PLEAS FOR RAGGED
SCHOOLS.
FIRST PLEA.
ON approaching Edinburgh from the west, after the general
features which distance presents, - dome, and spire, and antique piles of
building, the Castle standing in the foreground, while Arthur Seat raises its
lion-like back between the city and the sea, - the first object which attracts
the eyes of a stranger is a structure of exquisite and surpassing beauty. It
might be a palace for our Queen:- it is an hospital. Near by, embowered in
wood, stands an edifice of less pretensions, but also great extent :-it is
another hospital. Within a bow-shot of that, again, some fine open towers rise
from the wood over a fair structure, with its Grecian pillars and graceful
portico:- it is another hospital. Now in the city, and wheeling round the base
of the Castle rock, he drives on by Lauriston. Not far away, on the outskirts
of the town, pleasantly planted in a beautiful park, bordered with trees,
stands an old-fashioned building - it is another hospital. In his way along
Lauriston, within a stone-cast of him, his eye catches the back of a large and
spacious edifice, which looks beautifully out on the Meadows, the low Braid
Hills, and the distant Pentlands : - it is another hospital. A few turns of the
wheel, and before him, within a fine park, or rather ornamental garden, stands
the finest structure of our town, - a master-piece of Inigo J ones, - with a
princely revenue of £15,000 a-year : - it is another hospital. The
carriage now jostles over a stone; the stranger turns his head, and sees, but
some hundred yards away, a large Dutch-like structure, stretching out its long
lines of windows, with the gilded ship, the sign of commerce, for weathervane,
on its summit : - that is another hospital. Our friend concludes, and not
without some reason, that, instead of the Modern Athens, Edinburgh
might be called the City of Hospitals.
I have no quarrel at present with
these institutions: their management is in the hands of wise, excellent, and
honourable men; and, in so far as they fail to accomplish the good intended, it
is not that they are mismanaged. The management is not bad; but in some of its
elements the system itself is vicious. God never made men to be reared in
flocks, but in families. Man is not a gregarious animal, other than that he
herds together with his race in towns, a congeries of families. Born, as he is,
with domestic affections, whatever interferes with their free play is an evil
to be shunned, and, in its moral and physical results, to be dreaded. God
framed and fitted man to grow up, not under the hospital, but the domestic roof
- whether that roof be the canvas of an Arab tent, the grassy turf of a
Highland shieling, or the gilded dome of a palace. And as man was no more made
to be reared in an hospital than the human foot to grow in a Chinese shoe, or
the human body to be bound in ribs of iron or whalebone, - acting in both cases
in contravention of Gods law, - you are as sure in the first case to
inflict injury on his moral, as in the second on his physical constitution.
They commit a grave mistake who forget that injury as inevitably results from
flying in the face of a moral or mental, as of a physical law. So long as rice
is rice, you cannot rear it on the bald brow of a hilltop : it loves the
hollows and the valleys, with their water-floods; and so long as man is man,
more or less of injury will follow the attempt to rear him in circumstances for
which his Maker never adapted him.
But apart from this, who and what are
the children that, under the roof of these crowded hospitals, receive shelter,
food, clothing, and instruction? It is much deplored by many, and can be denied
by none, that in some of these hospitals not a few of the inmates are the
children of those who are able, and ought to be willing, - and, but for the
temptations these institutions present, would be ready, - to train up their
children as olive plants around the domestic table, and rear them within the
tender, kind, holy, and heaven-blessed circle of a domestic home. There are
nursed those precious affections toward parents, brothers, sisters, and smiling
babes, which, for mans good in this life, and the wellbeing of society,
are worth more than all Greek and Roman lore. I cannot better convey my ideas
and feelings on this matter than by saying, that when a Governor of
Heriots Hospital, - an hospital which enjoys the care and attention both
of the Town Council and the city clergy, - I was astonished to be applied to by
a respectable man on behalf of his son. Let me not. be misunderstood. I do not
much blame parents and guardians for availing themselves of these hospitals,
even when they might do otherwise. A well- furnished table, lodging the most
comfortable, a first- rate education, in some instances valuable bursaries, and
occasionally, when launched into the world, a sum of money to float the
favoured pupil on, - these present the temptation to tear the child from a
mothers side, and send it away from a fathers care, which it is not
easy to resist.
Still, to resume my narrative, I was amazed to receive such
an application from such a quarter. The applicant was a sober and excellent
man, living in what the world would count respectable circumstances. Knowing
this, nevertheless I asked him, Can you give your boy porridge in the
morning ? Yes, said he, surprised at such a question.
