overthrown by its own impetus; and the proposition is equally true of
virtue. To do good to mankind is less facile than moralists suppose.
It requires something more than a mere animal impulse; and there is
much ground for doubting whether the world (at least the British world)
does not suffer more from the impertinent interference of mistaken
benevolence, than from the direct attacks of selfishness and malice on
its order and happiness. Charity, more especially, (though, in a well
ordered state, a duty whose exercise is limited within a narrow and
comprehensible sphere,) becomes, under a government replete with abuses
and fertile in factitious misery, a science requiring as much patient
research, and as large a grasp of intellect, as any other department of
politics. To be charitable on an extensive scale, is to legislate for
the poor; and man, in his domestic capacity, (whatever may be thought of
him as a citizen or a subject) is an animal made to think and to act for
himself.
In the British empire, where every class of society is more or less
dislocated, where the rewards of industry are subject to frequent
revolutions, and where life is sustained by the most painful efforts,
errors in the direction or energy of the charitable are doubly fatal.
They are not only a waste of the scanty and insufficient resources of
the multitudinous poor, a destruction of so much of the materials of
happiness, but they are a direct and positive evil, deranging the economy
of the lower orders, harassing them by needless and galling dictation,
and destroying in their bosoms the principle of independence, without
which there can be no virtue.
An high estimate of pecuniary charity in the scale of virtues is the
result of incivilization, and a testimony of the barbarity of the
governments where it prevails. Where the people are well governed and
prosperous, the field for the exercise of this virtue is necessarily
limited; but wherever great and terrible inequalities in human condition
subsist, charity is a necessary supplement to the defective institutions,
out of which they arise. In the christian world, where pecuniary
liberality is dignified as a theological virtue, charity stands in the
place of many more serviceable and important duties; and much of that
energy which should be given to the improvement of the political and
statistic condition of the country, is wasted in a vain attempt to
bolster up bad systems, and to avert by eleemosynary efforts the miseries
and vices accumulated by misrule. The high and influential classes are
especially prone to fall into this error. Too moral and too religious
to be satisfied with the wretchedness by which they are surrounded, yet
too selfish, perverse, or indolent to attempt a thorough removal of its
causes, they satisfy their consciences by attempting to relieve in detail
the sufferings, which their privileges and pretensions produce in the
gross; and when they have bestowed a small per centage of their overgrown
fortunes upon the wretches whom their monopoly of power has impoverished
and wronged, they flatter themselves that they have done all which human
sympathy or divine injunction requires at their hands.
This description of charity has been well described by a popular writer,
as “other-worldly-mindedness;” and no where is it more sensitive and
alive than among the aristocracy of Ireland,—a country where mendicity
is national, and where religious Quixotism is carried to the fever point
of exaltation and excess. Unfortunately this fiery and rampant zeal is
utterly deficient in knowledge; and there is more waste of money in
the city of Dublin, more direct provocation of misery by ill-contrived
attempts to relieve distress, more misdirected energy, than would,
if properly applied, remove, ten times over, all the pauperism of a
wholesomely constituted society of the same bulk.
In a country so teeming with an unemployed population as Ireland, it
certainly is not an easy matter to give a proper direction to public
feeling, and to avoid falling into dangerous errors; and though it is
necessary to signalize the more flagrant and mischievous abuses, and to
ridicule an all pervading folly, by which society suffers so deeply, yet
it must be confessed that the individuals who come under the lash are not
without some excuse. If their presumption and self-conceit are absurd and
baneful, their intentions at least are often the purest and the best.
The sphere of charity, its productive power of good, being closely
confined to the relief of those fortuitous evils to which the lower
classes must ever be exposed, even in the best regulated societies, the
moment it is applied to large categories of persons, as a remedy for
permanent abuses, it becomes an unmanageable and equivocal agent of
happiness, interfering with independent labour, disturbing its market,
and rendering occupation precarious, and its reward fluctuating. The
means which a nation possesses of employing its population are definite;
and charity, in giving them a new direction, does not increase the sum:
on the contrary, in as far as the process is forced and unnatural, it
tends to diminish that sum by waste and mismanagement. Most of the
charitable efforts which daily succeed each other for the employing
the poor of Ireland, are but the pouring money out of one pocket, to
place it in another; and if certain individuals are put to work in a new
direction by the process, an equal number are inevitably thrown out of
employment in some unobserved department.
