BEGGAR

Bee
Beggars.

the hive, and then speedily destroys all its inhabitants; the swallow, the sparrow, the titmouse, the cuckoo, and the Merops apiaster, or bee-eater, and poultry of every kind, prey upon them separately. According to Bosc, they are also food for the shrikes, and for the Falco apivorus. Lizards watch for them, and seize them as they alight near the hive. Toads occasionally devour them. They are in some danger from the larger kinds of spiders, and of Libellulæ, as also from the Philanthus apivorus of Fabricius. But the most insidious and destructive enemy of these insects is the moth; various species of which, particularly the Phalena mellollena, insinuate themselves into the hive, and deposit their eggs unperceived between the cells, in such numbers, that the hive is soon overrun with the larvae, where they are hatched, and the bees are forced to abandon the hive. A new enemy of the same tribe has been lately discovered by Huber, in the Sphinx atropos, well known by the name of death's head. Towards the end of autumn, when the bees have filled their magazines, a loud hum is sometimes heard near their habitation, and a multitude of bees come out during the night, and fly about in the utmost confusion. The tumult continues for several hours, and the next morning a number of dead bees are strewn before the hive. On examining the hive, it is found to have been robbed of all its honey, and the bees do not return to it. These effects result from the incursions of the sphinx, which watches its opportuni-

ty to introduce itself into the hive during the night, when the bees are deprived of the advantages of vision, which the sphinx enjoys in greater perfection at this period. By rendering the door-way extremely narrow, so as only to admit a single bee at a time, this accident may be prevented; and it is curious that the bees themselves frequently anticipate this danger, and provide against it by employing, of their own accord, the very same mode of defence. They construct a thick wall which barricades the entrance, and resembles a regular fortification, with bastions, casemates, and massive gateways. They often, indeed, have recourse to a similar contrivance for protection against the pillaging-bees, enabling them to repel the assault with greater effect. At other times when the danger is less pressing, the inconveniences of so narrow a gateway being strongly felt, they enlarge it by removing the fortification they had built, and do not again construct it unless the appearance of the enemy in the ensuing season should inspire them with fresh alarms. If, on the other hand, the precaution of narrowing the gateway should already have been taken by the cultivator, the bees, feeling themselves secure, spare themselves the unnecessary labour of erecting these walls. This single trait in their history is a sufficient refutation of those theories which ascribe all their actions to the operation of a blind indiscriminating instinct, and would exclude every species of foresight and reflection.
(w.)

B E G G A R.

THE word literally means, one who begs. In a more restricted sense, it means one who begs the means of subsistence. Even this definition, however, is too extensive for the idea to which, in this article, we mean to confine it. The class, in fact, of the persons to whom the term beggar, in the most restricted sense, applies, cannot easily be separated by an exact line of distinction from the kindred tribes. You cannot define the beggar as one who asks the means of subsistence, or money to purchase it, from passengers in the streets and highways; because there are people who beg from house to house. If you include those who beg from house to house, even that will not suffice, because there are persons who beg by letter, and have various means, beside language, of bringing to the knowledge of others the tokens of real or fictitious distress. And, if you make a definition extensive enough to embrace all these classes, you will make it include persons whom no one regards as standing in the rank of beggars; every person, almost, who, from any cause, is brought to require the assistance of others. It is not useless to contemplate how these classes run into one another; because it teaches the necessity of delicate and cautious proceedings, when we take measures of cure; especially if force enters at all into their composition.

1. Of the class of persons to whom, in the common use of language, the term Beggar is with pro-

priety assigned, there is one distinction which is obviously and commonly made; that is, into those who beg from necessity, and those who beg from choice. In each of these divisions, there is great variety. For a description of the field of mendicity we derive helps from the Report of a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in the year 1815, to inquire into the state of mendicity in the metropolis. The inquiry is very imperfect; the interrogation of the witnesses superficial and unskilful; the information which they give not followed up, by exploring other and better sources, which they indicate; but, as people had been left to casual observation, to fancy, and conjecture before, the facts and conjectures which that Report lays before us are still the best information we possess.

Nothing more strongly indicates the deficiency of our knowledge upon this subject, than the different opinions which the Committee received on the proportion between those who beg from necessity, and those who beg from choice. The persons examined were those of whom the Committee made choice, as having possessed peculiar opportunities of knowledge; and this was a point to which their inquiries were peculiarly directed. Yet one part of the witnesses strongly asserted, that a proportion as large as one half were beggars from necessity; another part of them asserted that all beggars, with hardly any exception, prosecuted the occupation from choice.

Mr Martin, the conductor of an inquiry into the state of mendicity in the metropolis, under instructions from his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, which inquiry extended to about 4500 cases, stated, as "the general result of his information, that beggary is, in very many cases, perhaps in about half the cases of those who beg, the effect rather of real distress, than of any voluntary desire to impose. So far from having found, amongst those who have attended at the office, any reason to think that the whole was a matter of imposition, I have (says he) found cases of the most acute suffering, which have long been concealed, of some of the beggars, who belonged to parishes in the metropolis, who have not made their cases properly known to the parish-officers, and who have ventured to slip out of their parishes, not so much because they wished to impose, as because they were driven by distress to beg." Mr Martin grounded this conclusion also upon the general fact, that the number of women was much greater than that of men, and that of married women greater than that of single. "Men," he remarks, "are stronger than women, have more resources, and are better able to provide for themselves; and single women are more eligible for service than married, and usually have only themselves to maintain."

The Rev. Henry Budd, who had been fourteen years Chaplain to Bridewell Hospital, to which the greater number of the persons taken up for begging in the streets of London are committed, was asked, "Have you ever known a worthy person begging in the streets?"—"Yes; I have known many that I should call worthy; and, I think I could mention some who have come up from the country distressed for want of work. They think London is paved with gold, or presents opportunities the country does not; and they find themselves here without friends. I have met with many whom I considered very worthy."

Of these two witnesses, the personal experience in the case was equal, or probably superior to that of all the rest taken together.

From other witnesses, however, of whom the experience was also great, the committee received affirmations of an opposite import. Mr John Cooper, a visitor of the Spitalfields Benevolent Society, was asked, "From the observations you have made upon the state of poor families, do you think any worthy families have recourse to begging in the streets?"—"Ans. "I have no idea at all, from what has come under my own observations, that, in any individual case, persons, that were worthy objects, however distressed they were, have had recourse to street-begging."

Mr John Doughtry, a gentleman much in the habit of visiting the habitations of the needy, was asked, "In your opinion, do many worthy, honest, industrious persons have recourse to begging, or does this class of society consist chiefly of the idle and profligate?"—"Ans. "The instances in which worthy, honest, industrious persons have recourse to begging are extremely rare. They will, in general, rather starve than beg. A person of veracity, who sometime ago visited 1500 poor families in the

neighbourhood of Spitalfields, affirms, that, out of full 300 cases of abject poverty and destitution, and at least 100 of LITERAL WANT AND STARVATION, not a dozen had been found to have recourse to begging. Many of the most wretched of the above cases had been, not long before, able to support themselves in some comfort, but want of employ had completely ruined them. They were, at that moment, pressed by landlord, baker, and tax-gatherer; had pawned and sold every thing that could be turned into money; were absolutely without a morsel of food for themselves or family; but still had not recourse to begging. As a general fact, the decent poor will struggle to the uttermost, and even perish, rather than turn beggars."

This is heroism, in comparison with which, that of the Herculeses and the Hectors, ancient and modern, sinks into nothing! What an admirable foundation of virtue must be laid, in these minds, which even thus endure the horrors of death, approaching with all the torments of hunger and cold, rather than seek to relieve themselves by courses reputed disgraceful! And how unworthily is this class of persons traduced, by those who represent them as capable of being restrained by nothing but a dungeon or a bayonet; and who, by their ignorance of human nature, so cruelly prolong the needless miseries under which it labours!

According to the experiment mentioned by Mr Doughtry, and it is upon a large scale, and a part of the population (the circumstances of the people in Spitalfields are not favourable to virtue) which may be reckoned below rather than above the common standard, out of 400 individuals, of the lowest order, 388 will consent to perish by hunger, rather than beg. In confirmation of this testimony, an extraordinary fact has come to our knowledge. We have been informed by a gentleman, whose knowledge of the circumstances and behaviour of the journeymen in the metropolis may be regarded as in a very unusual, or rather an unexampled degree, minute and correct, that, of this important portion of the labouring population, no one ever begs; that such a thing as a journeyman tradesman, or any of his family, begging, is almost unknown; and may, with certainty, be pronounced as one of the rarest of contingent events. When it is considered to what an extraordinary degree most of the employments by which these men earn the means of subsistence are liable to fluctuation; that thousands of them are for months together deprived of work, as was the case with thousands, for example, of the carpenters and bricklayers during the severe winter of 1815; that of those the whole must be reduced to the most cruel privations, and a great proportion actually starve unpitied, unheard of, and unknown; the resolution by which they abstain from begging, should be regarded as one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the human mind.

It may still be possible to reconcile these undoubted facts with the testimonies of Mr Martin and Mr Budd. It appears that a great proportion of the beggars to whom they allude are women, and women with families; whose spirits, where they are left to themselves, are less able to support them, and to make

Beggar. the dread of disgrace an overmatch for the pains of hunger and the terrors of death. It appears, also, that a large proportion of them are the wives of soldiers, in the company of whom the sense of disgrace is apt to lose its pungency. People from the country, simple, and without resources, add a portion to the number of those whose mendicity cannot be regarded as the effect of vice. And it cannot, surely, be a source of wonder, that, out of so large a population, so great a portion of whom are liable to the extremity of want, there should be a few with whom the dread of disgrace should not be so powerful a motive as the love of food, and of life.

Number of Beggars. 2. Of the number of beggars in the metropolis (and no attempt has been made to discover it in the rest of the country), the labours of the Committee have ascertained hardly any thing. At the time of the first inquiry, which was made by Mr Martin, 2000 cases presented themselves. This, by a vague estimate, he supposed might be about one-third of the whole; and allowing at the rate of a child and a half to each principal, he conjectured that the whole number might be about 15,000. If this be supposed a tolerable approximation, with regard to the metropolis, a comparison of the population of the metropolis with that of the whole country, will give an approximation to the number of beggars in the kingdom.

3. With regard to the number of beggars, an important fact appears to be ascertained; that it is gradually diminishing. Mr Martin said, "I do think that the number of beggars has something decreased since the first inquiry, nine years ago; and I am very much confirmed in that opinion, by what persons have told me, that they have not seen so many as they did. I really think there are not so many by one-fourth." Sir N. Conant, of the Police-office in Bow-street, said, "I think the number of beggars was greater thirty years ago than now. I have acted as a magistrate for more than thirty years. —Do you mean greater in proportion to the population? —Greater in fact. I am sure, on my own recollection and observation, that mendicity is a less nuisance now than it was thirty years ago."

Sir Daniel Williams, a magistrate attending the Police-office in Whitechapel, was asked, respecting the beggars in that district, "Do you think the number has increased within any given period?" —Ans. "I think, within the last two years, they have rather diminished." Mr John Stafford, chief clerk of the office in Bow-street, said, "It strikes me, from the knowledge I have had, having been chief clerk of the Police-office in Bow-street ever since the year 1803, that there are not the same number of beggars about the streets that there used to be; I think the number is considerably decreased." This corresponds so fully with what strongly meets the observation of every attentive man, and has been amply given in evidence before the Committees of the House of Commons, on the state of education, and the police of the metropolis, during the last session of Parliament, respecting the great improvement in the morals and in the manners of the lower or-

ders, that it may be regarded as a fact of which no reasonable doubt can be entertained.

4. This is the little which appears to be known with regard to the proportion between the beggars from choice, and the beggars from necessity, and with regard to the number of the whole. We shall next speak of the arts by which it is understood that the trade of beggars is carried on. This appears to be the grand subject of curiosity. There is a mystery about this, and a fancied ingenuity, which those who wish for the marvellous are very much stimulated to explore and to magnify. The fact, however, is, that the contrivances, upon the whole, are few, and almost all of them obvious, and coarse. They are expedients for exhibiting as much as possible of the appearances of distress. Of these, rags and nastiness are one portion, which it surely requires but little ingenuity to display. The different kinds of bodily infirmity, chiefly those which incapacitate for labour, are the remaining portion. On this subject the most authentic details which have been collected, are those contained in the Report of the Committee on Mendicity. We shall select from the evidence, as far as it goes, the description of the principal arts; and the intelligent reader will perceive, that, with regard to invention, they are near the bottom of the scale.

The Reverend William Gurney said, "I am rector of St Clement Danes, and minister of the Free Chapel in West Street, St Giles's. In the course of my ministry there, I have had a great deal of occasion to visit persons in very great distress. I have ascertained, that there are four different ways of begging. Some are by letters, which are sent by post; and some are what we call knocker beggars, who go from house to house, knocking at every door. If they get a knowledge of any respectable person in the street, they pretend they have received money at his house, to make a sum to pay rent, or the postage of a letter from a son who has been six or seven years at sea, and from whom they expect a remittance; or for other purposes. On these occasions they have generally some written statement in their hands. Some beggars are stationary. They come to their stand at a certain hour, where they remain all day, or after so many hours repair to another. Of these beggars, those who are blind, or maimed, or have children, succeed the best. There are others, women and children, who are moveable beggars, following not the street but the people. For instance, at the time of the play, they are always very near the theatres; and if they see a young gentleman and a young lady walking together in deep conversation, they will pester them, and run before them till they give them something to get rid of them. Those people, at other times of the day, if it is a Sunday, for instance, will be found near chapels where there are large congregations; they know as well where the large congregations are as possible. There are others who are continually begging from house to house; they go through a great number of streets in the day, occasionally taking a ballad, or a bunch of matches, and pretend to be picking up bones in the street, and early in the morning kneeling down to areas, tormenting the

cook when she is busy in the kitchen, until they get some broken victuals, as they call it, but they actually sell this victuals; that I have found out. In St Giles's there are some eating houses for the very poorest mendicants, where they go and sell this victuals they get from different houses."

This is a correct description of the most common cases of begging. There is one case, by no means uncommon, which we do not perceive described by any of the witnesses; that, when three or four men, being or appearing to be lame or maimed, and most commonly in the guise of sailors, go out in a body, singing with great loudness, and almost barricading with their bodies the streets through which they move, in such a manner, that nobody can pass without a vehement onset, while the timid or sensitive hardly dare to resist. Of course, this takes place only in these streets in which there is least danger of their being taken up.

