AN ESSAY ON CHARITY, AND CHARITY-SCHOOLS. (continued 2)

A housekeeper, who cannot afford to make many entertainments, and does not often invite people to his table, can have no creditable man-servant, and is forced to take up with some country booby, or other awkward fellow, who will likewise give him the slip, as soon as he imagines himself fit for any other service, and is made wiser by his rascally companions. All noted eating-houses, and places that many gentlemen resort to for diversion or business, more especially the precincts of Westminster-hall, are the great schools for servants, where the dullest fellows may have their understandings improved; and get rid at once of their stupidity and their innocence. They are the academies for footmen, where public lectures are daily read, on all sciences of low debauchery, by the experienced professors of them; and students are instructed in above seven hundred illiberal arts, how to cheat, impose upon, and find out the blind side of their masters, with so much application, that in few years they become graduates in iniquity. Young gentlemen and others, that are not thoroughly versed in the world, when they get such knowing sharpers in their service, are commonly indulging above measure; and for fear of discovering their want of experience, hardly dare to contradict or deny them any thing, which is often the reason, that by allowing them unreasonable privileges, they expose their ignorance when they are most endeavouring to conceal it.

Some perhaps will lay the things I complain of to the charge of luxury, of which I said that it could do no hurt to a rich nation, if the imports never did exceed the exports; but I do not think this imputation just, and nothing ought to be scored on the account of luxury, that is downright the effect of folly. A man may be very extravagant in indulging his ease and his pleasure, and render the enjoyment of the world as operose and expensive as they can be made, if he can afford it, and, at the same time, show his good sense in every thing about him: This he cannot be said to do, if he industriously renders his people incapable of doing him that service he expects from them. It is too much money, excessive wages, and unreasonable vails, that spoil servants in England. A man may have five and twenty horses in his stables, without being guilty of folly, if it suits with the rest of his circumstances; but if he keeps but one, and overfeeds it to show his wealth, he is a fool for his pains. Is it not madness to suffer, that servants should take three, and others five per cent. of what they pay to tradesmen for their masters, as is so well known to watchmakers, and others that sell toys, superfluous nicknacks, and other curiosities, if they deal with people of quality and fashionable gentlemen, that are above telling their own money? If they should accept of a present when offered, it might be connived at, but it is an unpardonable impudence that they should claim it as their due, and contend for it if refused. Those who have all the necessaries of life provided for, can have no occasion for money, but what does them hurt as servants, unless they were to hoard it up for age or sickness, which, among our skip-kennels, is not very common, and even then it makes them saucy and insupportable.

I am credibly informed, that a parcel of footmen are arrived to that height of insolence, as to have entered into a society together, and made laws, by which they oblige themselves not to serve for less than such a sum, nor carry burdens, or any bundle or parcel above a certain weight, not exceeding two or three pounds, with other regulations directly opposite to the interest of those they serve, and altogether destructive to the use they were designed for. If any of them be turned away for strictly adhering to the orders of this honourable corporation, he is taken care of till another service is provided for him; and there is no money wanting at any time to commence and maintain a law-suit against any master that shall pretend to strike, or offer any other injury to his gentleman footman, contrary to the statutes of their society. If this be true, as I have reason to believe it is, and they are suffered to go on in consulting and providing for their own ease and conveniency any further, we may expect quickly to see the French comedy, Le Maitre le Valet acted in good earnest in most families, which, if not redressed in a little time, and those footmen increase their company to the number it is possible they may, as well as assemble when they please with impunity, it will be in their power to make a tragedy of it whenever they have a mind to it.

But suppose those apprehensions frivolous and groundless, it is undeniable that servants, in general, are daily encroaching upon masters and mistresses, and endeavouring to be more upon the level with them. They not only seem solicitous to abolish the low dignity of their condition, but have already considerably raised it in the common estimation from the original meanness which the public welfare requires it should always remain in. I do not say that these things are altogether owing to charity schools, there are other evils they may be partly ascribed to. London is too big for the country, and, in several respects, we are wanting to ourselves. But if a thousand faults were to concur before the inconveniences could be produced we labour under, can any man doubt, who will consider what I have said, that charity schools are accessary, or, at least, that they are more likely to create and increase than to lessen or redress those complaints?