This evil attaches with particular severity and mischievous effect to
those associations of good and pious ladies, who either work themselves
for the benefit of the poor, or find employment for them in charitable
asylums, where they are enabled to under-sell and drive out of the market
all competitors who are thrown upon their own resources. The money which
is collected by the sale of needle and fancy work thus performed, is
a direct robbery of the sempstresses, who, in garrets and in cellars,
strive to exist by unwearied labour. The cheap repositories that vend
articles of taste, fabricated in Magdalen asylums and receptacles for
the destitute, not only severely injure the shopkeeper, who pays rent
and taxes for the service of the public, but, through him, strikes
despair into the bosom of a large class of helpless females, who avail
themselves of accomplishments, acquired in happier circumstances, to
support themselves in independence, by the only means which the perverse
exclusion of women from their natural employments has left open to them.
It is no justification of such establishments, that they sell only
inutilities, calculated to catch a certain portion of loose cash, which
otherwise would be lost to benevolence. The manufacture of inutilities,
no less than that of articles of prime necessity, is the property of the
working poor,—a property with which the public cannot tamper, without
producing a certain evil, that is never compensated by the uncertain and
delusive good expected from the process.
Among the many idle, delusive, and extravagant amusements, invented by
that model of Grand Caliphs, Louis the XIVth, not the least remarkable
were the shops opened in the saloons of Versailles, and kept by the
king’s mistresses, or the princesses of the blood, attended by cavaliers,
who, though officiating as shop-boys, were chosen according to their rank
and office. In these magazines, toys, trinkets, and jewels of immense
value, were distributed at counters, attended by the greatest beauties
and most distinguished personages at the court; and if the cupidity
of the courtiers found its account in this prodigality, coquetry lost
nothing by the assumption of a character which added the _naïveté_ of the
_bonne bourgeoisie_ to the graces of dignity and refinement. Madame de
Maintenon dwells with emphasis on the fascinations of these illustrious
shopkeepers, and the elegance which presided over their counters.
The bazaars, called charitable, which, for some successive seasons have
been opened in Dublin, have in their details been modelled somewhat
after the manner of these _comptoirs_ of Versailles. The market is
generally held in some very public place; either at the Rotunda, (a room
consecrated to all public purposes,) or in an hotel or tavern. The stalls
are raised on either side; the shops are kept by ladies of the highest
rank in the Irish world of fashion and charity. The work disposed of is
their own; their customers are the public at large, who are admitted on
paying a shilling. The profits of the sale, of course, go to charity,
sometimes at home—too often foreign,—the conversion of Jews, or the
gathering of the stray sheep of Otaheite or Hindostan. The articles
produced to extort the benevolence of the customer, address themselves
rather to his charity than to his taste. They are multifarious; and
if variety could compensate for want of ingenuity and of skill, there
would be nothing to wish for in the bazaars of the charitable ladies of
Dublin:—worsted stockings, to fit Irish giants,—bead purses, threaded by
fairy fingers,—frizettes for the head, woven of horse-hair,—and slippers
of hemp for the feet, as fatiguing as the tread-mill,—hearth-rugs
as rugged “as a Russian bear,”—and pillows of lavender, not much
smoother,—old jelly and stale cakes, which have figured at more than
one tea and tract _soirée_,—and ornaments in every form, that can be
produced by paste and paper, and daubed by paint,—from a pagoda to a
pincushion,—of just that description which a woman of taste consigns to
her housekeeper’s room, and the housekeeper, in turn, bestows on the
still room, as fit for nothing but to preserve dust, and afford lurking
places for spiders.
