is nothing like them in Munich, Dresden, or Berlin. Sir Francis Head and Lord Ashley put themselves in the hands of an experienced resident in Paris with a request that they might be taken to the very worst haunts and dwellings of the lowest portion of the population, and this is the testimony Sir F. Head gives :

"I must own it was my impression, and I believe it was that of Lord Ashley, that the poverty we had come to witness bore no comparison whatever to that recklessness of personal appearance, that abject wretchedness, that squalid misery, which-dressed in the castoff tattered garments of our wealthy classes, and in clothes perforated with holes not to be seen among the most savage tribes-Ireland annually pours out upon England, and which, in the crowded courts and alleys of London I have so often visited, produce among our own people, as it were, by infection which no moral remedy has yet been able to cure, scenes not only revolting as well as discreditable to human nature, but which are to be witnessed in no other portion, civilized or uncivilized, of the globe. . . . . In another locality, La Petite Pologne, we found the general condition of the poorer classes in no way worse than those we had just left. On entering a large house, four stories high, running round a small square hollow court, we ascertained that it contained rather more than 500 lodgers, usually grouped together in families or little communities. In this barrack or warren, the rooms, paved with bricks, were about fifteen feet long, ten feet broad, and eight feet high. We found them, generally speaking, clean and well ventilated, but the charge for each chamber unfurnished was six francs a month. . . . In the most miserable district in the west end of Paris, we also failed to meet with anything that could be said to add opprobrium to poverty. The inhabitants of the few houses we entered were, no doubt, existing upon very scanty subsistence, but in every case they appeared anxious to preserve polite manners and to be clean in their dress. In the Rue de la Roche, No. 2, we entered a lodging-house, kept by a clean, pleasing-mannered woman, and as all her lodgers were out at work, we walked over her establishment. The rooms, which were about eight feet seven inches in height, contained, nearly touching each other, from three to five double beds; for each of which she charged ten sous a night, or 24d. for each sleeper, (in London the charge is usually 4d.) Each room had one window, and we found every one wide open."-Head's Fagots of French Sticks, i. 114-118.

Now, when we remember that England is beyond comparison richer than these Continental States, and that the earnings of our labouring classes are far higher than those of the same classes in either France or Germany-higher even in reference to the price of the necessaries of life; and that we are accustomed to regard ourselves as standing at the head of European civilisation, and as having pursued a more enlightened social

Why are English "wretched" more wretched thun elsewhere? 61

policy than other nations; there is much in the contrast we have noticed that should startle us into inquiry and reflection. What are the causes of a phenomenon so painful and discreditable to us? As a general rule the labouring poor abroad are more respectable in their character and mode of life than their analoga in England-not certainly cleverer, not better workmen, not made of more sterling stuff, than most of the same class with us, but still leading generally a more decent, worthy, satisfactory, social existence; their peasants are more contented, better-mannered, less boorish, and (when unexcited) less brutal, and more comfortable, though often with fewer of the raw materials of comfort; their artisans are steadier, soberer, more cheerful, more saving, and more sensible than ours; and even their very poor, destitute, and forlorn are less wretched, less squalid, less absolutely abandoned and despairing than ours. Why is this? And when we thus come to compare the results of our opposite notions and proceedings in matters of social policy, is there not reason to suspect that, even if the ultimate and average verdict be given in our favour, we may not be so wholly right nor our neighbours so wholly wrong as it has hitherto pleased us to imagine? There must surely be something good and imitable in a system under which, while there is more poverty, misery is less frequent and less extreme than in our free, prosperous, and energetic land.