The only thing of weight, then, that can be said in their behalf is, that so many thousand children are educated by them in the Christian faith, and the principles of the church of England. To demonstrate that this is not a sufficient plea for them, I must desire the reader, as I hate repetitions, to look back on what I have said before, to which I shall add, that whatever is necessary to salvation, and requisite for poor labouring people to know concerning religion, that children learn at school, may fully as well either by preaching or catechizing be taught at church, from which, or some other place of worship, I would not have the meanest of a parish that is able to walk to it be absent on Sundays. It is the Sabbath, the most useful day in seven, that is set apart for divine service and religious exercise, as well as resting from bodily labour; and it is a duty incumbent on all magistrates, to take particular care of that day. The poor more especially and their children, should be made to go to church on it, both in the fore and afternoon, because they have no time on any other. By precept and example they ought to be encouraged and used to it from their very infancy; the wilful neglect of it ought to be counted scandalous, and if downright compulsion to what I urge might seem too harsh, and perhaps impracticable, all diversions at least ought strictly to be prohibited, and the poor hindered from every amusement abroad that might allure or draw them from it.

Where this care is taken by the magistrates, as far as it lies in their power, ministers of the gospel may instil into the smallest capacities, more piety and devotion, and better principles of virtue and religion, than charity schools ever did or ever will produce; and those who complain, when they have such opportunities, that they cannot imbue their parishioners with sufficient knowledge, of what they stand in need of as Christians, without the assistance of reading and writing, are either very lazy or very ignorant and undeserving themselves.

That the most knowing are not the most religious, will be evident if we make a trial between people of different abilities, even in this juncture, where going to church is not made such an obligation on the poor and illiterate, as it might be. Let us pitch upon a hundred poor men, the first we can light on, that are above forty, and were brought up to hard labour from their infancy, such as never went to school at all, and always lived remote from knowledge and great towns: Let us compare to these an equal number of very good scholars, that shall all have had university education, and be, if you will, half of them divines, well versed in philology and polemic learning; then let us impartially examine into the lives and conversations of both, and I dare engage that among the first, who can neither read nor write, we shall meet with more union and neighbourly love, less wickedness and attachment to the world, more content of mind, more innocence, sincerity, and other good qualities that conduce to the public peace and real felicity, than we shall find among the latter, where, on the contrary, we may be assured of the height of pride and insolence, eternal quarrels and dissensions, irreconcileable hatreds, strife, envy, calumny, and other vices, destructive to mutual concord, which the illiterate labouring poor are hardly ever tainted with, to any considerable degree.

I am very well persuaded, that what I have said in the last paragraph, will be no news to most of my readers; but if it be truth, why should it be stifled, and why must our concern for religion be eternally made a cloak to hide our real drifts and worldly intentions? Would both parties agree to pull off the mask, we should soon discover that whatever they pretend to, they aim at nothing so much in charity schools, as to strengthen their party; and that the great sticklers for the church, by educating children in the principles of religion, mean inspiring them with a superlative veneration for the clergy of the church of England, and a strong aversion and immortal animosity against all that dissent from it. To be assured of this, we are but to mind on the one hand, what divines are most admired for their charity sermons, and most fond to preach them; and on the other, whether of late years we have had any riots or party scuffles among the mob, in which the youth of a famous hospital in this city, were not always the most forward ringleaders.

The grand asserters of liberty, who are ever guarding themselves, and skirmishing against arbitrary power, often when they are in no danger of it, are generally speaking, not very superstitious, nor seem to lay great stress on any modern apostleship: yet some of these likewise speak up loudly for charity schools; but what they expect from them has no relation to religion or morality: they only look upon them as the proper means to destroy, and disappoint the power of the priests over the laity. Reading and writing increase knowledge; and the more men know, the better they can judge for themselves, and they imagine that, if knowledge could be rendered universal, people could not be priest-rid, which is the thing they fear the most.