The following is a description given by the Reverend W. Gurney, of some other classes of beggars. He had mentioned a set of applications frequently made to him, by persons who pretended that prize-money, or benefits of some other sort were due to them, of which, however, being deprived by want of knowing the steps to be taken, they entreated a letter to somebody who would instruct them; "but their object was to get a letter with my name to it, with which probably in a short time they could get L. 20. If I have written to any body in the office of the Treasurer of the Navy, whom I knew, for instruction or counsel how they ought to act, recommending the bearer to this person for any information he could give upon such points; if I only said, I beg leave to recommend the bearer to your notice, they would paste this upon another sheet of paper, cutting off the bottom part (and one person was detected in doing this), and then they would take the name at the bottom, and so paste it together, making a kind of a recommendation of this person: knowing who I was acquainted with, some other clergyman, perhaps setting me down as giving them 10s.; that clergyman is induced to give them 10s. also, and to send them to some benevolent person in his congregation: and so they go on till they have got L. 20: and that has frequently been done, I do not mean always by imposition. But, in many cases, where persons have been in distress, through providential circumstances, I have written to another clergyman, saying, such a woman was distressed, and had so many children, and that her husband was out of work, and that this I knew to be the fact, for I had inquired. I have given half a guinea, and have given the names of others; and by this means sufficient relief has been procured without coming to the parish at all. But the impositions on the subject of recommendations are very great; I have had letters from all parts of the country, inquiring whether I gave a general recommendation to such a person; and they have said, we saw a letter purporting to be in your handwriting; we were pretty confident it was not written by you, but it was a very good imitation. One man in Staffordshire, where I had lately been, got a great deal of money upon such a letter. I conceive

the beggars in the streets are more numerous at one time of the year than another; and it would be supposed the time of the year when they were most numerous, would be in the early part of the winter; but that is not the case, for now they are as thick as at any time of the year. I have been endeavouring for a long time to ascertain the reason of this; and the first obvious reason for the influx of beggars into the metropolis, at this season of the year, is, with respect to one class of beggars, those who do it by letters or recommendations, and not going from house to house, that they take advantage while Parliament is still sitting, or particular persons being in town; they perhaps are pretty stationary in London all the year; but they are more anxious at this time, and therefore more heard of, because people are going out of town, and therefore they are taking time by the forelock, and work double tides; that is the reason I very frequently have letters sent by friends of mine in affluence, Mr Wilberforce and others, requesting me to inquire into particular cases, and if I found them to be as represented, to give them so and so. I have generally been troubled more at this season of the year than at any other. As to those who knock at the door to beg, the reason of their being so numerous at this time of the year, I apprehend, is, that many come out of the country with a view to take the early hay-time about the metropolis, but they bring always a large suit with them. If a man comes to mow in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, they mow their way back again, the harvest beginning sooner near the metropolis; they bring with them a wife and six or seven children. I have seen hundreds coming up through Stanmore, when I resided there. They generally come too soon, and the streets are filled with these poor people: One says, if I could but get money to buy a fork I could get work; and another, if I could get money to buy a rake, I could get employment. I have had half a dozen with me since Saturday, stating that they came up to get a job of work, but the market is overstocked: there are so many Irish here. The consequence of these people coming is, their children are immediately set to begging in the streets, and with the dust upon them, having travelled a great way, and frequently in real want, they move the compassion of people very much; they are frequently sitting with papers stuck in their hats. In the course of six or eight weeks great numbers of those will disappear; the husbands will get to mowing, their wives will get a hay-fork, and the children will get to weeding in the gardens: Then they get a dreadful habit, by coming to the metropolis, a habit of idleness and drinking; and those children are annually instructed in idleness and drinking, and of course lying; idleness is sure to bring on lying and theft. I dare say there are very few of these mendicant children who are not trained up to pilfer as well as to beg; they come principally, I believe, from the manufacturing counties. On a journey from Birmingham to London, two years ago, I passed not less than two hundred with their wives and children, who were begging as I passed."

The following statement is inserted in the Re-

Beggar. port of the Committee, under the title of "Information communicated by three members of a Society instituted for Benevolent Purposes."

"In Nicholas-court, Rosemary-lane, there are about twenty beggars, male and female, of the very worst description, great impostors, drunkards, blasphemers, &c.: their rendezvous the City of Carlisle, Rosemary-lane.

"In Mill-yard, Church-lane, about ten female beggars.

"In White Horse-court and Blue Anchor-yard, about fourteen beggars.

"In Detridge-street, New-street, and St Catherine's-lane, about thirty female beggars.

"In Angel-Gardens and Blue Gate Fields, about twelve beggars, four of them blacks.

"In Chapel-street, Commercial-road, six beggars.

"In Goodman's-yard, Minories, six beggars affecting blindness.

"In the neighbourhood of Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, about thirty-five families may be computed at one hundred and fifty members, who subsist by begging and plunder. There are about thirty Greenwich Pensioners, who hire instruments of music and go out in parties.

"If each beggar does not procure at least 6s. per day, they are considered very bad at their business.

"In visiting George-yard, leading from High-street, Whitechapel, into Wentworth-street, we found there were from thirty to forty houses apparently full of people; and being desirous of knowing the situation they were in, we gained access to several of them where we had formerly visited distressing cases; and from the information we collected, we conceive that in these houses there are no less than two thousand people; the whole place, indeed, presents such a scene of human misery and dissipation as can hardly be conceived. We learned from those we had access to, that one half of these inhabitants subsist almost entirely by prostitution and beggary; the other half are chiefly Irish labouring people.

"In Wentworth-street (adjoining the above yard) there are a great many houses occupied by inhabitants similar to those in George-yard. One of these (a private house, No. 53) we visited, and were not a little surprised to find that it contained one hundred beds, which are let by the night or otherwise, to beggars, and loose characters of all descriptions. In some of the lanes leading from this street, there are other houses of the same kind."

Mr Sampson Stevenson, who had been Overseer of the parish of St Giles's the preceding year, and by that circumstance forced into an acquaintance with the practices of its begging inhabitants, said,—"There is a man whose real name I do not know, but he goes by the name of Graane Manoo. He is a man who, I believe, is scarcely out of jail three months in the year; for he is so abusive and vile a character, he is very frequently in jail for his abuse and mendacity. He is young enough to have gone to sea, but I believe he has been ruptured, consequently they will not take him. I have seen him scratch his legs about the ancles, to make them bleed; and he never goes

out with shoes. That is the man that collects the greatest quantity of shoes and other habiliments; for he goes literally so naked, that it is almost disgusting for any person to see him in that situation. Another man I have known upon the town these fifteen or twenty years; he is a young man as nimble as any man can be. I have seen him fencing with the other people, and jumping about as you would see a man that was practised in the pugilistic art. He goes generally without a hat, with a waistcoat with his arms thrust through, and his arms bare, with a canvass bag at his back; he begins generally by singing some sort of a song, for he has the voice of a decent ballad-singer. He takes primroses or something in his hand, and generally goes limping or crawling in such a way, that any person would suppose he could not step one foot before another. I have also seen him, if a Bow-street officer or beadle came in sight, walk off the ground as quickly as most people. There is a man who has had a very genteel education, and has been in the medical line, an Irishman; that man writes a most beautiful hand, and he principally gets his livelihood by writing petitions for those kind of people, of various descriptions; whether truth or falsehood I know not, but I have seen him writing them, for which he gets from sixpence to a shilling.

"Do you know whether they change their beats?—I have seen them come out from twenty to thirty out of the bottom of a street, formerly called Dyot Street, now called George Street. They branch off, five or six together, one one way, another another. Invariably, before they get to any great distance, they go into a liquor-shop, and if one amongst them has saved (and it is rare but one of them saves some of the wreck of his fortune over night), he sets them off with a pint of gin, or half a pint of gin amongst them, before they set out. Then they trust to the day for raising the contributions necessary for their subsistence in the evening. They have all their divisions. The town is quartered into sections and divisions, and they go one part one way, another part another. In regard to the mendicity of people begging with children, I can give a little information upon that. There is one person, of an acute nature, who is practised in the art of begging, will collect three, four, or five children from different parents of the lower class of people, and will give those parents 6d. or even more per day, for those children to go begging with. They go in those kind of gangs, and make a very great noise, setting the children sometimes crying in order to extort charity from the people. I had an opportunity of seeing a number of those cases, being a parish officer. They will sometimes have the audacity to come to the Board for relief, which we have four days a-week: there is a great deal of money given in St Giles's. They will, if necessary, swear they are all their own children, and being, in general, of Irish parents (wherever the tree falls it must lie), consequently they get some relief till we can make proper inquiry; but, in a very short time, they are found out, for we generally send to the place they come from; but the landlords and landladies are so cunning, they would swear that the whole of those children belonged to them. But we have people of their own class, to whom we

are obliged to give something to detect the impositions we are liable to, for we are often imposed upon. A great many of those cases were before me last year as a parish officer; where a woman had been in the habit of receiving 5s. a-week, and at last a woman of her own country came forward, and taxed her that three of the children were not her own. We never saw them again, but they went into other parishes, such as Mary-le-bone, St Andrew's, and other parishes, and sought relief there; they know we cannot remove them. We have had other persons whose families are their own, and when they have a habit of begging, and get a good deal of money by that trade, they will not go to work. But we have complaints from a variety of persons round Bedford and Bloomsbury Square, of those persons being nuisances. And when the parties have come to the Board, we have offered them the house to come in with wife and children:—"No; I expect my husband home very soon, and I will not come into the house." In those cases we get rid of them, but we invariably offer them the house. When they will not take it, then we stop the relief, for I think the house is the best thing for a family of children, and a distressed family of that description."

Mr William Dorrel, inspector of the pavement of St Giles's and St George, Bloomsbury, said,—"One evening I was coming down Tottenham-court Road; a man and a woman, both beggars, were quarrelling. The man swore at the woman very much, and told her to go down to such a place, and he would follow her. I said to myself, I will see this out. She appeared to be pregnant, and very near her time. I went down to Sheen's, I think he sent her there. There was a quarrel, and he said, "I will do for you presently;" and he up with his foot and kicked her, and down came a pillow stuffed with straw, or something of that kind; she was very soon delivered. I have been informed of a circumstance respecting a man of the name of Butler, that went about; he had lost one of his eyes. I am told he had been to sea. He had a dog, and walked with a stick; the dog went before him; he hit the curb-stone. People supposed he was blind of both eyes; he turned his eye up in such a way that he appeared blind. When he returned to his hotel, he could see as well as I could, and he wrote letters for his brother-beggars. This man has been dead two or three months."

The following is a curious fact, testified by Mr T. A. Finnigan, master of the Catholic Free School in St Giles's.—"About two years ago, there was an old woman who kept a night-school, not for the purpose of instructing children to spell and read, but for the sole purpose of teaching them the street language, that is, to scold; this was for females particularly. One female child, according to the woman's declaration to me, would act the part of Mother Barlow, and the other Mother Cummins; these were the fictitious names they gave. The old woman instructed the children in all the manœuvres of scolding and clapping their hands at each other, and making use of the sort of infamous expressions they use. This led them into the most disgraceful scenes. When these children met, if one entered into the depart-

ment of the other the next day, they were prepared to defend their station, and to excite a mob."

This is nearly the whole of the information which is contained in this celebrated Report, with regard to the arts which are employed by the beggars of the metropolis. We shall next consider the estimate which ought to be formed of their gettings. On this subject also exists a great bias to exaggeration. Both the Committee, and these witnesses, with certain exceptions, appear to have been led by it.

Mr Gurney had heard of one individual who boasted that he could with ease earn 5s. a-day; that he would go through sixty streets, and that it was a poor street that would not bring him a penny. Sir Nathaniel Conant, however, being asked, "Did it ever come to your knowledge, what any of the mendicants got?" made answer,—"I have heard very large sums stated, but I disbelieve many of them; I have not known of money being found about them; there are a good many very impudent fellows certainly about the streets, who are very troublesome; those who have been taken up have been seldom found with more than a shilling or two, but I believe some of them had hoarded at home. There was a woman brought before me, when I acted at Marlborough-street, who had a caddy in which there were nine or ten guineas hoarded."

Joseph Butterworth, Esq. a member of the Committee, stated as an inference from credible information which he had received respecting their mode of spending, that their daily acquisitions would not be less than from 3s. to 5s. each. One particular girl, however, whom he examined, stated that 1s. 6d. was the common amount of what she was able to collect, though on some days she made as much as 4s. or 5s.

Mr Sampson Stevenson was asked,—"Has it fallen within your knowledge what the largest sums are that have been gained by beggars in the course of the day?—That I have been unable to ascertain, but I have heard them brag of 6s., 7s., or 8s. a-day, or more, according to their luck, as they call it; and if one gets more than the others, they divide it with the rest."

It appears from the words themselves of the evidence on this point, that it is insufficient to prove anything. It is either the result of hearsay, which hearsay was probably the result of conjecture, not of knowledge; or it is founded on what the beggars themselves have said, when in a boasting humour; that is, when actuated with a desire to make their gettings appear as large as possible, and when, of course, their own declarations about the amount of them are, as evidence, of little or no value.

6. The ground on which the opinion of the great profits of begging seems chiefly to be founded, is the notion which is entertained of their expensive mode of living. It is therefore necessary, before we adduce the remarks which appear to be called for on the subject of profits, to state the evidence which has been furnished on the subject of expence.

The Reverend William Gurney was asked,—"Have you understood that the beggars' walks are considered as a sort of property?—Yes; I have

Beggar. no doubt of it; they never interfere one with another.

"And that a blind man stationed at a particular place, drives away others who interfere?—Yes; and they have their rules and their carousings: There is a house in Kent Street, where I have seen a great fat man, who moves himself about on a wooden board. When I lived near the Kent road, I have seen eight or ten of these persons go into a miserable house in the lower part of Kent Street. I have seen tables set; one a very long table covered with a coarse cloth, but a clean one; and there was something roasting: I was afraid to go in, on account of this man, who was a very violent one; this man was among the rest; they were going to have their dinner at the fashionable hour of seven. There was a cripple among them, who used to be at St George's Chapel in St George's Fields; he used to lie there, and pretend to hold out a pamphlet; he was weak about the loins, and his legs folded under him. I really believe the stories which have been told are not exaggerated.

"Have you any opportunity of knowing that the bread they eat is always of the best?—Yes; they would never eat any but the best wheaten bread."

This evidence proves but little. It is solely by conjecture, Mr Gurney here infers that there was any considerable expence.

Sir Daniel Williams was asked,—"Do you know their mode of life?—There was, in a situation called Church Lane, Whitechapel, some years ago a house of resort of beggars, which was well known to all that class of people in every part of the metropolis, by the name of The Beggar's Opera: the sign of the public-house was the Weaver's Arms, but its slang name was The Beggar's Opera: At the period I am mentioning, these beggars used to resort there of an evening, after having perambulated their different circuits, and lived well; they spent a considerable portion of money, would have hot suppers dressed, and regale themselves with beer, punch, and often other liquor still more expensive."

How unfortunate, and at the same time how strange it is, that not a single question was put to this gentleman, to ascertain whether he knew this by hearsay, or by observation. We are constrained to conclude that it was only by hearsay; because, had he seen the facts, it would have been natural to say so; and because we are never entitled to make an inference stronger than the premises on which it depends.

Mr Butterworth describes scenes of a similar sort, but has attention enough to accuracy to say, that he is only credibly informed of the things which he states. Not a question is put to him about the sources whence his information is derived; much less are any of the persons who gave it brought before the Committee, who ought not to have been contented with the hearsay, when they might have had the original evidence. Mr Butterworth did, indeed, volunteer (for he was not provoked to it by any interrogation) the description of one person. "I know," he said, "a sober hackney-coachman, upon whose veracity I can depend, who has frequently conveyed beggars to their lodgings; and former-

ly, when he plied in St Giles's, has been called to the public houses which they haunt, to take them from thence, being so intoxicated they could not walk home." If this information of the hackney-coachman was of any value, how wrong it was not to call the hackney-coachman, and get his own information from himself? According to what appears from Mr Butterworth's words, he might have conveyed a beggar from those houses, either twice or two hundred times in his life.

This is a very imperfect mode of collecting evidence.

The only person who gives anything that resembles the evidence of his own observation upon the subject is Mr Sampson Stevenson. He was asked,—"Have you had an opportunity of making observations, on the character of street beggars?—A great deal; not only before I was officer, but having been led by being officer to look into the matter, I have made great observations, because there was a house which those kind of people used, not above eight yards from my own house; complaint being made, the nuisance was done away."