Meantime, if criticism looks on with her “eye malign askance,” in its
lounge up the long line opened between the repositories of trash, there
are many whose susceptibility supplies the place at once of taste and of
charity, and the bazaar is the great resort of all the _désœuvrés_ of one
sex, and of all the saints of the other. Among the most distinguished of
the first, are the military elegants of the garrison; among the latter,
are some of the highest and prettiest of the aristocracy. Placed behind
piles of pincushions, each having a moral in minikins stuck on its silken
surface, or behind an outwork of paper screens, consecrated by the Lord’s
prayer and the commandments, stands the fair trader, with a look, “sober,
steadfast, and demure,” and an air of gentle solicitation, like that of
the venders of royal effigies at the gate of the Tuileries, who cry,
from morning till night, “_Voyez, Messieurs, voyez la famille royale de
France, et la Princesse Caroline, tous pour deux sous._”[65]
I was one day much amused by observing a little scene of this sort. The
finest eyes I ever saw, were doing the honours of a charitable counter,
to the very best of their ability. “_A bonnes enseignes, bon vin._” A
young and gallant hussar, whose attention had wandered from stall to
stall, with undefined charity, was at last attracted by the “_voyez,
messieurs_,” of the eyes alluded to. The _petit commerce_ once begun, it
was difficult to say which party threw most enterprize and speculation
into the transaction. Fly-traps were shut and opened, with suitable
comments on flies and traps; tablets were displayed, whose inscriptions
were only to be breathed upon, to become, like good impressions,
ineffacable; Adam and Eve, with the tempter in the tree, worked on a
footstool in tent stitch, were not without allusion and edification; and
the history of “Theresa Tidy” was recommended as a _souvenir_ for absent
sisters, with an air which proved that saints, as well as hussars, can
be good disciplinarians. The choice was at length made. It fell upon a
bunch of violets, reared by the fair hands of the vender for charitable
purposes. The young hussar drew it from its vase, “all dripping with
dew,” breathed its essence, looked full in the eyes of the _belle
jardinière_, paid his sigh and his sovereign, and—was elbowed on by a new
chapman, whose aid-de-camp’s uniform gave him superior claims on the
attention of the charitable bazaarist.
As I left the door of Morrison’s tavern, where the scene passed, the
young hussar stood waiting for his cab. A naked, shivering little girl,
with a bunch of wallflowers (stuffed with grass “to make a show,”) in her
dirty hands, came “between the wind and his nobility;” and with the usual
supplicatory drawl of Irish mendicity, solicited his attention, according
to its most approved formulary: “The Lord powr (pour) a blessing on your
beautiful honour, Sir, and buy them iligant wallflowers for an half-penny
from a fatherless orphant, that hasn’t broke her fast this day, God help
her.” His “beautiful honour” heard her not, or valued not the liquid
blessing of Heaven at the price the supplicant put upon it. He held his
violets to his nose. His thoughts were behind the counter of the bazaar,
and his foot on the step of his cab. After a moment’s hesitation, he
returned to the bazaar, and the half-penny worth of wallflowers fell to
my lot.
While ignorant benevolence, and mistaken charity, fancy they are serving
the great cause of humanity, by promoting institutions which are, in
fact, directly opposed to their laudable intentions, low cunning and
self-love take advantage of the circumstance, by joining in a work
which produces a temporary intimacy and equality between the little
and the great. Many, who have no other means of getting on in society,
find, in the charitable repositories, bazaars, and poor-shops, a means
of introduction to its autocrats, (for even poor Dublin has its _bel
air_) of acquaintance with the Countess of this, and the Marchioness
of the other, the long desired object of all their struggles, hopes,
and desires. Among a people essentially vain and ambitious, this sort
of connexion draws in a vast number of subscribers, contributors, and
labourers, to all schemes of mistaken benevolence, or quackish meddling;
and the peculiar notions of the catholics, on the necessity of a constant
practice of charity, complete the sums requisite for their mischievous
success.