*

One of the causes which contribute to this superiority, in Germany at least, we have already incidentally noticed, and we shall pass it over the more briefly as it is of a nature which we could not imitate or approach. We allude to the care taken by the governments of central Europe that there should be a calling, an opening, a mode of livelihood for every one of their citizens as he reaches manhood-a place at life's banquet in short, to use Malthus's illustration. They take vigilant cognizance of

Even classes like the "distressed needle women" seem far less miserable in Paris than in London. Compare the following from "Un Philosophe sous les toits," with the harrowing pictures given us in "Margaret,” “ Alton Locke,” and "Realities:"—

"Je me suis trouvé dans un wagon près de deux sœurs déjà sur le retour, appartenant à la classe des Parisiens casaniers et paisibles dont j'ai parlé plus haut. Quelques complaisances de bon voisinage ont suffi pour m'attirer leur confiance; au bout de quelques minutes je savais toute leur histoire.

"Ce sont deux pauvres filles restées orphelines à quinze ans, et qui, depuis, ont vécu comme vivent les femmes qui travaillent, d'économie et de privation. Fabriquant depuis vingt ou trente ans des agraffes pour la même maison, elles ont vu dix maîtres s'y succéder et s'enricher, sans que rien ait changé dans leur sort. Elles habitent toujours la même chambre, au fond d'une de ces impasses de la rue St. Denis où l'air et le soleil sont inconnus. Elles se mettent au travail avant le jour, le prolongent après la nuit, et voient les années se joindre aux années sans que leur vie ait été marquée par aucun autre évènement que l'office du dimanche, une promenade ou une maladie."

each man's means of support, and do not allow him to marry till these means are reasonably adequate. In Norway, no one can marry without "shewing, to the satisfaction of the clergyman, that he is permanently settled in such a manner as to offer a fair prospect that he can support a family." In Mecklenburg, marriages are delayed by the conscription in the twenty-second year, and by military service for six years; besides which the parties must have a dwelling, without which the clergyman is not allowed to marry them. In Saxony, "a man may not marry before he is twenty-one, if liable to serve in the army. In Dresden, artisans may not marry till they become masters in their trade." In Wurtemburg and Bavaria, (besides being obliged to remain single till the termination of the period fixed for military service,) "no man may marry without permission, and that permission is only granted on proving that he and his wife have between them sufficient to establish themselves and maintain a family ;-say from 800 to 1000 florins in large towns; 400 to 500 in smaller ones; and in villages 200 florins, or about £16." In Lubeck, Frankfort, and many Cantons of Switzerland, similar regulations are in force. It is difficult to say that there is anything in them which is inconsistent with justice or a fitting amount of social freedom, since the universal and tacit custom in modern civilized states of compelling the community to maintain those who cannot maintain themselves, certainly implies and involves a correlative right on the part of the community to watch that the number of these public burdens shall not be selfishly or wantonly augmented;-and after all, these regulations only impose by law upon the poor the restrictions. which the middle and upper ranks by habit, and voluntarily, impose upon themselves. But these restrictions are too foreign to our national notions to be adopted here as externally imposed fetters all that can be hoped for is that in time our labouring classes may become enlightened enough to assume them of their own free will, as they become conscious of the beneficial effect they could not fail to produce on their condition, and cognizant of the general though moderate and monotonous wellbeing which they are instrumental in diffusing among the inhabitants of central Europe.

A second cause, and perhaps the most frequent and the most powerful of all, in producing the contrast we have noticed in the aspect of French and English poverty, is the more habitual sobriety of the labouring class on the other side of the Channel. The vice of intemperance, or where it does not reach that point,

* See Senior on Foreign Poor Laws. Answers obtained from our consuls abroad.

Taste and Imagination of the French Poor.