"Have you had an opportunity of making particular inquiry into the character of individual beggars?—I have; in fact, I made inquiry, not only of the landlord, but of some of those who seemed to be of a superior class, or petition writers; that was before I was overseer. A year or two ago this house lost its licence; it not only encouraged those kind of people, but people guilty of felonies, and so on. This threw them into other quarters; and they made their residence at a public-house called The Fountain, in King-street, Seven Dials, where they assembled not only at night, but in a morning before they started upon their daily occupations, as they express it; I have seen them come in. As it is a house, the landlord of which is very respectable, and has a family, I have gone into the bar on purpose to see their manner of going on; that is very near the tap-room: They come at night, perhaps individuals, and likewise those sailors, or pretended sailors, in a body; but those who go one and two together come also: those who are sailors never take anything on their backs like knapsacks, for they only beg or extort money; but the others beg clothing, or anything they can get, and they always have a knapsack to put it in; they will come loaded with shoes and various habiliments, which, being near Monmouth-street, the place where they translate old shoes into new ones, they sell, and likewise the clothing. I have heard them say, that they have made 3s. or 4s. a-day in begging shoes, for sometimes they got shoes that really were very good ones; and their mode of exciting charity for shoes is, invariably, to go barefooted, and scarify their feet and heels with something or another to cause the blood as it were to flow. I have seen them in that situation many times; and thus they sally out to their different departments, but invariably changing their routes each day, for one is scarcely ever seen in the same direction two days together, but another takes his situation. I have seen them myself; I never saw them outside: but I have seen considerable sums of money pulled out and shared amongst them,

both collectively and those who go two or three together. Victuals I do not think I ever saw brought into that place, for I rather think they throw it away when they get it. Mostly shoes and clothing, and such things as those, which they sell immediately. They stop as long as the house they use is open, and get violently drunk, and quarrel with one another, and very frequently fight; after that they are not allowed to remain, if they were, the licence would be stopped; and very likely there are houses in St Giles's where they spend the other part, if they have any left.

"What is their general character?—They are people that are initiated in this mode of begging; one teaches another their modes of extorting, for I can call it nothing else but extorting: And they are of the worst of characters, characters whose blasphemy it is almost impossible to repeat; they will follow you in a street for a length of space, and if they do not receive money, they give a great torrent of abuse, even all the time you may hear them. Most of them have no lodgings. There are houses where there are forty or fifty of them, like a jail, the porter stands at the door and takes the money; for 3d. they have clean straw, or something like it; for those who pay 4d. there is something more decent; for 6d. they have a bed; they are all locked in for the night, lest they should take the property. In the morning there is a general muster below. I have asked country paupers who have come for relief, how they have been entertained, they say, Very badly: they have gone there. The servants go and examine all the places, to see that all is free from felony; and then they are let out into the street, just as you would open the door of a jail, and let out forty or fifty of them together, and at night they come again; they have no settled habitations, but those places to which they resort; but there are numbers of those houses in St Giles's."

Most of the statements in this declaration are very loose and vague. Yet not a question is put by the Committee to ascertain how far the witness had actually seen and heard, and how far he merely conjectured. No; he is allowed to make up a compound of what he saw, and what he conjectured, just as he pleased, and to leave the ingredients without any distinction. In several things he is palpably and grossly erroneous. For example, he supposes that beggars in general throw away the victuals which they collect. It is likely that they should take the trouble of collecting any thing merely to throw it away! It is likely they should throw away that for which they might get money! Besides, the assertion is contrary to what is actually delivered in evidence to the Committee; the fact, that there are places in St Giles's where the commodity is regularly bought, and where those who have collected it go to sell it.

Nothing is more common, in cases of this sort, than to receive a violent impression from the strong cases, however few; to overlook and forget the small cases, however numerous; and from the strong cases solely to draw every inference to the whole. There are strong marks of this imperfection in the

evidence which is given in this Report. Mr Stevenson, for example, in the passage which has just been quoted, gives it, without any restriction whatsoever, as a general characteristic of the beggars of whom he speaks, to be very abusive when their applications are refused. Now, this may safely be pronounced as one of the rarest occurrences. The writer of this article may give his own evidence. He has lived above fifteen years in the metropolis: he has walked more than most people, both in the streets of London, and in the roads and fields immediately surrounding it: he never gives anything to a casual beggar: he has been accosted by thousands of beggars: he cannot at this moment recollect that, in the whole course of that experience, he ever met with one abusive word: but he has a hundred times received a "Thank you, Sir," with a bow or a curtsey from the little boys and girls whom he has refused and repulsed, and to whom it is evident that such a lesson is taught by those on whom their conduct depends. The impostrous beggar, in fact, knows his art too well to lose his temper; and the spirit of the age, so much improved, renders a mild deportment necessary to the success even of the worst employment.

Of this evidence about the great gains of beggars, some parts are directly and strongly opposed to the rest.

Thus we are told that they eat and drink most voluptuously; we are also told that their sleeping places are wretched beyond description. But why should this be, if they were able to afford, in this respect, a higher degree of comfort? Notwithstanding what we are told about their delicate feeding, we are also told that there are eating-houses to which the beggars resort, and in which they buy the scraps of victuals, collected at doors, which the beggars who have collected beyond their own consumption there dispose of. This is no proof that they are generally able to cultivate delicacy.

So slight an exercise of reflection is sufficient to show that the gain of beggars must of necessity be wretched, that one is astonished at the proof which is exhibited of the inattention of mankind, by the number of persons who believe the contrary. According to the principle of population, which supposes a greater number of hands than can find employment, the ordinary occupations and trades may all be regarded as overstocked. The lowest is necessarily the most overstocked of all; because the hands which overflow from the rest are all driven downwards, and the lowest receives the overplus of the whole. The lowest species of occupation is, therefore, of necessity underpaid; that is to say, the wages of the labourer are not sufficient to maintain him with such a family as is necessary to keep the number of labourers, in that occupation, at its existing amount. But it must necessarily be, that the gains of beggars, upon the whole, that is, the gains of an average beggar, are below, and considerably below, the earnings of individuals in the lowest and worst paid species of labour. If it were not, it would follow, that the wretched starving people, employed in the lowest, naturally the hardest and most pain-

Beggar. ful, species of labour, of consent, will choose to receive a small sum with hard and painful labour, when they might receive a larger sum without any labour at all; it would follow that, out of a multitude, amounting to the greater part of the population, all, or all but an insignificant portion, are endowed with this degree of heroic virtue. This would be to suppose a sensibility to moral considerations which, in the circumstances of an oppressive and degrading poverty, is utterly incompatible with the laws of human nature.

We regard it, therefore, as a matter of demonstration, that the earnings of beggars, as a class, are considerably below the earnings of the worst paid class of labourers.

With this conclusion, however, it is very compatible to suppose, that individuals in the class of beggars, those who have more skill and industry than the rest, may attain to considerable gains; as it is evidently an occupation in which a greater or less degree of skill in working upon the attention and sympathy of mankind must make a considerable difference. The greater you suppose the gains of these skilled individuals to be, the smaller, of course, must you suppose the number of those who make them.

7. We have now exhibited what appears to be the result of all the evidence yet before the public, respecting the actual state of mendicity. The information is exceedingly imperfect, while it is certainly not very creditable to the legislation of our country to be thus ignorant upon such a subject.

It remains for us to present what the existing state of information enables us to discover with regard to the causes which operate in this, our own country, to the production of mendicity; in the next place, to explain the effects which it is of the nature of mendicity to produce; and, in the last place, to give a list of the operations which appear likely to be the most powerful in effecting a remedy,—the object and end of the inquiry.

Causes of Mendicity. 8. With respect to the causes of British mendicity, it will be useful, in the first place, to give what dropped in detail from the witnesses before the Committee.

The cause of which they first begin to speak, is what we may call, in one word, soldiering, or the unfavourable change produced in the minds and in the circumstances, both of individuals and of families, when the individuals, or those on whom they depend, become soldiers. There is nothing to which the minds of the witnesses appear to be carried more frequently than to this.

Edward Quin, Esq. a member of the establishment for sending the poor Irish to their own country, speaking of the persons whom they send, declares: "Most of those parties have been, I should imagine nine out of twelve, either in the army or navy, and mostly with families, who have no means whatever of returning home, except, perhaps, a temporary pass, twopence a mile, or a penny a mile; we have known a man, with a wife and six children, coming from the Peninsula, sometimes with 9d. or 1s. or 2s. a-day."

He makes a curious declaration with regard to the Irish, who are already begging in England. The establishment thinks it is better to have them in Eng-

land, as "to send them to Ireland, where there is no provision for them, would be doing them no good."

Beggar. Mr Colquhoun, the celebrated magistrate, and our grand instructor on the subject of police, being asked for his opinion of the causes of mendicity, said,— "It does appear that there are various classes of mendicants, which are all pretty numerous: First, those that are beggars by profession, who are the immediate objects of the attention of the police. Secondly, those that, from temporary pressure in the winter season, and other seasons when work is slack, or they have any special pressure upon them, fall into want, such as the wives and families of soldiers, when their husbands are abroad; or when, from sickness, the head of the family is out of work, many of them have no resource but to ask alms in the streets; that class is forced to do so from the inadequate allowance the parishes can make them, partly arising from their not being parishioners, and arising also from the circumstance of the small sum the parishes can afford to allow, which seldom exceeds the weekly sum required for a miserable lodging. The next class, I am sorry to say, are persons, and they are pretty numerous, who have allowances from Greenwich Hospital, or who are Chelsea pensioners; they carry on the trade of begging to a pretty considerable extent. Strangers wander up to town, of which there are a great number, in search of work, with their families, and are disappointed, in consequence of the scarcity of labour, from the supply being greater than the demand; which has been evident to me, and very much so, from attending the very unpleasant duty of appeals against parish rates, and that discloses very often a great number of people out of employ: a number of those who have been wandering up, as well as those stationary in town, do obtain some subsistence, I apprehend, from begging. Those are all the different classes which occur to me at present."

Mr Davis, the agent by whom all persons taken up as beggars and vagrants in London and Middlesex, and passed to other counties, are conveyed, speaking of the difficulty of keeping them from running away, says,— "But the girls that come up with the soldiers are the worst we have; down at Woolwich or at Greenwich, sometimes I have a whole coach-load brought up at a time, some going one way, some another; if it is possible to get away, they will. Some of them say, We must go out of your district, but we will not promise to go all the way home."

The Edinburgh Society, also, for the suppression of beggars, say, in their first Report,

"The widows, where not charity work-house cases, were generally found burdened with families, frequently the widows of soldiers killed in battle. The married women were either old, or with families, their husbands being labourers out of employment, or soldiers abroad, many of whom had once enjoyed the county allowance as militiamen's wives, but who had been deprived of that resource in consequence of their husbands having volunteered into regiments of the line. There seems some reason to apprehend that the allowance to the wives and families of militiamen is gradually eradicating that pride which, with the lower ranks in this country, made parish

Beggar. support disgraceful, and the resource only of the utterly helpless and friendless."

We shall not lengthen this article by pointing out, because they are obvious to all, the circumstances attached to soldiering, by which it necessarily becomes a great source of beggary. These instances are sufficient to prove the impression which has been made by the facts upon the minds of those who have been situated most favourably for observing them.

The next circumstance which is stated by the witnesses before the Committee as a cause of multiplying beggars, is the state lottery. It is adduced by more of the witnesses than one, but we must remain satisfied with a specimen. Mr Wakefield was asked, "You have mentioned the lottery, as the second cause; have you any facts to state, justifying that opinion?—I beg to state a very strong instance of an apparently industrious man, who applied to the committee of the Spitalfields Soup Society for relief; he was told, that his appearance did not indicate want; and his mode of living was asked. He said he was a "Translator;" which is a business of buying old shoes and boots, and translating them into wearable ones. Inquiry was then made, if he had such a business, why he should then apply for relief; and he answered, as a matter of course, that the lottery was drawing, or about to draw. "Why, how can that affect your business?"—"I have no sale for boots or shoes during the time that the lottery draws." Inquiry was then made as to the truth of the statement, and it was found to be the case, and that he was an industrious and respectable man; and that it was only on account of the loss of his trade that he was brought into that distress.

"How long ago was that?—Two or three years ago; the money went, of course, either in the purchase of tickets, or the payment of insurances in the lottery."

Almost all the witnesses who deliver any opinion upon the causes of mendicity, mention the use of intoxicating liquors as one of the greatest. It is needless, we conceive, to adduce the testimony of any individual in this case. The only mistake, of which there is any danger, in respect to this cause, is the ascribing to it more effects than it produces. Though mischievous, in proportion to the quantity, by every drop that is consumed, it will account for but a small portion of the mischief which we behold.

Local demands for temporary labour often affect the poor very unfavourably. A passage already quoted from the evidence of Mr Gurney, shows in what manner a great number of persons crowding to the vicinity of London in the hay season, are driven or seduced into habits of beggary.

One cause of beggary may here be mentioned, which has not attracted all the attention which it deserves. That is, the mode in which we allow certain classes of the people to pay themselves by a sort of begging. In these unhappy circumstances we allow post-boys, stage-coachmen, and various other classes to be placed. One sort of begging is nearly allied to another. Of the same tendency is the practice by which servants take, and by their

well known expectations beg, gratuities from their master's guests. All these are degrading practices, which bring down the mind to the mendicant level. We have no doubt whatsoever, that, of this sort of people, a greater proportion than of others, recruit the ranks of mendicity. Beggar.

Almost all the witnesses represent the want of education, as standing high in the list of the causes of mendicity. Some of them who had used the greatest range of observation, spoke of this cause with extraordinary emphasis; and of the powerful effects of schooling, as giving that sense of honour to the people, which makes them willing rather to die than to beg. We shall not enlarge upon this cause, which would afford materials for a volume. It is enough, in this place, to mark the importance which the mere outward observation of practical men has drawn them to attach to it.

The poor laws stand branded by the witnesses as perhaps the most prolific of all the causes of beggary. The object of the poor laws is the very reverse. They are, by this account, the greatest cause of that which they were contrived to prevent. By making a sure provision for every body reduced to want, all motive for begging was expected to be taken away. The legislator looked only to one thing; where he had a great many things to which he ought to have looked.

Mr John Stafford, the chief clerk of the Police-office in Bow-street, said,—"I think it might prevent a considerable number of persons becoming beggars, if there was greater facility given to the magistrates to compel parish-officers to relieve poor persons who are in want, and unable to work or provide for themselves; for, as the law stands now, if a poor person comes to the magistrate to complain that he is in a state of distress, and does not know what to do to obtain relief, that person must apply to two overseers of the poor, who may refuse relief. The magistrate must then summon the two overseers to appear before him; and it is not until after they appear, or have made default, that he is enabled to make any order upon the parish-officers to relieve those persons; so that, in cases where the parish-officers are from home, or when they live at any distance, it requires frequently a day or two before a return to the summons can be procured; then, unless anything can be done in the meantime, the paupers have no means of obtaining relief, but by soliciting charity."

Sir Nathaniel Conant, the magistrate, describes the same evil in nearly the same words. Respecting the beggars produced by this cause he was asked,—"Do you think they constitute a large proportion of the beggars in London?—I cannot state that; there are a great many, almost all the persons not actually known in a parish, who have occasion to apply for parish relief, apply in their last extremity. They are shifted about from post to pillar for two or three days, before they can obtain relief. They beg at the corner of a street; they are taken up by the watchman; and when they are found to belong to a parish, they are let out, instead of being taken to the overseers. I conceive a good many of those who run after the passengers are in that situation. I con-

Beggar. ceive that, if they could go to the parish-officers at the moment of casualty, they would not be in the streets.

On this head, however, the information afforded by Mr Martin is the most important. It appeared by the Inquiry, of which he was the principal organ, into the State of Mendicity in the Metropolis, that about one half of the beggars in the metropolis in reality belonged to the parishes in the metropolis, and were there entitled to relief. This is most assuredly, in the account of English mendicity, a very extraordinary fact. It is worth while to give the proportions, as they exhibited themselves upon this inquiry:

CLASS I. PAROCHIAL INDIVIDUALS.

CLASS II. NON-PAROCHIAL INDIVIDUALS.

Mr Martin observes, "It may appear extraordinary, that the parochial poor should be found to furnish above one half of the general mass of beggars in the metropolis. There are, however, two causes particularly affecting the parochial poor, which have doubtless contributed to reduce many of them to a state of beggary; viz.

"1. The practice, generally prevailing in the metropolis, of refusing relief to paupers out of the work-house; and,

"2. The want of a provision by law, to direct, in particular cases, adequate relief to parochial poor, not resident within the limits of their legal settlements."