On the privations and sufferings inflicted on the respectable and
laborious poor, by such interference with the branch of industry upon
which they almost exclusively rely, it would be easy to say some
eloquent things; for it is difficult to enter deeply and warmly into
any subject, and not to treat of it effectually. There is no muse
like being in earnest. But here is a little document, worth all that
practised authorship could give on the subject, however deeply felt,
or well studied. It is a letter from some poor sufferer, written in
all the simplicity and integrity of conscious injury. I give it, with
the too flattering letter in which it was inclosed, and which, (having
received it this morning, March 29th, 1829,) directed my thoughts to the
composition of this brief article. Having allied myself, from my earliest
youth, to the oppressed party of my country, I have never enjoyed there
but one distinction. The suffering and the unfortunate of all creeds have
honoured me, by claims on my sympathy, which, alas! is frequently all I
have to bestow; and I have, for many years back, been in the habit of
receiving applications from the wretched, (a painful preeminence) which
have included the details of almost every species of misery which flesh
is heir to, from the despair of the condemned convict, who has written to
me from his cell, to the indignant repinings of neglected genius, and
the eloquent recital of “all the wrongs, which patient merit from the
unworthy takes.”
But to the letter, and the simple statement of the distressed female,
suffering from the ladies’ charitable bazaar, which I give exactly as I
received it:—
“_To Lady Morgan, Kildare-street, Dublin._
“Without presuming the Irish heart of your ladyship to be at
all concerned in the pernicious custom!—the enclosed alludes
to, it is very humbly submitted to your kind consideration—as
one looked up to—as well in national pride—as the kindness of
your disposition towards every individual of your country—and
as it appears the _press_ (the best medium of rectifying
publick evils) will not receive it—your general opinion—of
the mischief it records—may go far in serving—a class of poor
individuals (_your countrywomen_) labouring under the hardship
it details—and layd before your ladyship—by _one_ of the
oppressed sufferers—who has the honour to be,
“Your Ladyship’s
“Most obedient humble Servant,
“A DISTRESSED FEMALE.”
“_Dublin, March 28th, 1829._”
“_To the Ladies of the late Bazaar, and those generally of
Dublin._
“LADIES:
“However painful in laying before you in this public manner
evils brought on a numerous class of persons—through
inadvertency and want of consideration (as hunger will break
through stone walls) it is necessary, in addition to many
hints you have already had laid before you, to now enter into
a more particular detail of the misfortune visited on many,
by your establishing bazaars and other shops, to be met with
in many parts of Dublin, for the sale of _ladies’ works_; nor
are you to suppose in doing so, it is intended to convey any
idea of your not laudably working for yourselves or families,
or contributing to such charities as you may desire to be
interested in; but in doing so, permit me to say, you should
put your hands in _your pockets_, and by no means interfere
with the bread of others, as you manifestedly have done. You
will please to recollect that besides the more common and
industrious classes of society, there are many respectable,
well educated females, reduced, from _misfortune_, and not
_fault_, to the necessity of earning their bread by the work of
their hands; inferior in taste, ingenuity, and acquirements,
to none of their countrywomen! now thrown on the world for
want of a usual emporium for the sale of their labour; wrought
probably in filial piety for the humane and dutiful purposes of
assisting an aged father or mother perishing in silent misery.
For your bazaars, and from the glut of work they accumulate,
prevent even shopkeepers from taking any off their hands,
from the impossibility of disposing of it, as well as others
purchasing those articles of taste and ingenuity, these unhappy
people were wont to earn subsistence by. And really, ladies,
where females are concerned, I would put it to your kind
consideration, if it is consonant to the generous feelings of
our soil, to thus open the floodgates of vice, as a probable
mode of preventing starvation, encreasing female crime, and
multiplying mendicity, in the current of misery and want.
“Our unfortunate country labours under the severe oppression
of considerable absenteeism; but how despairingly must it
indeed be felt, if those our _residents_, blessed with rank and
fortune, lend their aid to increase distress in any part of the
community, for the benefit of a good name; let the object be
what it may, nothing can be called charity, that uncharitably
takes bread from the mouths of many.
“And although excuses may be made for ladies of high
consideration not being sufficiently acquainted, either with
the nature of the trading world, or desperate state of the
poor, none can, for _those_ (some now holding titles) who
have been indebted in a great measure for their present good
fortune, to the benefit of fair trade, and support of the
poor; swallowing Læthean drafts and standing behind a bazaar
table, inflicting in the articles they sell, misery and want on
several poor creatures, their countrywomen.
