1883.] on Count Bumford, Originator of the Boyal Institution. 421 



New Year's Day was the beggars' holiday, and their jiatron and 

 reformer chose that day to get hohi of them. It was the 1st of Janu- 

 ary, 1790. In the prosecution of his despotic scheme all men seemed 

 to fall under his lead. To relieve it of the odium which might accrue 

 if it were effected wholly by the military, he associated with himself 

 and his field officers the magistrates of Munich. They gave him 

 willing sympathy and aid. On New Year's morning he and the chief 

 magistrate walked out together. With extended hand a beggar im- 

 mediately accosted them. Thompson, setting the example to his 

 followers, laid his hand gently upon the shoulder of the vagabond, 

 committed him to the charge of a sergeant, with orders to take him to 

 the Townhall, " where he would be provided for in one way if he 

 were really helpless, but in another way if he were not." ThomjDSon 

 encouraged his associates, and with such alacrity was the work accom- 

 plished, that at the end of that day not a single beggar remained at 

 large. The name of every member of the motley crew was inserted in 

 prepared lists, and they were sent off to their haunts with instructions 

 to appear on the following day at the military workhouse, where they 

 would inhabit comfortable warm rooms, enjoy a warm dinner daily, 

 and be provided with remunerative work. In the suburbs the same 

 measures were followed up successfully by patrols of soldiers and 

 police. 



With his iron resolution was associated, in those days, a plastic tact 

 which enabled him to avoid jealousies and collisions that a man of more 

 hectoring temper and less self-restraint would infallibly have incurred. 

 To the schools for poor students, the Sisters of Charity, the hospital for 

 lepers, and other institutions had been conceded the right of making 

 periodic appeals from house to house ; German apprentices had also 

 been permitted to beg upon their travels ; all of these had their claims 

 adjusted. After he had swept his swarm of paupers into the quarters 

 provided for them, Thompson's hardest work began. Here the inflexible 

 order which had characterised him through life came as a natural force 

 to his aid. " He encouraged a spirit of industry, pride, self-respect, and 

 emulation, finding helj) even in trifling distinctions of apparel." His 

 pauper workhouse was self-supporting, while its inmates were happy. 

 For several years they made up all the clothing of the Bavarian 

 troops, realising sometimes a profit of 10,000 florins a year. Thompson 

 himself constructed and arranged a kitchen which provided daily a 

 warm and nutritive dinner for a thousand or fifteen hundred persons ; 

 an incredibly small amount of fuel sufficing to cook a dinner of this 

 magnitude. The military workhouse was also remunerative. Its 

 profits for six years exceeded a hundred thousand dollars. The 

 military workhouse at Mannheim was unfortunately set on fire and 

 ruined during the siege of the city by Austrian troops. 



Thompson had the art of making himself loved and honoured by 

 the people whom he ruled in this arbitrary way. Some very striking 

 illustrations of this are given in the ' Life and Essays.' He once, for 

 example, broke down at Munich under his self-imposed labours. It 