It was observed to him, "If it be real distress and not imposture, it should appear that the proper place to apply for relief would be the place of their own settlement?—It is astonishing how ignorant the poor people are. A great many live in a contiguous parish to that to which they are chargeable, then they are afraid of the law which directs they should be either imprisoned or whipped, or removed home, in case they apply for relief; and some, who have been in better conditions in life, are very delicate in making their distresses known at all.

"Have you ascertained that?—Yes; even when I have written, I have frequently found the testimony in some degree corroborated I have received before; there may have been a variation in a few circumstances, but the general statement has been often true in those cases with which the committee

would be most surprised. A woman mentioned a great deal of property abroad (I think in one of the West India Islands) some time ago; I found there was ground for a great part of what she said, but not the whole.

"You think those persons did not know where to apply, till you informed them?—In many instances they did not know how to apply, or they have been so intimidated by the letter of the law they were afraid.

"Do you think a large proportion of those who applied, became beggars and applied for relief to you, because they did not choose to go to their parish?—I think there were some, but their motives for that were very various; in many cases it was entirely timidity.

"You have mentioned in your printed letter of 1811, as one of the causes for beggary, the want of a provision by law to direct, in particular cases, adequate relief to parochial poor not resident within the limits of their legal settlement; what do you mean by that?—I mean, that supposing there is a man belonging to Liverpool who is a coachmaker's smith for instance, or in some employ in London, and that he falls into temporary distress by sickness; the distress of that family is enhanced, and often goes to the excess of making the wife pawn even the working tools of her husband; if they could immediately go to any magistrate, and claim the necessary relief, to be afterwards refunded by their parish, that distress would be prevented."

To Mr Colquhoun, the magistrate, it was observed, "You have given it as your opinion, in your Treatise on Indigence, that among the causes of vagrancy is the hardship and dread of removals?—I look upon the removal as one of the greatest evils attaching to the pauper system; if that could be done away by legislative regulation, so as to let the burthen fall equally upon the country at large, that would do more to reduce the rates than any thing else: it is a lamentable thing. I know in the year 1800, that in Braintree and Bocking in Essex, although the average of the whole country was not above 5s. 6d. in the pound, they paid actually 40s. in the pound for poor rates, which amounted nearly to a disinheritance of property, in the hands, perhaps, since William the Conqueror, of some of the proprietors; and I know of property which would let for £200 a year in any other part of the country, letting for £20: And I remember another instance, of a person who had established a nursery; he was rated for that nursery £70 a year; it had cost him £800; and the question with him was, whether it would not be better to abandon it than sustain the burthen. Wherever you see in England the finest surface of country, such as Hertfordshire, and all the southern counties, there you have the greatest portion of poverty: In Sussex, by the last returns, it was 25 in the hundred, that was, a fourth part of the population; in Cumberland, five; in Lancashire, where we should expect more poor than any other, from the fluctuation of labour, 17.

"Do you conceive, that the system of removals at once adds considerably to the expence of the rates, and is a great grievance to the morals of the poor?

Beggar. — That it degrades the poor to a very great degree is certain; and that it adds to the rates, but mostly in the metropolis. The managers of the poor are very willing, thinking to get rid of them in a short time, to maintain them, rather than send them to a remote quarter; if it is within 20 or 30 miles, they will remove them, but if it is 200 miles off they do not go to the expence.

“Then they must have the paupers perpetually upon them?—They are in hopes of soon getting rid of them; they often go into the house from the sickness of the head of the family, or from various casualties; they are in hopes things may come round.”

Of the existing system of extraordinary laws concerning the poor in England, that part which relates to the whipping and imprisoning of persons found soliciting alms, is represented by the witnesses as one of the grand sources of evil; because it is a law which the present state of humanity will not allow, in ordinary cases, to be executed. The whipping is regularly and totally disused. The putting a wretched being into an English prison is not a way to elevate his mind, and place him above the base thoughts of beggary. It is likely to make him more regardless of all moral, very often of all legal restraints; and where he went in a beggar, to come out a thief. Upon the atrocious cruelty of driving a wretched creature to beggary, in the way explained above, by refusing prompt assistance, and then whipping or imprisoning for an act of such necessity, no comment is required.

Into the mischievous tendency of the principle upon which the system of the English poor laws is built, holding out a premium for worthlessness, and for that excessive multiplication of the people, to which a state of general wretchedness is attached, we shall not at present enter. It will come to be considered, where THE POOR, and the policy regarding them, become the subjects of discussion. What, in this place, chiefly calls for attention, is the course of procedure and detail, in the hands of the parish officers; not as a system of waste and of oppression upon the contribution, nor as a system of tyranny and vexation to the paupers, but as a mode of making beggars. This they do, by their modes both of giving and withholding relief. They give it under such circumstances as to make people fly from it to beggary; they withhold it in such a manner as both to compel and seduce them into beggary. Mr Gurney was asked,—“What is the police establishment of your parish?—We have four beadles and six constables, besides special constables occasionally; but there is a great terror and alarm on the minds of the parish officers of all the parishes, lest the work-house should be overstocked, and lest the parish should be burthened; and, as long as persons get their livelihood without looking to them, though it is by pilfering, unless they actually know that they are pilfering, they take no notice. I have often thought that if many of our poor laws were imperative, instead of permissive, it would be useful; and I am afraid many of the parish officers are ignorant of their duty, as well as the beadles and constables.

“Do you know whether persons confined in the work-houses, and relieved there, are ever let out of

those work-houses for the purpose of begging, in the course of the day?—They go out on the Sunday generally, and I believe many of them beg, indeed I am pretty sure of it.” Beggar.

As a cause of beggary, it is necessary here to mention early and improvident marriages, and all those other proceedings which tend to increase procreation beyond the measure of subsistence, and thus to keep the great mass of the people sunk near to the level of mendicity,—a proximity from which, by the slightest accident, many of them are continually falling down to it altogether. That this is the grand medium through which beggary is produced, it is needless to offer any proof. The mode in which the principle of population, when injudiciously encouraged, instead of being wisely restrained, operates to the degradation of the people, has been already, in part, explained; and it will be still farther elucidated in a subsequent article of this work.

Among the causes of beggary in England, one may be regarded as pretty remarkable, that is, Ireland. Ireland is one of the greatest of all the causes of beggary in England. Considerably more than one-third of all the beggars in the metropolis appear to be Irish. Of all human beings in any part of the globe, the mass of the Irish appear to be in the most deplorable circumstances, whether their moral or physical situation be considered; and that under a government regarded as the best in the world. The art of making governments efficient to the purposes of government is, therefore, still but imperfectly understood.

Some of the witnesses, Mr Colquhoun in particular, bring forward a very important subject. They give the state of the criminal laws as one of the chief among the causes of mendicity.—“About 5000 individuals,” he says, “are vomited out of the jails, without character. These people come on society, without any asylum provided for them. If such an asylum could be established, I think, in a very short time, it would relieve the town of a great many of the beggars.” The operation of the penal laws upon the moral state of the people is a field of inquiry far too extensive to be introduced into the present article. That an ill-conceived system of correction for offences may degrade the minds of a people, destroy their sensibility to moral considerations, render many of them incapable of that self-esteem, on which the abhorrence of becoming a beggar is founded, nobody can help perceiving. That a great part of the British system of penal law is infected with this tendency, has long been the complaint of discerning and philosophic minds. The public is not a little indebted to the popular writings of Mr Colquhoun, for the degree of attention from men in power which it cannot long be hindered from receiving. Another place in this work will be found for giving to the subject that degree of elucidation which it so highly deserves.

Of all the causes of beggary, war may undoubtedly be assumed as one of the most extraordinary. We have already seen in what manner the people converted by it into soldiers swell the ranks of mendicity; but this is only a small part of the deplorable effects. It brings the condition of the whole of the

Beggar. labouring mass down nearer to the mendicant level; and, of course, a new and additional portion down to it altogether. This it does by the consumption which it produces. Exactly in proportion as money is spent upon war, exactly in that proportion is the means of employing labour, that is, of buoying up the condition of the people, destroyed; exactly in that proportion must the people, ceteris paribus, sink. These are conclusions which may be regarded as scientific, and which will never be called in dispute except by those who are ignorant of the subject. It is not impossible for war to be accidentally accompanied with circumstances which counterbalance this tendency, even in respect to wealth; but this is exceedingly rare. The great men very often gain by war: the little almost always lose.

There is one other cause of mendicity, which it is incumbent to mention, because it really includes all the rest; but it can be very little more than mentioned, as it is far too extensive for elucidation in this place. This cause is legislation,—bad legislation. An argument, which, though it is too general deeply to impress a mind unaccustomed to generalize, is in fact almost demonstrative, may be given in a few words. Perfect legislation, a legislation capable of turning to the best possible account the command which in this world man possesses over the good things of life, would so conduct society, that, as there would be scarcely any individual who would not, by his moral qualities, deserve, so there would be not one who would be left without the means of corporeal well-being. If this proposition be correct, it follows, as an unavoidable consequence, that every beggar who exists is, in some way or another, the effect and consequence of bad laws. Exactly in proportion as we can make our laws do more of that which all laws ought to do, we shall diminish the number of those who approach the level of mendicity; and at last dry up every source from which it springs. And in the meantime, exactly in proportion as a greater number of the mass of any people are either at, or approach to, the level of mendicity, in that proportion infallibly may the laws be pronounced to be bad.

Effects of Mendicity. 9. We have now stated what the present occasion appears to require, on the subject of the causes of mendicity. We proceed to the effects, which, being a much less complicated subject, will be much more quickly dispatched.

The effects may be considered as bad, first, in respect to the beggar himself; next, in respect to the community.

With respect to the beggar himself, they are bad exactly in so far as he is less happy in that state, than he would have been in any other in which it is in his power to place himself. If it was not in his power to have placed himself in a situation above suffering to a greater degree for want of the means of well-being, he suffers nothing bodily; perhaps he even gains, if the bodily pains of begging are less than those of the labour to which he would have been doomed. He may suffer in his mind, by the sense of degradation. But when that ceases to be an object, this pain is at an end. In as far as he is

likely to be more intemperate as a beggar, he injures his health, and destroys the pleasures of sympathy. And in as far as he is less religious than he would otherwise have been, he is a loser in respect to the hopes which religion bestows.

If he has fallen to beggary, by his misconduct, from a superior state, in which he would have enjoyed more happiness; of this loss, whatever it is, beggary is not the cause, but the previous misconduct. The question is not, what he would have been, had he not lost what he has lost by misconduct, but what, having made that loss, he can now do that would make him happier than begging. If a mind is well educated, and its sensibility to moral considerations acute, almost anything would render it happier than begging. If it is in the brutal state of an uneducated mind,—a mind which has never had its moral sensibility sharpened, few things would render it happier than did not afford it in greater plenty the means of sensual indulgence and ease.

These, such as these, are the considerations by which we should endeavour to estimate the loss of happiness which beggary produces to the generality of beggars themselves.

Let us next endeavour to estimate what is lost through it by the community to which the beggar belongs.

There is, first, the loss of his labour, provided he was able to work. He consumes without producing. In this particular he is equally mischievous with every useless soldier, every useless functionary of the state, and not more. Not so much, indeed, as often as their consumption is greater than his.

If the beggar is unable to work, the public, in a pecuniary sense, loses nothing by his beggary, because, it being not proposed to let him die of hunger, he would have been maintained in all events.

What remains, exclusive of moral effects, is only the annoyance which is given to the people at large by the solicitations of beggars; by conveying to them disagreeable impressions through their eyes and their ears. We shall not reckon this for absolutely nothing. But sure we are, that all the amount of pain which in a year is produced in this country by that cause is very inconsiderable. There are exhibitions of sores and filth, and a degree of importunity which we can conceive amounting to a pretty serious nuisance. But these things, we see, it is very easy to prevent.

We come now to the moral effects produced by beggary, which, except in regard to the beggars themselves, in which respect they have been considered already, consist entirely in example; in the tendency which the immorality of beggars has to produce imitation.

But it is the privilege of beggars that their vices are not contagious. The vices of the great infect the whole community. The vices of beggars infect nobody but themselves.

We do not think it necessary to pursue this subject. The evidence appears to be satisfactory, that beggary, when considered as a cause of evil, turns out to be a cause of no great importance. Of the inconveniences sustained by the nation, a very

small portion can be traced to beggary. For even the loss of labour, which is the main article, is very inconsiderable, as the number of able-bodied mendicants is very small, compared with that of the very young, the very old, the mutilated, and diseased.

In the case of beggary, as of many other results in an imperfect state of the social union, the disapprobation and hatred of the mind are very apt to be misplaced. We abhor beggary, but it is the causes out of which beggary springs, and from which, along with begging, infinite other evils arise, that deserve almost all our abhorrence.

10. We come now to consider the remedies which may be applied to the disease of beggary; the facienda, in short, the things to be done for its removal.

The first and most natural course would be to go to the list of causes; the excess of multiplication, and consequent poverty of the mass of the people; the want of education; the poor laws; the criminal code; wars; and in one word including the whole, bad legislation. Take away the causes, and the effect immediately disappears.

As among the causes of beggary, however, there are some, and these among the most powerful, which cannot be easily or speedily removed, it remains to inquire what, in the meantime, can be done to check their operation.

The first question is, what can be done by the operation of the existing laws.

The following testimony was given by Sir Nathaniel Conant:

"You think if there was a strict execution of the laws now in force, the streets might be cleared of the beggars?—Certainly.

"In what way would they then be disposed of under the existing law?—If they were taken in the act of begging in an individual parish, they must be sent into the Bridewell for seven days at least; then a pass must be made to the place of their last settlement; if that is not found by the examination of the Justice to his satisfaction, he sends them into the place of their last residence, the place where they were taken; that parish is to fight against them as well as it can, that is, by bribery, if it can be called so, by giving them relief and letting them slip out of doors.

"What becomes of them then?—Then they begin again; the existing law will clear them, but it is only for a day.

"Then the laws, as at present constituted, are not sufficient for clearing the streets?—My answer to that would be, that the nature of such a town as this is such, that they cannot be cleared in those intervals which occur between the application and the relief given; there will be distress and hunger, which will drive the paupers to mendicity.

"Then, if they are passed to a parish near to London, they may be engaged in begging again in eight and forty hours?—Yes, in less than that; and where they are passed to distant parishes, there are perhaps only two or three farms; the occupiers of those farms are very unfit to have the care of such persons, perhaps, from their age or their sex, and very unwilling to have such pensioners.

"Can you suggest any alteration of the law, which would have the effect of clearing the streets?—I think that might be effected by a strict execution of the existing laws; but that would introduce such a degree of severity as to a considerable part, not perhaps half, that it would be quite as great as the laceration of the mind of the passenger on seeing such objects.

"The question refers to the case of persons returning to their parishes, and then beginning begging again?—The nature of the legislation of England is, that it always goes upon the idea of the whole, and not of a crowded metropolis; and it supposes the profligacy or industry of each individual to be known.

"You were understood to state, that when a person was taken up, he was sent to Bridewell for seven days, then passed to his parish, and that, if that parish was in London, he then returned to a state of mendicity. Can you suggest any alteration which would prevent the beggar who had been in Bridewell, and who had been passed to his parish, returning to a state of mendicity?—Parliament might compel the parish to maintain them until they are enabled to obtain their own livelihood, according to their age, or strength, or sex; but nothing less than that would do, for the person goes out without clothing sufficient for a decent occupation."

Sir Nathaniel had stated, that he did not give orders for taking up the beggars with all the strictness of the law, and gave the following as his reasons:—"That if I did give those orders this morning, I should have those that are impostors all run away into the next street, only so to elude the people to whom I gave the directions; and I should have blind and imbecile creatures, who had no claim at all upon the justice of the parish in which they happen to be taken, though that parish would, in the first instance, be made liable to them, if I passed them into that parish after sending them to prison for a week, which the Act of Parliament necessarily includes; for no pass can be made till they have been in prison a week. If they were passed into that parish, the parish-officers would, in their policy, and in justice to their neighbours, say, "Why do you come here? you come here as a beggar, and have been punished; here is a shilling, go about your business, and get yourself conditioned in some other place." They would walk down below the Tower, and beg there for another week, and then get up again into Westminster, and continue the practice of begging, having no settlement perhaps.