The first, I confess, it is very possible will get their aim. But sure wise men that are not red-hot for a party, or bigots to the priests, will not think it worth while to suffer so many inconveniencies, as charity schools may be the occasion of, only to promote the ambition and power of the clergy. To the other I would answer, that if all those who are educated at the charge of their parents or relations, will but think for themselves, and refuse to have their reason imposed upon by the priests, we need not be concerned for what the clergy will work upon the ignorant that have no education at all. Let them make the most of them: considering the schools we have for those who can and do pay for learning, it is ridiculous to imagine that the abolishing of charity schools would be a step towards any ignorance that could be prejudicial to the nation.

I would not be thought cruel, and am well assured if I know any thing of myself, that I abhor inhumanity; but to be compassionate to excess, where reason forbids it, and the general interest of the society requires steadiness of thought and resolution, is an unpardonable weakness. I know it will be ever urged against me, that it is barbarous the children of the poor should have no opportunity of exerting themselves, as long as God has not debarred them from natural parts and genius, more than the rich. But I cannot think this is harder, than it is that they should not have money, as long as they have the same inclinations to spend as others. That great and useful men have sprung from hospitals, I do not deny; but it is likewise very probable, that when they were first employed, many as capable as themselves not brought up in hospitals were neglected, that with the same good fortune would have done as well as they, if they had been made use of instead of them.

There are many examples of women that have excelled in learning, and even in war, but this is no reason we should bring them all up to Latin and Greek, or else military discipline, instead of needle-work and housewifery. But there is no scarcity of sprightliness or natural parts among us, and no soil and climate has human creatures to boast of better formed, either inside or outside, than this island generally produces. But it is not wit, genius, or docility we want, but diligence, application, and assiduity.

Abundance of hard and dirty labour is to be done, and coarse living is to be complied with: where shall we find a better nursery for these necessities than the children of the poor? none, certainly, are nearer to it or fitter for it: Besides that the things I called hardships, neither seem nor are such to those who have been brought up to them, and know no better. There is not a more contented people among us, than those who work the hardest, and are the least acquainted with the pomp and delicacies of the world.

These are truths that are undeniable; yet I know few people will be pleased to have them divulged; what makes them odious, is an unreasonable vein of petty reverence for the poor, that runs through most multitudes, and more particularly in this nation, and arises from a mixture of pity, folly, and superstition. It is from a lively sense of this compound, that men cannot endure to hear or see any thing said or acted against the poor; without considering how just the one, or insolent the other. So a beggar must not be beat, though he strikes you first. Journeymen tailors go to law with their masters, and are obstinate in a wrong cause, yet they must be pitied; and murmuring weavers must be relieved, and have fifty silly things done to humour them, though in the midst of their poverty they insult their betters, and, on all occasions, appear to be more prone to make holidays and riots than they are to working or sobriety.

This puts me in mind of our wool, which, considering the posture of our affairs, and the behaviour of the poor, I sincerely believe, ought not, upon any account, to be carried abroad: but if we look into the reason, why suffering it to be fetched away is so pernicious, our heavy complaint and lamentations that it is exported can be no great credit to us. Considering the mighty and manifold hazards that must be run before it can be got off the coast, and safely landed beyond sea, it is manifest that the foreigners, before they can work our wool, must pay more for it very considerably, than what we can have it for at home. Yet, notwithstanding this great difference in the prime cost, they can afford to sell the manufactures made of it cheaper at foreign markets than ourselves. This is the disaster we groan under, the intolerable mischief, without which the exportation of that commodity could be no greater prejudice to us than that of tin or lead, as long as our hands were fully employed, and we had still wool to spare.

There is no people yet come to higher perfection in the woollen manufacture, either as to dispatch or goodness of work, at least in the most considerable branches, than ourselves; and therefore what we complain of can only depend on the difference in the management of the poor, between other nations and ours. If the labouring people in one country will work twelve hours in a day, and six days in a week, and in another they are employed but eight hours in a day, and not above four days in a week the one is obliged to have nine hands for what the other does with four. But if, moreover, the living, the food, and raiment, and what is consumed by the workmen of the industrious, costs but half the money of what is expended among an equal number of the other, the consequence must be, that the first will have the work of eighteen men for the same price as the other gives for the work of four. I would not insinuate, neither do I think, that the difference, either in diligence or necessaries of life between us and any neighbouring nation, is near so great as what I speak of, yet I would have it considered, that half of that difference, and much less, is sufficient to over-balance the disadvantage they labour under as to the price of wool.

