and the Poor Law. 
95 
wlio are only too glad to get all they can, and could not help the 
parents much, even if they recognised the duty of so doing, 
having children and cares of their own. Once in the union, he 
parts from his wife, to meet her but for a short half-hour in each 
week of the brief term remaining to them before they turn " to 
the unremembcred and unremembering dust." She soon pines 
away of no disease in particular, and he remains a desolate old 
man, so far as desolation consists in the destruction of home and 
family associations and sympathies, and the want of every human 
kindness, but the conventional kindness contracted for and paid 
by the poor-rate. His associates in the old men's ward by da}', 
his companions in the old men's ward by night, in all the 
feebleness and with something of the petulance and peevishness 
of the aged, are (with one or two exceptions *) men whom he 
never would have been, from a feeling of self-respect, familiar 
with so long as he could help it, men some of whom have eaten 
their Christmas dinners in the gaol, in their time, and say they 
enjoyed them more than in the workhouse. His relations seldom 
go near the old man, and he can no longer walk over to the scene 
of his home, and he waits with such patience and resignation as 
religion and experience have combined to teach him till the 
jest of the club day becomes sober truth, for the parish has to 
pay for the funeral after all. 
Now that man had the intelligence, the industry, and the will, 
which would have secured him independence and a home in his 
old age. But he had no fair chance. In addition to the ancient 
difficulty of earning such provision by the sweat of his brow, 
he fell under the modern contrivance of a law which uninten- 
tionally, but yet with deadly certainty, hindered his making 
the effort. He had the natural wish for the friendship and 
help of his neighbours, and the desire to reciprocate their 
kindness, and the friendly society secured these advantages. 
Further than this, and reaching to permanent provision, 
the society must not, in liis opinion go, unless he would 
jeopardise his presumed right to a share of the poor-rate. 
His society exacted the cost of his independence, so far as money 
goes, and the natural and unavoidable consequence was his 
gradual fall in social position, till he became a permanent 
pauper. Under auspicious legislation the man might have saved 
not only himself, but, by example and influence, others from 
such a fate. But having no moral support or encouragement 
* The Earl of Lichfield obtained a return of the number of paupers iu union 
workhouses in England and Wales who had formerly been members of benefit 
societies. The number was, in August, 18G7, 4015. Subsequent enquiry elicited 
the fact that such persons were about 12 per cent, of the whole number of male 
paupers at that date who were iumates of the worlchouscs. 