"Supposing the magistrates were to follow the letter of the law, might not they be all removed from the neighbourhood of the metropolis?—I think they might; I think the practice established at Edinburgh might be practised here, but with dreadful cruelty to two-thirds of the persons subjected to that mode of subsistence. In Edinburgh, they act with extreme severity to every person found in a state of mendicity."

Sir D. Williams gave the following testimony:—"Do you take any steps, through the medium of your officers, to take up beggars?—We have given instructions generally to take up all beggars; and it

Beggar. has been done also by several parishes in the neighbourhood, who have directed their beadles to take them into custody.

"Is it your opinion, that if the same mode was pursued by the other magistrates in different districts, that many beggars would be prevented from pursuing that course of life?—There can be no doubt of it.

"You consider the present laws sufficiently strong, if those laws were put in force?—No doubt.

"And that if the magistrates were to put the law into force as it now exists, public begging might be prevented?—There can be no doubt of it.

"You consider that the laws might be so far put in force, as to clear the streets of beggars; have the goodness to state to the committee the process which takes place with the beggars found in your district?—Any person has a right to capture a beggar in the act of begging; he is to take him before a magistrate; the magistrate, by the confession of the party himself, or the oath of another party, is bound to pronounce him a rogue and vagabond, and send him to the House of Correction for the county of Middlesex; there he remains seven days, and is passed by the pass-master of the county to the next parish leading to his settlement, and so forward till he arrives at the place of settlement; and for which the person capturing the mendicant is allowed by law 5s.; there is a premium for it.

"Supposing the parish to which he actually belongs remains within your district, or is that in which he is found begging; there is nothing to prevent him, on his return, resuming the same practice of begging?—The law will prevent that, by sentencing him as an incorrigible rogue, to six months imprisonment, if he has been pronounced a rogue and vagabond under the first charge.

"Are those steps frequently taken by you?—They are brought before the Court, and the Court judges them to a further imprisonment.

"How long do they remain there?—Seven days in the first instance, and six months in the second."

Patrick Colquhoun, Esq. to whom, primarily, his Country is indebted for all the knowledge it has recently gained, and all the improvement it has made in Police, delivered the following testimony:—"Of late it is inconceivable the number that have received passes from the magistrates to go to their different parishes; which we give now, though directly in opposition to the Act of 1792, which requires they should be previously whipped or imprisoned a certain number of days, and then passed as vagrants to their parishes; that Act has been found impracticable. It arose from the Lord Mayor and the magistrates giving innumerable passes, of which I am afraid many make the very worst use; but we are very glad to get them out of the town, that they may be subsisted in the quarters to which they belong, or where they have friends; in that way we are relieved of a very considerable number, who must otherwise beg in the streets.

"Do you conceive that the laws as they at present exist relative to beggars, if put into due and strict execution by all the magistrates in London and its vicinity, would be sufficient to clear the streets of beggars?—I do not indeed; there have been at-

tempts made at different times, and they have all failed. I think the Act of 17th Geo. II. totally inadequate to the purpose; it is loosely worded; it is not at all adapted to the present state of society; and that Act ought to be revised from the beginning, and adapted to the present state of society.

"Do you mean individual and separate attempts?—I mean to say various attempts have been made, by taking up the beggars; the expence is enormous on the county rate. I believe at one time there was more than L. 100 paid to the office I belong to, in the course of the sessions.

"If all the magistrates were to unite, the magistrates of the city of London, the magistrates of Westminster, and the magistrates of the vicinity, to put the laws in execution, do you think that would be successful?—As far as my judgment goes, if the whole were to join their efforts it would not succeed."

The beadles complain that when they take up beggars the magistrates discharge them. One of the beadles of St George's, Bloomsbury, said, "I took up a man yesterday that I observed knocking at every house, regularly, in Bloomsbury-square, two or three days ago. He was again yesterday taking every house regularly; I waited till the servant came to the door, and he then put a petition into her hand; I took the petition from him, and took him to the watch-house. I found three copies of the petition upon him. I took him to the office in Hatton Garden, and the magistrate discharged him.

"Did the magistrates examine you upon your oath?—They did; and I told them I had removed him out of Bloomsbury-square, three days before, in consequence of great complaints of the inhabitants, that those persons were suffered to be about.

"You stated upon your oath, to the magistrate, that you believed him to be a common vagrant?—Yes; he paused a quarter of an hour upon it; and he said, the prison was so full of people that he thought it not right to commit him there. He talked of sending him to the New Prison, and the clerk said it must be the House of Correction. I told him I should not object, if he thought proper to discharge him, which he did. The magistrate told me, if I saw him again, I might bring him. I could have taken four beggars up on Sunday, but if we take them down they discharge them.

"That is the practice of the magistrates?—It is. I have taken many and many down, and they have been discharged; and my brother beadles will give the same testimony."

Mr Mills, a gentleman who had been Overseer of the parish of St Giles, stated, "We used to take them to the magistrates, and take the recourse the law provided; but, in fact, the magistrates themselves would have loaded the prison, they were so numerous. In our parish there was no end to the commitments which would have taken place. I have sat with my brother officers from two o'clock in the afternoon till eight in the evening, constantly relieving those persons."

It thus, we think, sufficiently appears, that the law for the compulsive prevention of beggary cannot be executed, or, more accurately speaking, it is unfit for execution; it cannot be executed without

producing a much greater quantity of evil than it seeks to remedy; and therefore the magistrates take upon them, without scruple, to violate it, and leave it without execution.

Of the things to be done, one, then, most obviously suggested, is a review of the existing laws which relate to beggary; the repeal of all the enactments, which are ill adapted to the object in view; and the passing of other enactments which may possess the greatest practicable degree of adaptation and efficiency. Into the detail of these enactments, it is not here the intention to enter, because they must embrace the provision which is made for the destitute; the questions relating to which, we reserve for the article on the Poor.

Another of the remedial operations, importunately demanded, is to make provision immediately for the careful and efficient education of the whole mass of the population, down to the lowest individual. On the potent connection between good education, and that sort of conduct which keeps people above the level of mendicity, as well as on the mode in which education should be provided, our sentiments will be given with more propriety on another occasion.

As the tendency in population to increase faster than food, produces a greater number of individuals than can be fed,—as this is the grand parent of indigence, and the most prolific of all the sources of evil to the labouring portion of mankind, take all possible measures for preventing so rapid a multiplication; and let no mere prejudice, whether religious or political, restrain your hands in so beneficent and meritorious an undertaking. It would be easy to offer suggestions on this head, if we were not entirely precluded from going into detail. It is abundantly evident, in the meantime, that indirect methods can alone avail; the passions to be combatted cannot be destroyed; nor, to the production of effects of any considerable magnitude, resisted. With a little ingenuity they may, however, be eluded, and, instead of spending themselves in hurtful, made to spend themselves in harmless channels. This is the business of skilful legislation to effect.

In cutting off other causes, cut off Ireland; we do not mean literally; but what we mean is, that the mode of governing Ireland should be so reformed, as to make it able to send to England something better than a mass of beggars nearly equal to all her own.

Make a law to prohibit all modes of paying the people, which have an affinity with yielding to the cravings of a beggar.

Take all proper methods of rendering universal and preserving alive that exquisite moral sensibility, which is possessed by so great a portion of your population, and makes them willing to die of hunger rather than beg.

Provide a proper asylum for rearing to virtue the children of beggars; and let no person who begs be allowed, on any terms, to retain power over a single child; that, at any rate, you may prevent any portion of the young from being reared to beggary. This is an easy, obvious, and most important part of a good plan for lessening or extinguishing the evil of beggary.

Reform your criminal code; and cease to deal with offences in such a fashion, as to make the indigence of your people greater, and the virtues less, than they would otherwise be.

Under the head of improvement in the criminal law, it may be fittest to speak of that indispensable instrument for the cure of beggary,—a system of Reformatories, or houses in which bad habits may be eradicated and good acquired. On this point, some of the witnesses, whose testimony is entitled to the greatest respect, used a language unusually strong. The chaplain to Bridewell Hospital said, "I have long thought, seeing so much misery as I have done, that, as to remedy, very little could be done, unless you deprive the beggars of the pretext of begging; that that could be only by a large penitentiary system.

"Has it occurred to your mind, that there could be a Penitentiary large enough to include all those persons?—I have not proposed one for the whole town, but four or five at different parts of the town.

"Did you propose this for persons having settlements in the country, and others?—Yes; that every person knocking at the door might have admission, and that no person should have a pretext for begging in the streets. If a committee was sitting at either of those Penitentiaries, and work was going on at them, that would relieve from part of the expence; the great advantage that appears to my mind is, the investigation of each case. I do not know any place in town where that can be done. I have frequently thought, that unless there could be such a system as that to which I have alluded, the clearing of the town is hopeless: The great mass of misery which floats in this metropolis, I am fearful can never be removed, unless there is such a penitentiary system as that to which I have alluded: the two societies established for the reception of such persons are far too confined.

"If one, two, or three large ships could be fitted up with good accommodation, do you think such places could be substituted for penitentiary houses, till the parties were disposed of?—I never but once saw any thing of the kind, and that was at Sheerness some years ago, when I think the sailors' wives lived in two large hulks drawn up on shore; but there appeared to be so much misery and wretchedness, and they were so close and confined, that I did not form a favourable opinion of it.

"The question supposes the ships to be fitted up in an airy manner, with convenient apartments, that would receive nearly as many, at little or no expence to the public, as the Penitentiary House now building at a very great expence?—The penitentiary houses, as proposed by me, would include workshops and rope-walks, and so on."

Mr Colquhoun was asked,—"Do you think there could be any law devised by which there could be a possibility of furnishing relief to that class of persons who may be properly called beggars, by which they could be removed out of the streets?—I think it is perfectly possible to lessen the evil in a very considerable degree, but it must be by legislative regulation, and at pretty considerable expence. The situation of this town, to which so many wander up, is such that there must be an asylum for beggars,

Beggar. with a species of work-house, or what I would call a Village of Industry, that would apply to all. That struck me so strongly in the year 1792, that I wrote a paper on the subject; and I believe if the war had not broken out, it would have taken place. About 5000 are vomited out of the jails, without character; those people coming on society, it would have been a most desirable thing to have had an Asylum for them; but it was so gigantic a thing, that that prevented its being carried into effect. If such an Asylum could be established, I think in a very short time it would relieve the town of a great many of the beggars; but the magistrates must necessarily have some place to send them to.

"The Committee have been informed, that, within these few weeks, as is customary at this season of the year, there have entered London about 5000 persons of the labouring class, probably many of the mendicant class?—I cannot speak to the number; but I have no doubt of it.

"Would your plan of an Asylum go to the relieving those persons?—It would go to the relieving all persons who are mendicants, or had lost their character, by being committed for petty offences to the different prisons of the metropolis."

This, undoubtedly, is the right idea. Provide a system of Reformatories as perfect as they might easily be made, and you may accomplish every thing. Deprive yourselves of this important instrument, and you can do but little to any good purpose. A more appropriate place for describing this measure in detail, will occur more than once hereafter. We know, however, only one good plan, and that is before the world already, in Mr Bentham's Panopticon. Apply this, with the system of management which he has contrived for it, and if you do not extinguish the evil of pauperism, in all its degrees, you will undoubtedly reduce it to its lowest terms.

In the testimony given by the chaplain of Bridewell, as we have seen in the preceding quotation, he mentions, "the investigation of each particular case of beggary," as an advantage of the highest possible kind.

Mr Butterworth said,—"I conceive that no plan of relieving the poor is so effectual as that of visiting them at their own habitations; and even then, inquiry must be made of their neighbours, to know their real characters, as persons in the habit of begging are adepts in the art of imposition."

Mr Cooper was asked,—"In what way do you think poor families may be mostly benefited by the exercise of benevolence?—I know of no way more efficient than that of their being visited and relieved at their own habitations; and, in fact, as far as my observation and experience go, there is no certainty whatever of any donation being properly applied, without investigating the circumstances at their own habitations."

We deem these testimonies of great importance; as we are convinced, that what is here recommended, a distinct investigation of each individual case, rendered co-extensive with the population, would be attended with innumerable advantages.

To render this investigation practicable, without

enormous trouble, and, indeed, to render it possible with any tolerable degree of exactness, another and a most important operation is required, subservient to an infinite number of good purposes; and that is, a proper system of registration. The whole country should be divided into sections, containing each a moderate number of inhabitants; the names, residences, and descriptions of the inhabitants of each section should be entered in a public record; and means employed (as much as could be without incurring any serious inconvenience of a different sort) for placing the people of each under the full inspection of one another. How important a check this would be on improper conduct of every sort is intuitively manifest. How easy, too, it would render the business of visitation, and what perfect knowledge it would afford of the circumstances of each individual case, it is impossible to overlook.

The importance of registration was not unknown to some of the witnesses before the Mendicity Committee. Sir N. Conant observed,—"In a town like this, where no creature knows the inhabitant of the next house hardly, or their character, and especially among the poor, the overseers of parishes ready enough at all times to spare if they can, by any kind of indulgence (I was going to say) the parish purse, are always willing to put at a distance every person who applies, being entirely ignorant either of their character or of their necessity. Until they are forced to take them in, and give them relief, they seldom do, unless they know them, and they know very few of the inhabitants even of their own parish, in the very nature of the thing; this applies to any condition of life, and more especially to the poor; that introduces another class of mendicants, which are people deserving of parochial relief, in the interval before they get it. If the paupers apply to-day to the parish officer, being settled in their parish, they are not known to him; and the parish officer either says, he shall make some inquiry; or, that they look strong and hearty, and able to maintain themselves, or that their families may be imposed upon them, and that he shall inquire and see, and they may work."

We find Benefit Clubs, and Savings Banks, held forth as means for the preventing of beggary. But we question, whether the sort of people who apply to savings banks and benefit clubs are apt to become beggars. We see, that those among the common people, who have had any moral feelings implanted in them, will in general die rather than beg. We see also, that the having a provision already made is no security against mendicity, when the mind is worthless; because many of the Greenwich and Chelsea pensioners beg, and are among the most troublesome of all beggars. It would surely not be difficult to find a better mode of paying these pensioners, so as to afford a check upon their vices. Some way might also be found of punishing those parishes, who, when a beggar is passed to them, instantly let him out again, to prey upon the public. When a beggar appears, if it is resolved to suppress them altogether; or when he acts in any such manner as to create a nuisance, if it is only proposed to suppress what is noisome about them; it should al-

ways be easy at the moment for any passenger, or observer, to put in execution the means of taking them up. For this purpose, it would be necessary that a constable or beadle authorized for this purpose should be in every street, and his residence rendered conspicuous to all the passengers.

Under the head of remedies for the disease of beggary, it is necessary to speak of societies for the suppression of it. In the first place, it is abundantly evident, that an assemblage of private individuals have little power over the chief causes of mendicity; over wars, for example, excessive procreation, and bad legislation. They can only endeavour to counteract, by such powers as they possess, the operation of these causes. They may, indeed, contribute indirectly to the removal of the causes; namely, by holding them up in their true colours, to the legislature, and to the nation. This, it may be observed, in one of the ways in which they may effect the greatest quantity of good; may, in fact, advance with the greatest expedition to the accomplishment of their own end. With the means possessed in this country of operating upon the public mind, and the influence of the public mind upon the legislature, a society of gentlemen, rendered conspicuous by their union, and the beneficence of their proceedings, might, by representations, sufficiently persevering, and sufficiently strong, more especially if the operation was not confined to one society, but common to a number of societies, in numerous parts of the country; effect almost any improvement of which the nature of the case would admit.