Nothing to me is more evident, than that no nation in any manufacture whatever can undersell their neighbours with whom they are at best but equals as to skill and dispatch, and the conveniency for working, more especially when the prime cost of the thing to be manufactured is not in their favour, unless they have provisions, and whatever is relating to their sustenance, cheaper, or else workmen that are either more assiduous, and will remain longer at their work, or be content with a meaner and coarser way of living than those of their neighbours. This is certain, that where numbers are equal, the more laborious people are, and the fewer hands the same quantity of work is performed by, the greater plenty there is in a country of the necessaries for life, the more considerable and the cheaper that country may render its exports.

It being granted, then, that abundance of work is to be done, the next thing which I think to be likewise undeniable, is, that the more cheerfully it is done the better, as well for those that perform it, as for the rest of the society. To be happy is to be pleased, and the less notion a man has of a better way of living, the more content he will be with his own; and, on the other hand, the greater a man’s knowledge and experience is in the world, the more exquisite the delicacy of his taste, and the more consummate judge he is of things in general, certainly the more difficult it will be to please him. I would not advance any thing that is barbarous or inhuman: but when a man enjoys himself, laughs and sings, and in his gesture and behaviour shows me all the tokens of content and satisfaction, I pronounce him happy, and have nothing to do with his wit or capacity. I never enter into the reasonableness of his mirth, at least I ought not to judge of it by my own standard, and argue from the effect which the thing that makes him merry would have upon me. At that rate, a man that hates cheese must call me fool for loving blue mold. De gustibus non est disputandum is as true in a metaphorical, as it is in the literal sense; and the greater the distance is between people as to their condition, their circumstances and manner of living, the less capable they are of judging of one another’s troubles or pleasures.

Had the meanest and most uncivilized peasant leave incognito to observe the greatest king for a fortnight; though he might pick out several things he would like for himself, yet he would find a great many more, which, if the monarch and he were to exchange conditions, he would wish for his part to have immediately altered or redressed, and which with amazement he sees the king submit to. And again, if the sovereign was to examine the peasant in the same manner, his labour would be unsufferable; the dirt and squalor, his diet and amours, his pastimes and recreations would be all abominable; but then what charms would he find in the other’s peace of mind, the calmness and tranquillity of his soul? No necessity for dissimulation with any of his family, or feigned affection to his mortal enemies; no wife in a foreign interest, no danger to apprehend from his children; no plots to unravel, no poison to fear; no popular statesman at home, or cunning courts abroad to manage; no seeming patriots to bribe; no unsatiable favourite to gratify; no selfish ministry to obey; no divided nation to please, or fickle mob to humour, that would direct and interfere with his pleasures.

Was impartial reason to be judge between real good and real evil, and a catalogue made accordingly, of the several delights and vexations differently to be met with in both stations; I question whether the condition of kings would be at all preferable to that of peasants, even as ignorant and laborious as I seem to require the latter to be. The reason why the generality of people would rather be kings than peasants, is first owing to pride and ambition, that is deeply riveted in human nature, and which to gratify, we daily see men undergo and despise the greatest hazards and difficulties. Secondly, to the difference there is in the force with which our affection is wrought upon, as the objects are either material or spiritual. Things that immediately strike our outward senses, act more violently upon our passions than what is the result of thought, and the dictates of the most demonstrative reason; and there is a much stronger bias to gain our liking or aversion in the first, than there is in the latter.

Having thus demonstrated that what I urge could be no injury, or the least diminution of happiness to the poor, I leave it to the judicious reader, whether it is not more probable we should increase our exports by the methods I hint at, than by sitting still and damning and sinking our neighbours, for beating us at our own weapons; some of them out-selling us in manufactures made of our own product, which they dearly purchased, others growing rich in spite of distance and trouble, by the same fish which we neglect, though it is ready to jump into our mouths.

