb;
but alack! the adage, or the times, or both, are out of joint--the
wholesome maxim has lost its force--and homes for Charity must now be far
as the _Poles_ asunder, ere the benign influence of the weeping goddess
can fall upon its wretched supplicants.
In private life the neglect of a domestic hearth for the vainglorious
squandering abroad of the means that could and ought to render that the
chief seat of comfort and independence, calls down upon the thoughtless
and heartless squanderer and abuser of his means the just indignation and
merited contempt of every thinking and properly constituted mind. The
"Charity" that does not begin at home is the worst species of
unjustifiable prodigality, and the first step to the absolute ruin of the
"nearest and dearest" for the sake of the profligate and abandoned. And no
sophistry can justify the apparent liberality that deprives others of
their just and urgent dues.
It may be and is most noble to feed the widow and to clothe the orphan;
but where is the beneficence of the deed if the wife and children of the
ostentatious donor--the victims of the performance of such acts--are left
themselves to endure misery and privations, from which his inadequate
means cannot exempt the stranger and the giver's own household!
The sparrow who unwittingly rears the cuckoo's spurious offspring, tending
with care the ultimate destroyer of its own young, does so in perfect
ignorance of the results about to follow the misplaced affection. The
cravings of the interloper are satisfied to the detriment of its own
offspring; and when the full-fledged recipient of its misplaced bounty no
longer needs its aid, the thankless stranger wings its way on its far-off
course, selfishly careless of the fostering bird that brought it into
life; and this may be looked upon as one of the results generally
attendant upon a blind forgetfulness of _where_ our first endeavours for
the amelioration of the wants of others should be made.
It has ever been the crying sin of the vastly sympathetic to weep for the
miseries of the distant, and blink at the wretchedness their eyes--if not
their hearts--must ache to see. Their charity must have its proper stage,
their sentiments the proper objects,--and their imaginations the
undisturbed right to revel in the supposititious grievances of the far-off
wretched and oppressed. The poor black man! the tortured slave! the
benighted infidel! the debased image of his maker! the sunken bondsman!
These terms must be the "Open sesame" for the breasts from whence spring
bibles, bribes, blankets, glass beads, pocket-combs, tracts, teachers,
missions, and missionaries. Oppression is what they would put down; but
then the oppression must be of "foreign manufacture." Your English,
genuine home-made article, though as superior in strength and endurance as
our own canvas is to the finest fold of gauze-like cambric, is in their
opinion a thing not worth a thought. A half oppressed Caffre is an object
of ten thousand times more sympathy than a wholly oppressed Englishman; a
half-starved Pole the more fitting recipient of the same proportion of
actual bounty to a wholly starving peasant of our own land of law and
liberty.
Let one-tenth the disgusting details so nobly exposed in the _Times_
newspaper, as to the frightful state of some of our legalised poor law
inquisitions, appear as extracts from the columns of a _foreign_ journal,
stating such treatment to exist amongst a foreign population, and mark the
result. Why, the town would teem with meetings and the papers with
speeches. Royal, noble, and honourable chairmen and vice chairmen would
launch out their just anathemas against the heartless despots whose realms
were disgraced by such atrocities. Think, think of the aged poor torn from
their kindred, caged in a prison, refused all aid within, debarred from
every hope without,--think of the flesh, the very flesh, rotting by slow
degrees, and then in putrid masses falling from their wretched bones:
think, we say, on this--then give what name you can, save murder, to their
quickly succeeding death.
Fancy children--children that should be in their prime--so caged and fed
that the result is disease in its most loathsome form, and with all its
most appalling consequences! No hope! no flight! The yet untainted, as it
were, chained to the spot, with mute despair watching the slow infection,
and with breaking hearts awaiting the hour--the moment--when it _must_
reach to them!
We say, think of these things--not as if they were the doings in England,
and therefore legalised matters of course--but think of them as the arts
of some despot in a far-off colony, and oh, how all hearts would burn--all
tongues curse and call for vengeance on the abetors of such atrocities!
The supporters of the rights of man would indeed pour forth their eloquent
denunciations against the oppressors of the absent. The poetry of passion
would be exhausted to depict the frightful state of the crimeless and
venerable victim of tyranny, bowing his grey hairs with sorrow to the
grave; while the wailing of the helpless innocents _different indeed in
colour_, but in heart and spirit like ourselves, being sprung from the one
great source, would echo throughout the land, and find responses in every
bosom not lost to the kindly feelings of good-will towards its fellows!
Had the would-be esteemed philanthropists but these "_foreign cues_ for
passion," they would indeed
"Drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free;
Confound the ignorant; and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears."
But, alas! there is no such motive; these most destitute of Destitution's
children are simply fellow-countrymen and fellow-Christians. Sons of the
same soil, and worshippers of the same God, they need no good works in the
way of proselyzation to save them from eternal perdition; consequently
they receive no help to keep them from temporal torture.
To convince themselves that these remarks are neither unwarrantably
severe, nor in the slightest degree overcharged, let our readers not only
refer to the revolting doings chronicled in the _Times_, but let them find
the further illustration of this _foreign penchant_ in the recent doings
at the magnificently-attended ball given in behalf of the _Polish
Refugees_, and consequently commanding the support of the humane,
enlightened, and charitable English; and then let them cast their eyes
over the cold shoulder turned towards a proposition for the _same_ act of
charity being consummated for the relief of the poverty-stricken and
starving families of the destitute and deserving artisans now literally
starving under their very eyes, located no farther off than in the
wretched locality of Spitalfields! An opinion--and doubtless an honest
one--is given by the Lord Mayor, that any attempt to relieve _their
wants_, in the way found so efficacious for _the Polish Refugees_, would
be madness, inasmuch as it would, _as heretofore_, prove an absolute
failure. Reader, is there anything of the cuckoo and the sparrow in the
above assertion? Is it not true? And if it is so, is it not a more than
crying evil? Is it not a most vile blot upon our laws--a most beastly
libel upon our creed and our country? Is no relief ever to be given to the
immediate objects who should be the persons benefited by our bounty? Are
those who, in the prosperity proceeding from their unceasing and ill-paid
toil, added their quota to the succour of others, now that poverty has
fallen on them, to be left the sport of fortune and the slaves of
suffering? Do good, we say, in God's name, to all, if good can be done to
all. But do not rob the lamb of its natural due--its mother's
nourishment--to waste it on an alien. There is no spirit of illiberality
in these remarks; they are put forward to advocate the rights of our own
destitute countrymen--to claim for them a share of the lavish
commiseration bestowed on others--to call attention to the desolation of
_their_ hearths--the wreck of their comforts--the awful condition of their
starving and dependent families--and to give the really charitable an
opportunity of reserving some of their kindnesses for home consumption.
Let this be their _just_ object, and not one among the relieved would
withhold his mite from their suffering fellows in other climes. But in
Heaven's name, let the adage root itself once more in every Englishman's
"heart of hearts," and once more let "Charity begin at home!"
* * * * *