CHAPTER VII.

INDIGENCE.

"THE poor you have always with you:" indigence is the most prominent, and perhaps the most important evil of the social system; misery is most striking when it is in close contact with luxury; and it is to the violent contrasts which society frequently presents that we must ascribe the fantastic visions of a golden age which have so often misled the imagination of philanthropists. Indigence, like crime, exists in every state of society; but as a vigilant police, increasing the number of detections, has often led people to believe that there was an actual increase of guilt, so the exertions of the benevolent to relieve distress have sometimes created a mistaken opinion respecting the gradual accumulation of misery. There is a tendency in the human mind to confound the discovery of anything with the commencement of its existence: this is observable even in physical science; several of the opponents of Sir Isaac Newton attacked him, as if he had framed the laws of gravitation, instead of detecting them; and many of the modern adversaries of geology write as if they believed that Lyell, Sedgwick, and Buckland had themselves arranged the strata, disposed the fossil remains, and traced the limits that regulate the geographical distribution of animals. A quaint old writer says, "nobody will give anybody the credit of

first discovering what everybody might have found out at any time."

We have seen that society exists naturally and necessarily; there must consequently be certain laws of social existence; and if their conditions remain unfulfilled, either through accident or design, social suffering is the inevitable consequence. But it is only as society becomes civilized that it takes cognizance of the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of these conditions; and hence we find, that at every epoch when a great advance was made in intelligence, a number of social evils, before undiscovered, were brought into view, and treated by many as if they had been brought into existence. Ecclesiastical corruptions were certainly neither greater nor more numerous at the era of the Reformation than they were in the preceding century, but in the increased light of that time they were more clearly seen, more closely watched, and more diligently recorded. British liberty and the constitutional privileges of the legislature were more respected by the Stuarts than they were by the Tudors, yet the number of recorded violations is far greater under the former than under the latter dynasty. Actions for false imprisonment were far more numerous after the Revolution than before it, though illegal arrests had notoriously diminished. In the same way the science of political economy having for the first time revealed the nature and extent of indigence as a social evil, the subject excited universal attention, and led many to believe that an evil of such magnitude must have recently come into existence, or at least must have only of late days reached its present extent, or else it would have been long since discovered.

Some disastrous results have followed from this error; a cry of alarm was raised about the rapid extension of pauperism. Europe was supposed to be menaced by a new Jacquerie, or rather by a social revolution, infinitely worse than that threatened by Jacques Bonhomme, or Jack Cade. Landlords, in their excited imaginations, saw their estates invaded,-capitalists, their fortunes rent in sunder,- and manufacturers their . machinery destroyed, by millions of paupers, whose numbers, in their opinion had increased, were increasing, and could not be diminished. A change of system, in relation to pauperism, was demanded, for the sake of the rich. This error on one side led to a more dangerous error on the other. The poor were induced to believe that the wealth of the rich was derived from their misery, they deemed that the accumulation of property was the cause of poverty; they began to speculate on the possibility of reconstructing society on a different basis; and they were easily persuaded to regard measures proposed for the prevention of poverty, or at least for the limitation of its extent, as disguised attempts for the degradation, or even for the extermination of paupers. Thus the evil, instead of being viewed in its general relations to society, was regarded only in reference to classes. The ideas formed of it were consequently partial and exclusive,-what was true of pauperism in its most limited relation to a class, was taken to be true in its widest relation to the entire community; and such confusion between relative and absolute truth, is the source of all the mischievous falsehoods that have ever predominated over humanity.

Though nothing can be clearer, on the slightest

examination, than the aphorism, that whatever makes the rich man richer tends also to elevate the poor, and whatever makes the poor man poorer tends equally to depress the rich; there are, unfortunately, many impediments to the universal reception of this truth, and there is, perhaps, no greater difficulty presented to the advocates of civilization and the progress of society, than that arising from the prevalent errors on the subject of indigence. A rigorous examination of the acknowledged evil is therefore necessary; and though a complete analysis would greatly exceed our limits, we trust that we shall be able to offer some considerations which may tend to quiet the alarms of the friends of humanity, and remove some of the suspicions attached to the

advance of civilization.

But

It is obvious that there are various degrees of indigence; there is only one stage in which it has an aspect of uniformity-the complete and absolute destitution of all means of subsistence at the same instant. this stage is equivalent to death; such a state may exist, but it cannot continue to exist; its conditions include, in their terms, immediate extinction. Hence arises the common sophism, that indigence is unknown in savage life with the savage indigence is death; it begins and ends at the same moment. An unfavourable season-a deficiency in the supply of game-a flood, or a drought-may assail any land: in the civilized country, the calamity is marked by much suffering; in the savage land, it leaves no trace but bleaching bones and unburied corpses. In spite of Mr. Carlile's bitter attack upon statisticians, the fact that the average duration of human life has been sensibly increased by

the progress of civilization, is an unquestionable proof that cases of absolute indigence, that is, of sheer starvation, have been diminished.

Relief, for cases of absolute indigence, must come from a reserved fund, accumulated somewhere. It may be a question in civilized states whether this fund be sufficient or insufficient, but in savage life no such thing exists. It is a common mistake to suppose that capital is accumulated exclusively for the benefit of its possessor; but it is easy to shew that capitalists are essential to the well-being of the entire community. Every bad harvest would necessarily generate a famine, unless there were a fund to purchase supplies of food from other countries; every suspension of demand for the productions of any branch of industry, would be followed by a cessation of employment in that branch, if the capitalist had not a fund on which he could fall back until the market changed. Capital is the security against indigence, belonging not merely to the capitalist himself, but to every labourer in the community. There is no poverty where there is no capital, because death acts as relieving officer, and the tomb is the sole refuge for the destitute.

The case of absolute indigence requires no further examination; but when we come to examine the degrees of relative indigence, we find our path beset by unexpected difficulties. It is generally agreed that indigence consists in a want of the necessaries of life; it is far from being agreed what are the things necessary to existence, for it is notorious that what in one age or country would be considered extreme poverty, might in a different age or country be regarded as comparative luxury.