As by discouraging idleness with art and steadiness, you may compel the poor to labour without force; so, by bringing them up in ignorance, you may inure them to real hardships, without being ever sensible themselves that they are such. By bringing them up in ignorance, I mean no more, as I have hinted long ago, than that, as to worldly affairs, their knowledge should be confined within the verge of their own occupations, at least that we should not take pains to extend it beyond those limits. When by these two engines we shall have made provisions, and consequently labour cheap, we must infallibly outsell our neighbours; and at the same time increase our numbers. This is the noble and manly way of encountering the rivals of our trade, and by dint of merit outdoing them at foreign markets.

To allure the poor, we make use of policy in some cases with success. Why should we be neglectful of it in the most important point, when they make their boast that they will not live as the poor of other nations? If we cannot alter their resolution, why should we applaud the justness of their sentiments against the common interest? I have often wondered formerly how an Englishman that pretended to have the honour and glory, as well as the welfare of his country at heart, could take delight in the evening to hear an idle tenant that owed him above a year’s rent, ridicule the French for wearing wooden shoes, when in the morning he had had the mortification of hearing the great King William, that ambitious monarch, as well as able statesman, openly own to the world, and with grief and anger in his looks, complain of the exorbitant power of France. Yet I do not recommend wooden shoes, nor do the maxims I would introduce require arbitrary power in one person. Liberty and property I hope may remain secured, and yet the poor be better employed than they are, though their children should wear out their clothes by useful labour, and blacken them with country dirt for something, instead of tearing them off their backs at play, and daubing them with ink for nothing.

There is above three or four hundred years work, for a hundred thousand poor more than we have in this island. To make every part of it useful, and the whole thoroughly inhabited, many rivers are to be made navigable; canals to be cut in hundreds of places. Some lands are to be drained and secured from inundations for the future: abundance of barren soil is to be made fertile, and thousands of acres rendered more beneficial, by being made more accessible. Dii laboribus omnia vendunt. There is no difficulty of this nature, that labour and patience cannot surmount. The highest mountains may be thrown into their valleys that stand ready to receive them; and bridges might be laid where now we would not dare to think of it. Let us look back on the stupendous works of the Romans, more especially their highways and aqueducts. Let us consider in one view the vast extent of several of their roads, how substantial they made them, and what duration they have been of; and in another a poor traveller that at every ten miles end is stopped by a turnpike, and dunned for a penny for mending the roads in the summer, with what every body knows will be dirt before the winter that succeeds is expired.

The conveniency of the public ought ever to be the public care, and no private interest of a town, or a whole country, should ever hinder the execution of a project or contrivance that would manifestly tend to the improvement of the whole; and every member of the legislature, who knows his duty. and would choose rather to act like a wise man, than curry favour with his neighbours, will prefer the least benefit accruing to the whole kingdom, to the most visible advantage of the place he serves for.

We have materials of our own, and want neither stone nor timber to do any thing; and was the money that people give uncompelled to beggars, who do not deserve it, and what every housekeeper is obliged to pay to the poor of his parish, that is other wise employed or ill-applied, to be put together every year, it would make a sufficient fund to keep a great many thousands at work. I do not say this because I think it practicable, but only to show that we have money enough to spare, to employ vast multitudes of labourers; neither should we want so much for it as we perhaps might imagine. When it is taken for granted, that a soldier, whose strength and vigour is to be kept up at least as much as any body’s, can live upon sixpence a-day, I cannot conceive the necessity of giving the greatest part of the year, sixteen and eighteen pence to a day-labourer.

The fearful and cautious people, that are ever jealous of their liberty, I know will cry out, that where the multitudes I speak of should be kept in constant pay, property and privileges would be precarious. But they might be answered, that sure means might be found out, and such regulations made, as to the hands in which to trust the management and direction of these labourers, that it would be impossible for the prince, or any body else, to make an ill use of their numbers.