63

the custom of indulgence in spirituous liquors, so unhappily prevalent in our country, may not only do much to account for whatever is peculiarly afflicting and disreputable in the condition of our poor, but is the one main reason why, in spite of our general prosperity, this class has not risen to a height of comfort, ease, and opulence unparalleled in the old world. As is well known, our working classes yearly waste in the purely mischievous enjoyments of the palate a sum equal to the whole Imperial revenue,*-a sum which, if suffered to accumulate, would soon render them capitalists; if invested in annuities or savings' banks, would secure them against the day of reverse or incapacity; if judiciously expended, would raise them at once to a condition of comfort, respectability, even of luxury, and if they desired it, of comparative leisure. A cessation of this expenditure would be equivalent to raising the earnings of every poor man's family throughout Great Britain, by £10 a year, or four shillings a week. But this would be the smallest portion of the saving. The whole habits and mode of life of the individual would be regenerated. The home would become happy; the whole domestic circle would be a scene of peace instead of strife. There would be few filthy dwellings, few neglected children, few of those scandalous cases of wives half-murdered by their drunken husbands, which now disgrace every police court in our cities. It is impossible to overcolour or exaggerate the change which that one circumstance would make. All who have had to do with the poor know how directly, how inevitably, how rapidly, a habit of drinking, yielded to by the head of the family, changes poverty into destitution, stinted means into squalid wretchedness, a home into a den. The French artisan comparatively seldom gives way to this dreadful vice, and seldom, therefore, incurs the sordid misery which is its invariable consequence. He is often, generally, much poorer than his English brother; his fare is scantier; his house is smaller; his bed is harder; but he rarely aggravates these privations gratuitously by sensual indulgence; seldomer still does he cast these privations on his wife and children, while living in wasteful intemperance himself.

But connected with this greater sobriety, and operating in the same direction, is another cause of the superiority of the French poor man. He is by no means always better educated, but he has nearly always, whether from nature or training, a degree of taste and imagination of which our poor are sadly destitute. These qualities give him, in however straitened circumstances he may be, a fondness for the embellishments and amenities of

* Mr. Porter has shown that this amount cannot be less than £54,000,000 per

annum.

life, which makes him strive against squalor to the very last. He refuses to accept an utterly unornamented and inelegant existence, and because he is pinched, overworked, and even almost destitute, he does not see why he should also become thoroughly hopeless, spiritless, and degrading. Much of this æsthetic superiority is owing, no doubt, to original difference of constitution; much of it may, we believe, be traced to peculiarities of education. The French peasant is probably in general as ignorant as our own; but in what education he does receive there is mingled less that is merely rudimentary and mechanical, and more that is imaginative and refining. This is still more the case with the German and the Swiss. They have less of the alphabet instilled into them, but more of music, poetry, and the sentiments of poetry. Altogether, the temperament of the labouring class on the Continent, while sometimes more excitable, and sometimes more homely and stupid than in England, is nearly always more poetical. One fact has always struck our attention very strongly in Paris. In the worst dwellings of the poor-we do not mean the haunts of the actually vicious and criminal, but, in the wretched attics, seven or eight stories high, quite in the roof, and with little light, which must be fearfully close in summer, and painfully cold in winter-we almost always see the little window not only ornamented by a coarse muslin curtain, but adorned with flower-pots, or boxes of cress, or mignonette, or some humble vegetable, and evidently tended with the utmost care. There will never be absolute despairing squalor, however great the poverty, where there is this love of flowers, this passion for fragments of simple nature. Here is a sketch of the proceedings of a poor old soldier, who inhabited the garret opposite that of our philosopher :

"On reconnait le militaire à sa démarche cadencée, à sa moustache grise, et au ruban qui orne sa boutonnière; on le divinerait à ses soins attentifs pour le petit jardin qui décore sa galerie aérienne; car il y a deux choses particulièrement aimées de tous le vieux soldats, les fleurs et les enfans. Aussi le vent froid n'a pu chasser mon voisin de son balcon. Il laboure le terrain de ses caisses vertes ; il y sème avec soin les graines de capucine écarlate, de volubilis, et de pois de senteur. Désormais il viendra tous les jours épier leur germination, défendre les pousses naissantes contre l'herbe parasite ou l'insecte, disposer les fils conducteurs pour les tiges grimpantes, leur distribuer avec précaution l'eau et la chaleur.

66

Que de peines pour amener à bien cette moisson! Combien de fois je le verrai braver pour elle, comme aujourd'hui, le froid ou le chaud, la bise ou le soleil! Mais aussi, aux jours les plus ardents de l'été, quand une poussière enflammée tourbillonnera dans nos rues, quand l'œil, ébloui par l'éclat du plâtre, ne saura où se reposer, et