“Your last bazaar, it is understood, not only netted a
considerable sum of money by what it sold, but has left a great
quantity of ladies’ work yet to be disposed of; and which,
notwithstanding the _piety_ and _charity_ of the worthy females
concerned, is now at _their desire_, to be got rid of by a
LOTTERY; as well in the teeth of the acts of the legislature,
as truly encouraging a species of gambling; as destructive
a vice as ever (in its avaricious propensities) seized on
the human heart; and this being under the description of
_little-go’s_, becomes subject to magisterial interference. All
this shews the quantity of work you ladies have set up against
the poor and industrious fair trader, whose hands _is his_ or
_her support_, and which, evidently, you are not borne out in
any interference with for any object whatsoever; or to lay the
foundation of your _charities_, at the expense of the poor.
“And it is presumed, from the non-attendance of our gracious
vice-queen at your bazaar, that though a stranger to our
country, she has had that consideration in the benevolence of
her heart, which, either through inadvertency or the fashion
of the day, appears to have escaped yours. And believe the
want of emporium for sale of female works, has occasioned much
trouble to her grace, by many of those starving creatures who
have had no other hope of trying to get their productions off
their hands, has led them to seek that commiseration from
the stranger, which they have failed to receive at home. So
contrary is all this to the natural goodness of heart, so
wound up in our national female character, that it is indeed
with pain it is adverted to, and is only attributed to the
immediate desire of doing good; having in the impulse of the
moment, banished that more general, reflecting, and feeling
consideration. Your hearts, when thus strongly appealed to,
will, I am convinced, receive in the charity and benevolence,
so characteristic in the fair daughters of Erin.
“Whose obedient servant I am,
“PENELOPE,
“Out of work.”
“_Dublin, 23d March._
“_Editor_,” _&c. &c. &c._
END OF VOL. I.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Having mentioned how this trifling Work came to be written, a word
may be said on how it came to be published. While the fourth volume of
the “O’Briens” was going through the press, Mr. Colburn was sufficiently
pleased with the subscription (as it is called in the trade) to the first
edition, to desire a new work from the author. I was just setting off for
Ireland, the horses literally putting to—when Mr. Colburn arrived with
his flattering proposition. I could not enter into any future engagement;
and Mr. C., taking up a scrubby MS. volume, which the servant was about
to thrust into the pocket of the carriage, asked “What was that?” I said
it was “one of many volumes of odds and ends, _de omnibus rebus_;” and I
read him the last entry I had made the night before, on my return from
the Opera. “This is the very thing,” said the European publisher; and if
the public is of the same opinion, I shall have nothing to regret in thus
coming, though somewhat in _déshabillé_, before its tribunal.
[2] “With a skip and a jump.”
[3] “We love so much to talk of ourselves.”
[4] Whoever has read the History of the Campaign in Russia, by General
Count Ségur, must feel the force of this observation.
[5] “That he was but the half of a great man.”
[6] “At night they sung an ode in praise of the king at Madame de
Maintenon’s. It was by the Abbé Genest, the music by La Lande; and the
king found it so excellent, that when it was finished he caused it to be
repeated.”
[7] “I have always before my eyes the expression on the countenances of
the men, as they looked on the Emperor with a torch in his hand, himself
casting a light on the reiterated blows with which he opened the rocks.”
[8] Raconteur—a narrator.
[9] “Come, Mademoiselle, talk to us a little about religion; and
afterwards speak on something else.”
[10] “A maker of phrases.”
[11] “Beneath his reputation.” This occurred in his interview with M.
Necker, at Geneva.
[12] “Gentlemen, there was once upon a time a fermier-général—I have
forgotten the rest.”
[13] “There, there—go away—what does it signify if I am amused?”
[14] “Worthy of the best poets of France.”
[15] “You are a good gentleman, but our business here is to bury the
dead.”
[16] “It has struck three.”
[17] Un fâcheux.
[18] Dres means, literally, “news.”
[19] P. L——n, Esq. of M——, in the county of Kildare.
[20] The Kirwans are the only aboriginal family who were admitted into
the Thirteen Tribes of Galway.—“As proud as a Kirwan,” is a Galway
proverb.
[21] A person of remarkable appearance.
[22] The Duke of Wellington was then Secretary of State for Ireland.