The first idea of a Society of this sort, as far as we know, was started in Edinburgh, and there carried into execution in the year 1813. The sole object of this society appears to have been to try what they could do for the cure of beggary, under the existing laws. There is no evidence of their having elevated their views to the thought of operating through the public upon the legislature, and through the legislature upon the sources from which mendicity flows.

In the sphere which the Society of Edinburgh have chalked out for themselves, it is impossible for us not to bestow upon their proceedings the highest encomiums; since they have put in practice, as far as it lay within their power, the principles which we have here recommended as the groundwork of reform.

In the first place, the Visitation principle:—"The basis of the whole plan," says their Report, "was to be investigation, and personal inquiry."

Secondly, the Registration principle:—"For the sake of facilitating the task of making such inquiries," continues the Report, "and the labour of superintending the poor, as the only means of preventing fraud and imposture, it was necessary to divide the city into separate wards or districts." From the want of legislative powers, however, it is abundantly evident, that they could perform the work of registration very imperfectly; were obliged, in fact, to content themselves with the registration of those persons exclusively who applied to them for relief; and instead of placing them effectually under the

superintendence of the district itself, to take the labour of superintendence wholly upon themselves. If the business of registration, thus imperfectly performed, is yet an important instrument, how much would that importance be increased, if it were performed completely by legislative regulation.

Thirdly, the Reformatory, or Employment principle: The society is divided into four committees, of one of whom the business is to find employment for those of the applicants who are able to labour. It is evident under what prodigious disadvantages they carry on this part of their beneficent work. To perform it with any degree of completeness, a great establishment, such as those which have been called penitentiaries, houses of industry, reformatories, or panopticons, is required; an establishment in which different species of work may be carried on with all the accommodations which belong to them; in which the parties may work under the most complete superintendence; and in which they may be as completely as possible exposed to the operation of all the salutary motives which can be brought to bear upon them.

Fourthly, the Education principle: The children of the beggars are clothed, and sent to a Lancastrian school; and so important is this part of the business of the society accounted, that one of the four committees is wholly employed in conducting it.

What the Society professes is, to provide subsistence for all those who really are deprived of it, and of the means of providing it for themselves; and upon the strength of this undertaking the police of the city prohibit begging, by imprisoning and removing the beggars.

The only question which applies to this expedient regards the power of the Society to accomplish all which they undertake. If they can make provision for all who really and truly are in want; to prohibit begging is then to prohibit imposture, and can produce nothing but good. And if, along with this, they are able to make the distinction completely between those who are and those who are not able to provide for themselves; and to draw the benefit of labour from all who are capable of it; as far as there is any evil in mere begging, beyond the evil of being reduced to the begging condition, which is the principal, it is removed. It is not absolutely impossible that such an expedient as that of the Edinburgh Society, at one particular place, and one particular time; namely, when taken up with extraordinary ardour, owing to some particular concurrence of circumstances,—as in Edinburgh at the era of a new System of Police; or to the ardour of one or more individuals of sufficient influence to set a fashion, may, to a considerable degree, succeed. But it is abundantly certain, that it is not calculated for general or permanent use. How could it be applied to London, for example?—Besides; a great national benefit can never rest with safety on any thing so precarious, as the chance of extraordinary virtue in particular men. (F.R.)

Bejaipur. BEJAPOUR. The great peninsula of India is divided into several extensive kingdoms, which are partitioned into subordinate states of different denominations. Some were powerful sovereignties, enjoying a distinguished rank in the scale of nations, and subsisting during many centuries in splendour, as the empire of the Moguls; while others, as the Mysore, constituting the dominions of Hyder Ali, and his son Tipu Saib, were of more recent formation, and owed their aggrandizement to the weakness of their neighbours. Bejaipur is a large province in that part of India called the Deccan, extending from the 15th to the 19th degree of north latitude, and intersected by the 75th degree of east longitude, passing nearly through its centre. It is calculated to be 350 miles in length, by at least 200 in breadth, and thus is about equivalent to England in size. This province is bounded on the north and east by the provinces of Arungabad and Beeder, on the south by North Canara and the river Toombudra, and on the west by the sea. The western coast, for the space of 200 miles, is denominated Concan, forming a subordinate district, which has been long noted for the piracy of its inhabitants, who find secure retreats in the numerous bays and inlets on the shore, and a ready market for their plunder.

Rivers. Bejaipur is watered by many fine rivers, of which the principal are the Toombudra, Krishna, Beemah, and Gutpurba. The last exhibits a tremendous cataract, perpendicularly precipitated from a rock 174 feet high; where the river, during the rains, is 507 feet wide. A great range of mountains, being the continuation of the western Ghauts, traverses the province 40 or 60 miles from the sea, through which are several passes of long and painful ascent, leading to the more level parts of the country. Their height intercepts the passage of the clouds, and numerous streams pour down from them, which, in the wet season, are swelled into irresistible torrents, spreading over the plains; but where low and smooth, they are crossed by travellers in large round baskets, covered with hides, as a substitute for boats.

Soil. The fertility of the soil is various; but except in the rocky and mountainous places it is in general sufficient to afford an ample subsistence to the inhabitants. Nevertheless, they are sometimes visited by famine, resulting as much from the injuries of warfare as the effects of climate. Provisions are both cheap and plentiful. The horses reared on the banks of the river Beemah are highly esteemed, and constitute the best cavalry of the Mahrattas, who are eminently distinguished for that kind of military force.

Population. The population of the province is calculated at 7,000,000; of which, about a twentieth part is supposed to consist of Mahometans; the great body follow the doctrines of Brahma. They affect observance of their religious customs in the utmost purity; they totally abstain from animal food, and some of them even scruple to subsist on roots. But they are said, notwithstanding, to be rather in disrepute among their own tribes in different parts of India. It is undoubted, however, that there are some devotees in the peninsula, who, far from crediting that all things are created for the use of mankind, reject every species of subsistence but

milk, that nothing more gross may form in their intestines. Cows, it is well known, are objects of veneration, and in some places, beef is never used except by certain lower tribes of Hindoos; but particular towns have the privilege of killing beef for sale. Religious prejudices are carried to such an extraordinary height in India, that the lowest ranks of those sects which pique themselves on purity, would refuse to eat with sovereigns whom they did not esteem of an origin equally pure. Widows in Bejaipur burn themselves with the bodies of their husbands, and a year never elapses without witnessing some of these horrible sacrifices; the offspring of the most barbarous principles of delusion. Bramins are found in this territory weak enough to maintain, that the ground they occupy is so sacred that it will bear only a particular species of shrub, which, in the fervour of their zeal, they have consecrated. It is likely that the Mahometan religion was much more in observance formerly than at the present date, from the number of mosques seen in various stages of decay.

There are many large towns and celebrated cities in Cities.

this province, which was once a great and independent kingdom. Of these, the principal are Bejaipur, Poonah, Satarah, Hubely, Huttany, Punderpoor, Darwar, and Meritch, for the most part populous and wealthy places. Bejaipur is a city of such immense extent, that, were we not in possession of recent observations, what has been said regarding it might be supposed altogether fabulous. It is situated on a fine plain, in a fertile country, and now rather resembles the ruins of several separate and detached towns, than the remains of a single city. Its name, in the native language, signifies impregnable; and it may be said to consist of three cities contained within each other. The exterior is encompassed by a wall many miles in circuit, fortified by capacious towers of hewn stone, at intervals of 100 yards, and secured by a ditch and rampart. The interior, or second city, which is the fort, is not less than eight miles in compass; and the third or innermost, contained in it, is the citadel or strong-hold, which is a mile in circumference. But the whole are approaching to a state of decay, although the massy materials of which they are composed will long resist the ravages of time. The natives affirm, that, when the city was in its full splendour, it contained, according to authentic records, 984,456 houses, and 1600 mosques or temples. How far the former number is exaggerated we have no means of determining; the latest visitors are of opinion that the number of mosques and temples may have been as stated. Without supporting the affirmation of the natives, we may observe, that some great cities of the east are, in fact, an assemblage of towns and villages encompassed by a common wall, and even include gardens and cultivated fields. Besides, with regard to Bejaipur, we learn, that, in the year 1689, when invested by Aurungzebe at the head of his army, 15,000 cavalry could encamp between the fort and the city wall. A mile and a half distant from this, a town, called Toorvee, has been built from part of the remains of the city, amidst magnificent piles of ruins.

The fort is approached from one side, through a

Bejapour. neat small town on the south-west. The ditch, originally a formidable obstacle, is excavated from the rock on which it stands. The curtain or wall is of great height, probably 40 feet, entirely composed of huge stones, strongly cemented together, and frequently ornamented with sculptures of lions and tigers. It is flanked by numerous great towers, built of similar materials, and some with ornaments resembling a cornice at the top. The fort has seven entrances, five of which are in use, and the other two are shut. On the south-west side it is entered by three gates, near to the innermost of which is a tank, or artificial pond, about 300 feet long, by 225 broad, environed by steps descending to the water, and surrounded by an inclosure of fine stone houses, through which it is reached by an arched passage 50 feet wide. Several distinct towns are contained within that part called the fort, with neat bazars or market-places; and there are many splendid edifices, on which all the embellishments of eastern taste and magnificence have been lavished.

Among the first which claims admiration, is a great mosque, commenced by Mahomet Adil Shah, king of Bejapour, who died in the year 1660, and continued by his successors. The main body extends 291 feet by 195, and there is a wing projecting from each end 219 feet long by 45 broad, inclosing together, with the main body, a large reservoir and a fountain. Five lofty arches spread along the whole extent of the eastern front, under the centre of which are a few steps leading up into the building. The interior is richly ornamented with passages from the Koran, with the names of God, Mahomet, or the Caliphs, in relief; the groundwork enamelled, and the letters polished or gilt. In a mausoleum, 153 feet square, the body of the Shah reposes. There are circular buildings on the external angles, which, as well as the wall, rise about 100 feet high. Its grand entrance is very lofty, and highly adorned with sculptured inscriptions, and other ornaments. This sepulchral chamber is surmounted by a great dome, whose internal diameter is 117 feet, a vault under the centre of which contains the royal remains. But the dome is much neglected, and shrubs and weeds find root in it, which must occasion premature decay. The whole is executed in a style of plain and simple grandeur.

Without the fort, in the exterior city, there is a mosque of still larger dimensions, and the mausoleum of Ibrahim, another king of Bejapour, who seems to have completed it about the year 1620. The mosque is 390 feet in length, by 156 in breadth. Fronting it, at the distance of 40 yards, is the mausoleum, 57 feet square, inclosed by two virandas, the inner 13 feet broad and 22 feet high, the outer 20 feet broad by 30 in height, supported by seven arches in each face, which are beautifully ornamented above. The sides of the chamber are sculptured in the most elaborate manner with flowers on a blue ground resembling enamel, and sacred passages, as before, in relief, cut out of a black stone, and polished as highly as a mirror. The doors are studded with gilt knobs, and the doorways are adorned with a variety of ornaments exquisitely executed. Around the southern entrance,

there is a mystical tetrastich, signifying that the cost of the edifice was equivalent to L. 700,000, and it is said that 6533 workmen were employed on it 36 years, 11 months, and 11 days. Six graves are inclosed by the sepulchral chamber, which are always covered with a fine white cloth. Above it is a cupola; and the mosque is surmounted by another immense dome, supported on arches. The whole edifice is finished with a profusion of ornaments in the highest style of embellishment. There is also in Bejapour the tomb of Aurungzeb's queen, who was mother of his favourite son, consisting simply of beautiful white marble.

This city, as we have already seen, is equally distinguished by its fortifications. Indeed, everything here appears on a gigantic scale; and among the most remarkable objects, may be enumerated some enormous cannon, said to be twelve in number, deposited in different places. Many more were originally employed in its defence. Three of these are particularly described; the first, contained in a great tower on the south-east side of the fort, is a Malabar gun composed of iron bars hooped together, and hammered smooth; its dimensions are as follows:

The second gun, which is of the same construction, and called in the language of the country the Farflyer, is contained in a lofty tower near the western side of the fort; its dimensions are,

But the third is of brass, and fixed on a great iron ring inserted in the ground, and grasping its trunnions, in the manner of a swivel. It is contained in a tower still larger than the former, on another side of the fort, and its dimensions are not inferior, though in none of the modern proportions;

This enormous gun is called Mook e Meidan, or the Sovereign of the Plains, and it would carry an iron shot of 2646 lbs. It is beautifully wrought with several ornamental devices, particularly about the muzzle, and its polish is almost equal to that of glass. Several Persian and Arabic inscriptions appear upon it in elegant characters, one of them, according to English travellers, purporting that it was cast by Aurungzeb, the famous Mogul emperor, on his conquest of

Bejapour. the city in 1689; but we observe that some eastern historians affirm that he only substituted this inscription on crazing a previous one, and that during the siege of Bejapour, the shot of Moolk e Meidan damaged the mosque and mausoleum of Ibrahim Adil Shah. This gun had a companion of equal size, called Kurke Bedjile, or Thunder and Lightning, which was carried to Poonah, and is supposed to have been melted down. Probably no European cannon of equal size are known; Mons-Meg, a celebrated gun, now in the Tower of London, whither it was removed from Edinburgh Castle, is only of 20 inches calibre, and tapers downwards.

The inner fort or citadel, though a mile in circuit, is compared to a speck in the space occupied by the outer one. It is a place of great strength, consisting of a curtain, frequent large towers, a ditch, and covert way; the whole composed of massy materials, well constructed. The ditch, which was formerly supplied with water, is in most parts 100 yards wide, but the rubbish now filling it precludes any calculation of its original depth. The citadel itself is gained through several gates; but within it is a heap of ruins; and only one edifice, a beautiful small mosque, is in complete repair. Here were the palaces of the kings; the front of one of which is formed of three arches; that in the middle 87 feet wide. It has been observed, that all the arches in the city of Bejapour are Gothic, except those in the remains of a fine black stone palace in the citadel, built by Ibrahim Shah, where they are elliptic.

These are only a few of the public edifices contained in this extensive place, situated amidst piles of ruins, which appear at the interval of miles. A minute and accurate traveller has remarked, "that none of the buildings here described, the palaces in the fort excepted, have in them any wood; they are in general constructed of the most massy stone, in so durable a style, that one is almost induced to suppose, that the rudest hand of time, unaided, could scarcely have effected such destruction, nor could it seem that such ponderous gates were reared by the hands of men. The massy materials of some, the minute exquisite workmanship, and still greater durability of others, the ingenuity of the projectors, the skill of the artists, everything, indeed, that adorns the science of architecture are here united in so many instances, that the mind can scarcely realize the grandeur and magnificence of the objects that are in every direction scattered so profusely. On the other hand, such mountains of destruction, noble even in ruins, dictate the idea, that it proceeded, not from the ordinary revolution of time and things, but that they were rent from their foundation by some violent convulsion of nature." Until very lately, the most inaccurate opinions prevailed in Europe regarding the site and extent of Bejapour, which was better known by the name of Visiapour.

Poonah, the capital of the formidable empire of the Mahrattas, also stands in this province; at a place where the rivers Moota and Moola meet, and form a united stream called Moota-moola. Unlike the former, it is an open and defenceless city, occupying a superficial area of about two miles

square, and washed on the north by the river Moota; there about 600 feet wide, but shallow in the dry season. A bridge across it was commenced some time ago by the Peshwa, or Mahratta chief; but the decease both of himself and his successor having followed, the undertaking was abandoned as displeasing to the gods. The streets here are named after mythological personages venerated by the Hindoos, adding the termination warry to their proper appellation; and the divinities, with their monstrous and grotesque appendages, are sometimes painted on the exterior of the houses. There is an ancient castle in Poonah, surrounded by lofty strong walls, with only one entrance, and protected by four round towers, wherein some members of the Peshwa's family reside; but he occupies another residence, and, not long since, he had directed a palace to be erected by British architects. The population of Poonah is estimated at 100,000 souls. Formerly, the Mahrattas, on invasion of a hostile force, did not consider the preservation of so defenceless a place of importance to their power, and they have themselves destroyed it, retiring to Poorunder, a fortress on a mountain, about 18 miles distant, where the archives are deposited, and where some of the principal officers usually reside. Its prosperity is said to have been retarded by great assemblages of people who convoke for the purpose of celebrating some religious festivals, and marking their retreat, when these are over, by indiscriminate pillage and depredation. Poonah is 98 miles from Bombay.

