Chapter XXVIII: Letter VII: To John Squalid, Weaver, Stockton

DEAR JOHN,--I’m afraid you don’t go the right way to make both ends meet. Your letter is full of complaints of poverty, and all that sort of disagreeable thing. I very much fear that you’ve got into expensive habits, or your sixteen shillings a week would be sure to go further. Why don’t you be economical? why don’t you copy the prudence shown you by high people? Look here, now. Just read this from Sir Robert Peel’s speech. He is speaking of the marriage (and economy) of Queen Victoria:--

“It has pleased God to bless that union with the birth of four
children, and this, of course, caused a considerable additional
demand upon the civil list. In the course of the last year
three sovereigns have visited this country; amongst them were
the sovereigns of two of the most powerful countries in the
habitable globe--the Emperor of Russia and the King of the
French.”

I hope you blush now. Four children: and when--if you will only consider upon it--you come to think how much it costs for babies--how much in tops-and-bottoms alone--how much in short coating, worsted shoes, and all that,--can you, as a loyal subject, forbear to cast up your eyes and close your hands in wonderment at Sir Robert’s picture of royal economy? There have been four children and three kings come to Windsor Castle, and yet John Bull has never been asked for an extra shilling. If you owe anything anywhere, you are, after this, lost to all sense of self-respect. I give you up. Consider the expense borne by royalty for royal visitors! The extra night-candles--the extra clean sheets and pillow-cases,--and yet not a farthing more, _as yet_, demanded! To be sure, it wouldn’t have been very gracious towards the three sovereigns, if the bill for their entertainment had been immediately sent down to Parliament: they might, as gentlemen, have felt inclined to send over their cheques for the amount: but--no matter for that.

I clearly see what lies before you--it’s the union, and nothing less. And you don’t know what _that_--under the benevolence of Sir James Graham--is to be yet. He has just brought in a bill for another experiment upon the poor. Indeed Graham, in his bills for the treatment of the poor, may be likened to one Dr Majendie, a French surgeon, in his treatment of rabbits. He would take a live rabbit and cut its nerves here and there to make some great discovery--to learn what point of agony the rabbit could bear--and still keep a sort of life within it, eat and drink. Graham is the Poor-Law Majendie! He’s brought in something like a Settlement Bill; a bill which is to take the poor--to cut their nerves and heart-strings from their parishes--and settle them, when they need, what he in his droll manner calls relief, into unions, melting three-and-twenty parishes into one union! Old feelings--old affections for old places are to be nothing--ties of kindred nothing, nothing. Sir James will sever all these, and will then triumphantly show the world how well the human rabbit can exist with them cut through and through.

When in the fulness of years and reputation it may please Providence to remove Sir James from this vale of tears--and certainly it’s no fault of _his_ measures if the vale is very dry--there ought to be a monument raised to his memory, made of paupers’ bones.

However, history will be sure to do this for him. As the poor are to cease to have what is called any associations of place--why should they have any associations of particular names? Why should they not be lettered and numbered like the police? Such a plan would go far to take the conceit out of them, by reminding them most forcibly of the difference between themselves and the luckier people who bear Christian and surnames. More, that there should be no mistake, no shuffling in the matter, the pauper babe, instead of being christened, might be indelibly tattooed both with letter and number. If at any time of its future life it should by some strange accident realise sufficient money to make it respectable, it might then be allowed to be baptized; in the same way that now a man, on coming to immense wealth, is allowed by the _Gazette_ to slough the vulgarity of Wiggins into the aristocracy of Mosmancourt of Godolphin. I hope Sir James will think of this.

But the poor man was always a culprit. You heard I was once a lawyer’s clerk, and so, John, respect my Latin. The poor were _adscripti glebæ_--that is, bound to the soil, a bit of the earth, a lump of the clay, with no more power to remove themselves than a bramble-bush; if they did, see what came to ’em. I’ve only just picked up the matter, but here it is--let it be a warning to you. In the time of Richard the Second--what a very pauper he’d been if born one!--if any poor man left his home without a justice’s leave, and was taken in the crime, why, he was put in the stocks for his rascality. Henry the Eighth--a real tiger of the royal menagerie--made a law that whipped any beggar begging from his native place. Another of his laws--some of ’em were written in the best blood of the country--only whipped the beggar for his first offence, but cut off his right ear for the second, and blackened him from head to heel a felon for the third. Well, Edward the Sixth, or his ministers, branded the vagabond on the shoulder, and gave him as a slave to anybody who’d be troubled with him, to be beaten, chained, and otherwise remonstrated with for being poor. He might also, for further ill-manners of running away, be branded in the cheek, and made a slave for life. Another running away, and--here really came a bit of summary humanity--he might be hanged! Queen Elizabeth punished the beggar by ordering his ear to be “burned through the gristle with a hot iron, of a compass of an inch about”--that is, not much thicker.

Now, John, I hope you lay these things to your heart: I hope you will at once acknowledge the wickedness that has very properly been put upon poverty for hundreds of years, and don’t disgrace yourself and your relations by becoming a pauper. I have a great regard for you--a very great regard; nevertheless, if you come to want, I give you up for ever, and renounce you. I hope, therefore, you will take this warning in good part, and believe me, your affectionate cousin,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.