What I have said in the four or five last paragraphs, I foresee, will, with abundance of scorn, be laughed at by many of my readers, and at best be called building castles in the air; but whether that is my fault or theirs is a question. When the public spirit has left a nation, they not only lose their patience with it, and all thoughts of perseverance, but become likewise so narrow-souled, that it is a pain for them even to think of things that are of uncommon extent, or require great length of time; and whatever is noble or sublime in such conjectures, is counted chimerical. Where deep ignorance is entirely routed and expelled, and low learning promiscuously scattered on all the people, self-love turns knowledge into cunning; and the more this last qualification prevails in any country, the more the people will fix all their cares, concern, and application, on the time present, without regard of what is to come after them, or hardly ever thinking beyond the next generation.

But as cunning, according to my Lord Verulam, is but left-handed wisdom; so a prudent legislator ought to provide against this disorder of the society, as soon as the symptoms of it appear, among which the following are the most obvious. Imaginary rewards are generally despised; every body is for turning the penny, and short bargains; he that is diffident of every thing and believes nothing but what he sees with his own eyes, is counted the most prudent; and in all their dealings, men seem to act from no other principle than that of the devil take the hindmost. Instead of planting oaks, that will require a hundred and fifty years before they are fit to be cut down, they build houses with a design that they shall not stand above twelve or fourteen years. All heads run upon the uncertainty of things, and the vicissitudes of human affairs. The mathematics become the only valuable study, and are made use of in every thing, even where it is ridiculous, and men seem to repose no greater trust in Providence than they would in a broken merchant.

It is the business of the public to supply the defects of the society, and take that in hand first which is most neglected by private persons. Contraries are best cured by contraries, and therefore, as example is of greater efficacy than precept, in the amendment of national failings, the legislature ought to resolve upon some great undertakings, that must be the work of ages as well as vast labour, and convince the world that they did nothing without an anxious regard to their latest posterity. This will fix, or at least help to settle, the volatile genius and fickle spirit of the kingdom; put us in mind that we are not born for ourselves only, and be a means of rendering men less distrustful, and inspiring them with a true love for their country, and a tender affection for the ground itself, than which nothing is more necessary to aggrandize a nation. Forms of government may alter; religions and even languages may change, but Great Britain, or at least (if that likewise might lose its name) the island itself will remain, and in all human probability, last as long as any part of the globe. All ages have ever paid their kind acknowledgments to their ancestors, for the benefits derived from them; and a Christian who enjoys the multitude of fountains, and vast plenty of water to be met with in the city of St. Peter, is an ungrateful wretch if he never casts a thankful remembrance on old Pagan Rome, that took such prodigious pains to procure it.

When this island shall be cultivated, and every inch of it made habitable and useful, and the whole the most convenient and agreeable spot upon earth, all the cost and labour laid out upon it, will be gloriously repaid by the incense of them that shall come after us; and those who burn with the noble zeal and desire after immortality, and took such care to improve their country, may rest satisfied, that a thousand and two thousand years hence, they shall live in the memory and everlasting praises of the future ages that shall then enjoy it.

Here I should have concluded this rhapsody of thoughts; but something comes in my head concerning the main scope and design of this essay, which is to prove the necessity there is for a certain portion of ignorance, in a well-ordered society, that I must not omit, because, by mentioning it, I shall make an argument on my side, of what, if I had not spoke of it, might easily have appeared as a strong objection against me. It is the opinion of most people, and mine among the rest, that the most commendable quality of the present Czar of Muscovy, is his unwearied application, in raising his subjects from their native stupidity, and civilizing his nation: but then we must consider it is what they stood in need of, and that not long ago the greatest part of them were next to brute beasts. In proportion to the extent of his dominions, and the multitudes he commands, he had not that number or variety of tradesmen and artificers, which the true improvement of the country required, and therefore was in the right, in leaving no stone unturned to procure them. But what is that to us who labour under a contrary disease? Sound politics are to the social body, what the art of medicine is to the natural, and no physician would treat a man in a lethargy as if he was sick for want of rest, or prescribe in a dropsy what should be administered in a diabetes. In short, Russia has too few knowing men, and Great Britain too many.