Punderpour is a flourishing and populous city, 86 Punder-pour. miles south-east of Poonah, situate in a fertile and pleasant country, on the river Beemah, by which it is sometimes inundated. Though not of great extent, it is regularly and well built; the streets are broad, paved, and adorned with many handsome houses, the first storey consisting of stone, and the second of red brick, which has a very agreeable effect. The Peshwa and most of the principal members of the Mahratta government have elegant mansions in Punderpour, whither they retire as a relaxation from the fatigues of business. Besides native products, many articles of European manufacture are to be obtained here, as the merchants have connections with those of Bombay.

Among other towns in the province of Bejapour, Hubely and Huttany. there are two of considerable size, called Hubely and Huttany. The appearance of the former, which is situate in a district well wooded and watered, and in a high state of cultivation, bespeaks industry and comfort. An extensive inland traffic is carried on by its inhabitants, and a commercial intercourse is conducted with the east, principally through the medium of Goa, whence, in return for sandal-wood and elephants' teeth, they receive raw silk, cotton, and woollen stuffs. The bankers, who are rich and numerous, extend their transactions to Hyderabad, Seringapatam, and Surat; and the markets are so well attended, that the streets are scarcely passable from the crowd. There are two forts here, now very defenceless, from nearly being environed by houses; but the town has frequently been an object of competition between contending

Bejapour. powers. Huttany is enclosed by a wall and ditch, and also has a fort, which is incapable of standing a siege. In the year 1679, it was taken from the Mahrattas, and the enemy proposed to sell all the inhabitants for slaves; but this was not carried into execution. It is now large and populous, carrying on a great manufacture of silk and cotton; and an extensive trade in these articles, and also in grain, with the north of India and elsewhere. The natives are celebrated for their courtesy to strangers, whom they apparently are desirous of impressing with a high opinion of their wealth.

There are many strong forts in the province, smaller, and thence more capable of protracted resistance, than those already named. Such is Darwar, or Haserabad, a place of great strength, enclosed by a wall and ditch. In the year 1790, it was besieged by the united forces of the British and Mahrattas, amounting to 40,000 men, and surrendered by capitulation, chiefly from scarcity of provisions. This fort stands in a territory called Darwar, which is particularly subject to whirlwinds, advancing in the figure of an immense column, with irregular motion, great noise, and considerable rapidity. Clouds of dust are carried up by the column, which is 20 or 30 feet in diameter at the base, to a greater height than the eye can reach. Sometimes tents are beat down in its progress; and the only dress of their inmates swept half a mile away, while a close pursuit is necessary to recover it. Satarah, a strong hill fort and tower, stands at the summit of a declivity ascending several miles, distant 16 leagues from Poonah. Its name, according to some, signifies a star, being the form in which it is built; or, according to others, 17 walls, 17 towers, and 17 gates, with which it is said to be provided. It is accessible only by a very narrow path, admitting a single person at a time. In the year 1651, it was taken from the sovereign of Bejapour by the founder of the Mahratta empire; and here the descendant of the captor is still imprisoned. It should be understood that the Peshwa who is invested with the real authority, is only the representative of the head of the Mahrattas, while the sovereign enjoys nothing but nominal power, and is kept in a situation of restraint. But the Peshwa must nevertheless be invested in office by him, and he receives some external demonstrations of authority, though deprived of liberty, and is otherwise slenderly provided for.

Bejapour is therefore a populous and flourishing province, and one which, with its capital, has held a distinguished place in history. Four-fifths of it pertain to the Mahrattas; the remainder to the Nizam. It formerly constituted an independent sovereignty, with the antiquity of which we are not acquainted, farther than that Abou al Muzaffir Eusuff Adil Shah was the founder of the Adil Shawee, one of the principal dynasties. The father of this prince, dying in the year 1450, his brother, to obviate all disputes about succession to the kingdom, directed that he should be put to death; but the Sultana his mother, having prevailed on the executioners appointed by this barbarous order to spare her innocent child a single day,

studied to devise the means of his preservation. Bejapour. She sent immediately for Khajeh Ummed ud Dien, a merchant accustomed to supply her household, inquiring how many slaves he had for sale; and finding he had five Georgian and two Circassian boys, selected one of the latter who bore the greatest resemblance to her own son. He was strangled, and brought out in a shroud, without any suspicion being excited of the deception. The Sultana then induced the merchant to hasten with the young prince to a secure retreat, out of the Mahometan dominions; and he repaired with his charge to a town in Persia. There the prince attained many accomplishments, and remained until reaching the age of eighteen, when he resolved to revisit Hindostan. He soon obtained an important appointment in one of the courts of that country; and, by a series of good fortune, ascended the throne of Bejapour in the year 1489. His reign was long and prosperous; he patronised learning; encouraged the residence of foreign artists; the kingdom flourished; and his death was deeply regretted as a misfortune by his subjects. The fourth in succession from this prince was Ibrahim Adil Shah, who, attacked by a complication of disorders, put to death the physicians unable to effect his cure; decapitating some, and trampling others under the feet of elephants, which excited such an alarm, that all the survivors fled beyond his boundaries. In the year 1665, the governor of the Deccan was directed to render himself master of Bejapour. The natives were defeated, though they had an army of 80,000 horse, their general was killed, and the survivors pursued within ten miles of the capital. Aurungzebe renewed his invasion in 1668, and besieged the city in person; but the inhabitants defended themselves with great resolution. The country had been laid waste, supplies were intercepted, and so great a body of people confined in a restricted space began to be distressed for provisions. Meantime, the hostile batteries having effected sufficient breaches, preparations were made for an assault; but the inhabitants, apprehensive of the issue, resolved to capitulate, and the king surrendered himself to the Mogul emperor, by whom he was treated honourably; for one of his sisters had been married to a son of Aurungzebe; and his principal officers received marks of distinction. Aurungzebe entered the fort through the breach by which the assault was to have been made, and, repairing to the great mosque, already damaged by his cannon, offered up a thanksgiving for his success. But the internal tranquillity of Bejapour had been previously weakened by the revolt of Sevajee, the founder of the empire of the Mahrattas. They did not view the invasion of the Mogul emperor without jealousy; and, as their own power was constantly augmenting after his decease in 1707, they gradually compelled his successors to withdraw. Descending to a later period, we find that they had been unable to reduce the country to order and quietness; and, after a keen contest between them and the British, which terminated in the year 1804, their whole territory was in a state of anarchy. The authority of the Peshwa was either resisted or denied, and scarcely extend-

Belpour ed beyond his capital, Poona. The country was occupied by lawless depredators, and all the subordinate chiefs were rebellious and dissatisfied. It was found expedient for the British government to interpose, and endeavour to restore tranquillity,—a laudable measure, which was in a principal degree effected by the prudence and moderation of Sir Arthur Wellesley, now Duke of Wellington. He preserved many of the chiefs from the vengeance which their leader had resolved to take upon them, and induced them to recognise his authority, in paying the service due. Nevertheless, it is easy to anticipate, that, if their union is preserved, they will steadily resist the approaches of foreign nations towards their territory, and most probably will prove a material obstacle to the further aggrandizement of the British in Hindostan. (s.)

BELL ROCK LIGHT-HOUSE. The accompanying Plate (XXXIII.) exhibits a perspective view of this important national edifice (which has not improperly been termed the Scottish Pharos), as it is seen after a gale at north-east. In describing it we shall first notice the position of the rock, and circumstances connected with it, and then describe the progressive advancement and finishing of the building.

Description of the Bell Rock. The Inch Cape, or Bell Rock, is situate on the north-eastern coast of Great Britain, about 12 miles in a south-western direction from the town of Arbroath, in the county of Forfar, and about 30 miles in a north-eastern direction from St Abb's Head, in the county of Berwick; and, as may be seen from the charts of that coast, it lies in the direct track of the Firth of Tay, and of a great proportion of the shipping of the Firth of Forth which embraces the extensive local trade of the populous counties of Fife, Clackmannan, Stirling, Linlithgow, Edinburgh, and Haddington; and which being an admiral's station, is now the rendezvous of the North Sea fleet. This estuary is, besides, the principal inlet upon the eastern coast of Britain, in which the shipping of the German Ocean and North Sea take refuge, when overtaken by easterly storms. When the tides are neap, or at the quadratures of the moon, the Bell Rock is scarcely uncovered at low water; but, in spring tides, when the ebbs are greatest, that part of the rock which is exposed to view at low water measures about 427 feet in length, by 230 feet in breadth; and, in this low state of the tides, its average perpendicular height above the surface of the sea may be stated at about four feet. Beyond the space included in these measurements, at very low tides, there is a reef on which the larger kinds of fuci appear floating at the surface of the water. This reef extends about 1000 feet, in a south-western direction from the higher part of the rock just described, on which the light-house is erected. The whole rock is composed of sandstone of a red colour, with some spots of a whitish colour. It strongly resembles the rocks forming the promontory on the Forfarshire coast, called the Red Head, and those also of the opposite shores of Haddington and Berwick shires, near Dunglass. The stone is hard, of a fine grain, and contains minute specks of mica. Its surface is rugged, with holes which, at ebb-tide, form small pools of water. Such parts of

the rock as appear only in the lowest tides, are thickly coated with fuci; the larger specimens are Fucus digitatus, great tangle, and Fucus esculentus, or badderlock, a sea-weed which sometimes attains here the length of 18 or 20 feet. Those parts most frequently left by the tide are covered with small shell-fish, such as the common barnacle, the limpet, the whelk, and a few common mussels; and some very large seals rest upon its extremities at low water of spring-tides. At high water, the red ware cod is caught over the rock; and at a distance from it, as the water deepens, the common cod, haddock, whiting, skate, holibut, and other fishes common in these seas, are very numerous.

Such being the position and nature of the Bell Rock, lying in the direct track of a numerous class of shipping, and appearing only a few feet in height above the water, and that only at the ebbs of spring-tides, being at high-water wholly covered to the depth of from 10 to 12 feet; the want of some distinguishing mark that might point out its place was long felt by the mariner, and of the utility and necessity of this, every returning winter gave the public fresh proofs. But it required a great extent of commerce to afford the probability of raising an adequate revenue, by a small duty or tonnage upon vessels passing it, to meet the risk and expense of such a work, as the erection of a habitable house about 12 miles distant from the nearest land, and on a rock from 10 to 12 feet wholly under water at spring-tides. We have read of the wonderful extent of the Pharos of Alexandria, and are acquainted with the Tower of Corduan, erected upon a small island at the entrance of the Garonne, on the coast of France, and know, more particularly, the history and structure of the Eddystone light-house, built upon a small rock lying 12 miles off the coast of Cornwall. The public is in possession of Mr Smeaton's perspicuous and valuable account of that work; but it is to be observed, that, in the erection of a light-house upon the Bell Rock, independently of its distance from the main-land, a serious difficulty must here have presented itself, arising from the greater depth of water at which it was necessary to carry on the operations, than in the case of any former building of this kind.

Tradition tells us, that so far back as the fourteenth century, the monks of Aberbrothick caused a large bell to be suspended, by some means or other, upon the Rock, to which the waves of the sea gave motion, the tolling of the bell warning the mariner of his approaching danger. From this circumstance it is said the Rock got its present name, but in so far as can now be discovered, there is no record of this contrivance; and it seems more probable that, at an early period before the wasting effects of the sea had brought the Rock into a state so low and mutilated, some part of it may have resembled a bell in appearance, and have thus given rise to the name.

Although the dangers and the inconveniences of this Rock, and of the coast in general, were long and severely felt by the shipping of the eastern coast of Great Britain; yet, till of late, there was no constituted body for the erection of light-houses in

Bell Rock. Scotland; such an appointment necessarily supposes a more extensive trade than that part of the united kingdom possessed prior to the union of England and Scotland; and even long after that happy event, the finances of the country were not in a state to warrant expensive undertakings of this nature. About the middle of the last century, however, when the improvement of the highlands and islands of Scotland was viewed as an object of great national importance, the establishment of light-houses upon that coast was found indispensably necessary to the extension and success of the British Fisheries. This subject was accordingly agitated in the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland; and, in the year 1786, a bill was brought into Parliament, appointing the Lord Advocate and Solicitor-General of Scotland, the Sheriffs-depute of the maritime counties, and the chief Magistrates of certain of the Royal Burghs, ex officio, to act under the title of the Commissioners of the Northern Light-houses; and a certain duty on tonnage upon shipping was granted to them, for the erection and maintenance of such light-houses as they should find necessary to erect upon the coast of Scotland. But when a sufficient number of Light-houses are erected upon the coast, and a fund accumulated for their maintenance, the act provides, that the light-house duties shall cease and determine. These Commissioners, in virtue of the powers vested in them, proceeded to the immediate improvement of such accessible points of the coast as suited the infant state of their funds; and, in the course of a few years, eight of the principal headlands between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, including the Orkney Islands, were provided with light-houses, erected upon the most approved principles of the time, by the late Mr Smith, engineer for the Light-house Board. Keeping always in view as a principal object the erection of a light-house on the Bell Rock, the Commissioners, independently of these highly useful and important works, were gradually accumulating a fund for this purpose, in order to undertake that work as soon as their limited means would admit. In the month of December 1799, the occurrence of a dreadful storm rather tended to hasten this measure. The wind for two days was excessive, and being from the south-eastern direction, all the ships were driven from their moorings in the Downs and Yarmouth Roads. No fewer than about 70 vessels were wrecked, and with many of their crews were totally lost, upon the eastern coast of Scotland; a calamity that more especially directed the attention of the country and of the Commissioners, to the erection of a light-house upon this Rock; as, in this particular instance, a light-house there would have opened the Firth of Forth, as a place of safety to many, which, to avoid the hidden dangers of the Rock, were lost in attempting to get to the northward of the Firth in this storm.

After the loss of so many lives, and much valuable property, various measures were taken for the erection of a light-house upon this Rock. In the year 1803, a bill was brought into Parliament, which, with some alterations, ultimately pass-

ed both Houses, in the session of 1806; by which Bell Rock the northern light duty of three halfpence per ton on British vessels, and threepence per ton on foreign bottoms, was extended to all vessels sailing to or from any port between Peterhead to the north, and Berwick-upon-Tweed to the southward. This bill also empowered the commissioners to borrow L. 25,000 from the three per cent. consols, and having already accumulated the sum of L. 20,000 of surplus duties, with this loan from Government they were enabled to commence the operations at the Bell Rock with a disposable fund of L. 45,000.

Several plans for the erection of this light-house had for a considerable time been in contemplation, and were submitted for consideration of the Light-House Commissioners. Captain Brodie of the Navy constructed a very ingenious model of a cast-iron light-house to stand upon pillars; and Mr Murdoch Downie, author of several marine surveys, brought forward a plan of a light-house, to stand upon pillars of stone. Mr Telford, the engineer, was likewise employed in some preliminary steps, connected with Mr Downie's inquiries. In the year 1800, Mr Stevenson, engineer for the Commissioners of the Northern Light-houses, modelled a design applicable to this situation; and having, by their directions, made a survey and report relative to the situation of the Bell Rock, which was published by the Board, along with a letter from Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, when he commanded his Majesty's ship Hynd, upon the Leith station, in 1793, recommending the erection of a light-house on this Rock; these, with other documents, were afterwards submitted to Parliament, in a memorial from the Commissioners, drawn up by Robert Hamilton, Esq. advocate, one of their number; when application was made for a loan from Government. So different, however, were the views taken of the subject, and so various and doubtful were the opinions of the public about the kind and description of building best suited to the peculiar situation of the Rock, and even with regard to the practicability of a work so much under the surface of the water, and where so large a sum of money was necessarily to be expended, that the Commissioners thought it advisable to submit the matter to the opinion and advice of Mr Rennie. This eminent engineer coincided with Mr Stevenson in preferring a building of stone upon the principles of the Eddystone light-house, which being approved of and adopted, the execution of the work was finally committed to these gentlemen.

The bill having passed late in the session of 1806, Bell Rock in the following summer a vessel was fitted out as a Floating-Light. floating-light, for which the act of Parliament made provision, and she was accordingly moored off the Bell Rock in the month of July 1807. During the first season of the operations, this vessel was used as a Tender, to which the artificers retired while the Rock was covered with water. Her station was about a mile and a half north-east from the Bell Rock, and her moorings consisted of a mushroom anchor, weighing 33 cwt. and a weighty chain laid down in 22 fathoms water, and at these moorings she rode by

Bell Rock. a strong hempen cable, measuring 14 inches in circumference, without accident, during the four years in which the light-house was building. This vessel was rigged with three masts, each of which carried a lantern, which, in a curious manner, was made to embrace the masts; and, by this means, the use of cumbrous yards and spars over head were avoided; and as each mast passed through the centre of its respective lantern, on which it traversed, the light was not obscured on any side. Each of these lanterns contained ten lamps, with as many small silver-plated reflectors; and thus, by the appearance of three distinct lights (the centre one being the highest), the Bell Rock floating-light formed a triangular light, and was easily distinguishable from the double and single lights upon the coast, and rendered immediate and essential service to the trade and shipping of the coast.

Operations of 1807. Early in the spring of 1807, stones were collected from the granite quarries of Rubeslaw in Aberdeenshire, for the outside casing of the first 30 feet, or lower part of the building; those of sandstone for the hearting, or interior of the solid, and also for the higher parts of the building, were got from Mylnefield quarry, near Dundee. For the convenience of the work, the cornice and parapet-wall of the light-room were hewn and prepared at Edinburgh, and the stones for these parts were accordingly taken from the quarry of Craigleith. At Arbroath, the most contiguous harbour to the Bell Rock, a piece of ground for a work-yard was procured on a lease of seven years, the supposed period for the duration of the works; and here the works were conducted; materials were laid down, and workmen collected; shades were also constructed, and a barrack erected for the accommodation of about 100 artificers when they landed from the Rock, that they might be at a call, by night or day, when required to sail for the works at the Rock. These previous steps being taken ashore, the operations at the Rock itself commenced in the month of August 1807.

Wooden Beacon-house. The first attention at the Bell Rock was to erect a place of refuge for the artificers, in the event of an accident befalling any of the attending-boats,—a circumstance which, if unprovided for, might not only involve the safety of every person employed at the out-works, but prove a serious check to the future progress of the undertaking, which could only be proceeded in at low water of spring-tides, when two and a half or three hours were considered a good tide's work. From this circumstance, it became necessary to embrace every opportunity of favourable weather, as well in the day tides as under night by torch-light, and upon Sundays. In the early stages of the business, the flood-tide no sooner began to cover the exterior parts of the Rock, than the workmen were obliged to collect their tools and apparatus, and betake themselves to the attending-boats, before the water burst in upon them. These boats were rowed often with the utmost fatigue and difficulty to the floating-light, where the workmen remained till the Rock began to make its appearance again at next ebb-tide. Happily no accident occurred during this perilous part of the work, to check the ardour of the artificers, nor to

retard their progress, and by the latter end of October, the beacon, consisting of twelve large beams of fir-timber, was erected, having a common base of 30 feet, and rising to the height of 50 feet above the surface of the Rock. These spars were of fir-timber, strongly framed with oak-knees, connected to the Rock with iron-bats of a particular construction, set into holes, cut about 18 inches in depth, and wedged into their places, first with slips of fir, then with slips of oak, and, lastly, with pieces of iron. The upper part of this beacon was afterwards fitted up, and occupied as a place of residence during the working months. The lower floor was employed as a smith's forge, and also for preparing mortar for the building. The cook-house was immediately over this; the next floor was occupied by the cabins of the engineer and foremen, and over all was the barracks for the artificers, whose hammocks were ranged in tiers of five in height. The dwelling or lodging part of this temporary residence was above the reach of the sea in moderate weather, but the lower floor was often lifted by the waves, when the lime casks, and even the smith's anvil and apparatus, were frequently washed away. The beacon-house, so constructed, was erected near the site of the light-house, and in the more advanced state of the work, was connected with it by a wooden bridge; which was also of the greatest utility as a stage in raising the materials from the Rock to the building. A little reflection upon the singular position and circumstances of the Bell Rock, will show the great and indispensable use of this beacon-house in facilitating the operations. Unless some expedient of this kind had been resorted to at a work so much under water, the possibility of erecting a light-house here is extremely doubtful: at any rate, it must have required a much longer period for its accomplishment, and, in all probability, many lives would have been lost in the progress of the operations.

The circumstance of the beams of the beacon having withstood the storms of winter, inspired new confidence in the artificers, who now landed upon the Rock in the summer of 1808 with freedom, and remained upon it without fear till the tide flowed over it. Although it required a considerable part of the summer to fit up the beacon as a barrack, yet it was in a state sufficient to preserve the workmen in case of accident to the boats. The great personal risk and excessive fatigue of rowing boats, crowded with the artificers, every tide to the floating light-vessel was now also avoided by an additional vessel having this season been provided, and entirely set apart for the purpose of attending the Rock. This vessel was a very fine schooner of 80 tons. Her moorings were so constructed, that she could be cast loose at pleasure, and brought to the lee-side of the Rock, where she might at once take up the artificers and their boats in bad weather, instead of their having, as formerly, to row often against both wind and tide, to the more distant position of the floating light. From this circumstance, it was now found practicable both to commence the works at the Rock much earlier, and to continue them to a later period. Being now provided with a place of safety, by the erection of the spars of the beacon-house, and having a

Bell Rock. tender always at command, which could be cast loose, in case of need, the works now went forward even in pretty rough weather; and thus struggling both during the night and day tides, the site of the light-house was prepared, and cut to a sufficient depth into the Rock; and on the 10th of July 1808, the foundation stone of the building was laid. In the course of this season, tracks of cast-iron railways were also fixed upon the Rock, from the different landing places to the building, calculated for conveying blocks of stone of two or three tons weight along the Rock; and by the latter end of the season's operations the first four courses of the Light-house were built, which brought it to the height of five feet six inches above the foundation.

In the course of the winter preceding the third season's operations, the works at the Rock were frequently visited, and, in the spring of the year 1809, were resumed with new vigour; and it was no small happiness to find, that not only the four courses of the light-house built last season were in perfect order, after a long and severe winter, without the least shift or change of position, but that even the beacon-house and railways were little injured, being almost in a state of readiness for resuming the operations. The first thing to be done was to lay down sets of chain moorings, with floating buoys for the tender, and for the flush-decked praam-boat, stone lighters, and vessels employed at the Rock, and to erect the necessary apparatus and machinery for landing the stones, and laying them in their places upon the building. These arrangements being made, every thing went forward in the most prosperous manner; and, by the month of September, the building was got to the height of 30 feet, which completed the solid part of the light-house. After obtaining this height, from the advanced state of the season, Mr Stevenson did not find it advisable to risk the machinery and apparatus longer, and the building was left in this state for the winter months.

At the commencement of the fourth and last season's work, it was a matter of some importance for the preparation of the higher or finishing parts of the building, to ascertain whether it would be possible to carry the masonry from the height of 30 feet to 100 feet in the course of this summer; but it was extremely doubtful whether this could be accomplished, so as to secure good weather for fitting up the light-room, and completing the more delicate operations of the painter and glazier, connected with it. Under these uncertain prospects, the work was begun in 1810, at as early a period as the weather would at all admit. From the great number of finished courses of prepared stone at the work-yard, which had been tried upon the platform, numbered and ready to be shipped from Arbroath for the Rock, there was only the winds and tides to contend with; and even these were, in effect, wonderfully softened and allayed, by the enterprising exertions and thorough practice of the seamen and artificers, during four successive seasons: which had given much dexterity to the several departments, both in the work-yard at Arbroath, and at the Rock, where the operations of the builder and of the landing-master's crew were conducted with much skill and activity.

Taking these mainly into account, and by a fortunate train of circumstances, the masonry of the building was completed in October; and the light-room being finished in the month of December, the light was advertised to the public, and exhibited for the first time from the new Light-house on the evening of the 1st of February 1811; and, on the same night, the floating light-vessel was unmoored, and that temporary light discontinued.

Having thus given a general account of the Bell Rock, and the erection of the Light-house, we shall now describe the building, noticing its principal dimensions, and making such further remarks as may appear interesting to the reader. The Bell Rock Light-house is a circular building, the foundation-stone of which is nearly on a level with the surface of the sea at low-water of ordinary spring-tides; and consequently at high-water of these tides, the building is immersed to the height of about 15 feet. The two first or lower courses of the masonry are imbedded or sunk into the rock, and the stones of all the courses are curiously dovetailed and joined with each other, forming one connected mass from the centre to the circumference. The successive courses of the work are also attached to each other by joggles of stone; and, to prevent the stones from being lifted up by the force of the sea, while the work was in progress, each stone of the solid part of the building had two holes bored through it, entering six inches into the course immediately below, into which oaken tree-nails, two inches in diameter, were driven, after Mr Smeaton's plan at the Eddystone Light-house. The cement used at the Bell Rock, like that of the Eddystone, was a mixture of pozzolano, earth, lime, and sand, in equal parts, by measure. The building is of a circular form, composed of stones of the weight of from two tons to half a ton each. The ground course measures 42 feet in diameter, and the building diminishes, as may be observed from the plate of the light-house, as it rises to the top, where the parapet-wall of the light-room measures only 13 feet in diameter. The height of the masonry is 100 feet, but including the light-room, the total height is 115 feet. The building is solid from the ground course to the height of 30 feet, where the entry-door is situate, to which the ascent is by a kind of rope-ladder with wooden steps, hung out at ebb-tide, and taken into the building again when the water covers the Rock; but strangers to this sort of climbing are taken up in a kind of chair, by a small moveable crane projected from the door, from which a narrow passage leads to a stone stair-case 13 feet in height. Here the walls are seven feet in thickness, but they gradually diminish from the top of the stair-case, to the parapet-wall of the light-room, where they measure one foot in thickness. The upper half of the building may be described as divided into six apartments for the use of the light-keepers, and for containing light-house stores. The lower or first of these floors, formed by an inside scarsement of the walls at the top of the stair-case, is chiefly occupied with water tanks, fuel, and the other bulky articles; the second floor is for the oil cisterns, glass and other light-room stores; the third is occupied as a kitchen; the fourth is the bed-room,

Bell Rock. the fifth the library or strangers' room, and the upper apartment forms the light-room. The floors of the several apartments are of stone, and the communication from the one to the other, is made by means of wooden ladders, excepting in the light-room, where every article being fire proof, the steps are made of iron. There are two windows in each of the three lower apartments, but the upper rooms have each four windows. The casements of the windows are all double, and are glazed with plate-glass, having besides an outer storm-shutter, or dead-light of timber, to defend the glass from the waves and sprays of the sea. The parapet-wall of the light-room is six feet in height, and has a door which leads out to the balcony or walk formed by the cornice round the upper part of the building; which is surrounded by a cast-iron rail, curiously wrought like net-work. This rail rests upon batts of brass, and has a massive coping or top rail of the same metal.

Furniture of the House. In the kitchen, there is a kind of grate or open fire-place of cast-iron, with a smoke tube of the same metal which passes through the several apartments to the light-room, and heats them in its passage upwards. This grate and chimney merely touch the building, without being included or built into the walls, which, by this means, are neither weakened, nor liable to be injured by it. The timber of the doors, and the panelled partitioning of the rooms from the stairs, and also of the bed frames and furniture in general, is of wainscot.

Light-room. The light-room and its apparatus was entirely framed and prepared at Edinburgh. It is of an octagonal figure, measuring 12 feet across, and 15 feet in height, formed with cast-iron sashes, or window frames glazed with large plates of polished glass, measuring about 2 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 3 inches, each plate being of the thickness of a quarter of an inch. The light-room is covered with a dome roof of copper, terminating in a large gilded ball, with a vent-hole in the top.

Description of the Light. The light of the Bell Rock is very powerful, and is readily seen at the distance of six or seven leagues, when the atmosphere is clear. The light is from oil, with Argand burners placed in the focus of silver-plated reflectors, measuring 24 inches over the lips; the silvered surface or face being hollowed or wrought to the parabolic curve. That the Bell Rock light may be easily distinguished from all other lights upon the coast, the reflectors are ranged upon a frame with four faces or sides, which, by a train of machinery, is made to revolve upon a perpendicular axis once in six minutes. Between the observer and the reflectors, on two opposite sides of the revolving frame, shades of red glass are interposed, in such a manner, that, during each entire revolution of the reflectors, two appearances, distinctly differing from each other, are produced; one is the common bright light familiar to every one, but, on the other, or shaded sides, the rays are tinged of a red colour. These red and bright lights, in the course of each revolution, alternate with intervals of darkness, which, in a very beautiful and simple manner, characterize this light.

As a farther warning to the mariner, in foggy
VOL. II. PART I.

weather, two large bells, weighing about 12 cwt, are tolled day and night by the same train of machinery which moves the lights. As these bells, in moderate weather, may be heard considerably beyond the limits of the Rock, vessels, by this means, get warning to put about, and are thereby prevented from running upon the Rock in thick and hazy weather; a disaster to which ships might otherwise be liable, notwithstanding the erection of the light-house.

Prior to, or about the time of the erection of the Bell Rock light-house, it was by no means uncommon to meet with various doubts, regarding the practicability of the works, expressed in such terms as the following: "That, even if it were practicable to erect a light-house, upon such a sunken rock, no one would be found hardy enough to live in an abode so dread and dreary, and that it would fail to the lot of the projectors themselves to possess it for the first winter." But the reverse of all this took place; for the confidence of the public had been confirmed by the stability as well of the wooden-beacon-house, as of the building itself, which, in its progressive rise, withstood the storms of two successive winters, in an unfinished state; so that, by the time the house was ready for its inhabitants, the applications for the place of light-keepers were much more numerous than the situations; and applicants on both sides of the Tweed were disappointed in their wishes.

The establishment of light-keepers at the Bell Rock, consists of a principal light-keeper, who has at the rate of 60 guineas per annum, paid quarterly; a principal assistant, who has 55 guineas; and two other assistants at 50 guineas each; besides a suit of uniform clothes, in common with the other light-keepers of the Northern Light-houses, every three years. While at the rock, these men get a stated allowance of bread, beef, butter, oat-meal, pot-barley, and vegetables, besides small beer, and an allowance of fourpence per day each for the purchase of tea and other necessaries. At Arbroath, the most contiguous town on the opposite coast, a suite of buildings has been erected, where each light-keeper has three apartments for his family. Here the master and mate of the light-house tender have also accommodation for their families; a plot or piece of an enclosed garden ground is attached to each house, and likewise a seat in one of the pews in the parish church of Arbroath. Connected with these buildings, there is a signal tower erected, which is about 50 feet in height. At the top of it, there is a room with an excellent five feet achromatic telescope, placed upon a stand. From this tower, a set of corresponding signals is arranged, and kept up with the light-keepers at the rock. Three of the light-keepers are always at the light-house, while one is ashore on liberty, whose duty it is for the time to attend the signal room; and when the weather will admit of the regular removal of the light-keepers they are six weeks at the rock, and a fortnight ashore with their families.

The attending vessel for the Bell Rock, and the Attending light-houses of the Isle of May and Inchkeith, in the Vessel Firth of Forth, is a very handsome little cutter of about 50 tons register, carrying upon her prore a
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