Potatoes to dinner? Certainly. Porridge at night
? He looked astonished: he knew, as I and all his neighbours did, that he
was able to do a great deal more. Then, I said, my friend,
were I you, it should not be till they had laid me in my coffin that boy of
mine should lose the blessings of a fathers fireside, and be cast amid
the dangers of a public hospital. I may perhaps add, that I thought him a
wise man, for he took my advice. And before leaving these hospitals, I think it
right also to add, in justice to the management of Heriots Hospital, and
to the honour of Mr. Duncan Maclaren, by whom the scheme was proposed and
carried, that some £3000 a-year is applied to the maintenance of schools
scattered up and down the city, where the children of decent tradesmen,
mechanics, and labourers, receive a good gratis education.
Now, to resume,
for convenience sake, the company of my stranger friend. Skirting along the
ruins of the old city wall, and passing down the Vennel, we descend into the
Grassmarket, - a large, capacious place, with the exception of some
three or four modern houses, still standing as it did two centuries ago, - the
most perfect specimen in our city of the olden time. Its old massive fronts,
reared as if in picturesque contempt of modern uniformity, - some with the flat
roofs of the East, and others of the Flemish school, with their sharp and lofty
gables topped by the rose, the thistle, and the fleur de lis, - still
look down on that square as in the days when it was one sea of heads, every eye
turned to the great black gallows, which rose high over all, and from which,
amid the hushed and awful silence of assembled thousands, rose the last psalm
of a hero of the Covenant, who had come there to play the man.
In a small
well-conditioned town, with the exception of some children basking on the
pavement, and playing with the dogs that have gone over with them to enjoy the
sunny side, between the hours of ten and one, you miss the Scripture picture of
boys and girls playing in the street. Not so in the Grassmarket. In
two-thirds of the shops, on one side of this square (for we have counted them)
spirits are sold. The sheep are near the slaughter-house, - the victims are in
the neighbourhood of the altars. The mouth of almost every close is filled with
loungers, worse than Neapolitan lazzaroni, - bloated and brutal figures, ragged
and wretched old men, bold and fierce-looking women, and many a half-clad
mother, shivering in cold winter with her naked feet on the frozen pavement,
and a skeleton infant in her arms. On a summer day, when in the blessed
sunshine and warm air misery itself will sing, dashing in and out of these
closes, careering over the open ground, engaged in their rude games, arrayed in
flying drapery, here a leg out and there an arm, are crowds of children. Their
thin faces tell how ill they are fed. Their fearful oaths tell how ill they are
reared. Yet the merry laugh, the hearty shout, and screams of delight, as some
unfortunate urchin, at leap-frog, measures his length upon the ground, tell
that God made childhood to be happy, and how even misery will forget itself in
the buoyancy of youth.
We get hold of one of these boys. Poor fellow! it is
a bitter day; and he has neither shoes nor stockings. His naked feet are red,
swollen, cracked, ulcerated with the cold ; a thin, thread-worn jacket, with
its gaping rents, is all that protects his breast beneath his shaggy bush of
hair he shows a face sharp with want, yet sharp also with intelligence beyond
his years. That little fellow has learned to be already self-supporting. He has
studied the arts; - he is a master of imposture, lying, begging, stealing.
Small blame to him, but much to those who have neglected him, - he had
otherwise pined and perished. So soon as you have satisfied him that you are
not connected with the police, you ask him, Wheie is your father ?
Now, hear his story, - and there are hundreds can tell a similar tale.
Where is your father ? He is dead, Sir. Where is
your mother ? Dead too. Where do you stay ?
Sister and I, and my little brother live with granny. What is
she? She is a widow woman. What does she do ?
Sells sticks, Sir. And can she keep you all?
No. Then how do you live ? Go about and get bits
of meat, sell matches, and sometimes get a trifle from the carriers for running
an errand. Do you go to school? No, never was at
school; attended sometimes a Sabbath-school, but have not been there for a long
time. Do you go to church? Never was in a church.
Do you know who made you? Yes, God made me. Do
you say your prayers ? Yes, mother taught me a prayer before she
died; and I say it to granny afore I lie down. Have you a bed
? Some straw, Sir.
Our stranger friend is astonished at
this, - not we. Alas! we have ceased to be astonished at any amount of misery
suffered, or suffering, in our overgrown cities. You have, says he, splendid
hospitals, where children are fed, and clothed, and educated, whose parents, in
instances not a few, could do all that for them; you have beautiful schools for
the gratis education of the children of respectable tradesmen and mechanics:
what provision have you made for these children of crime, misery, and
misfortune? Let us go and see the remedy which this rich, enlightened,
Christian City has provided for such a crying evil. We blush, as we tell them
there is none. Let us explain ourselves. Such children cannot pay for
education, nor avail themselves of a or gratis one, even though offered, That
urchin must beg and steal, or he starves. With a number like himself, he goes
of a morning as regularly to that work as the merchant to his shop or the
tradesman to his place of labour. They are turned out, - driven forth
sometimes, - to get their meat, like sheep to the hills, or cattle to the
field; and if they dont bring home a certain supply, a drunken father and
a brutal beating await them.
For example, I was returning from a meeting
one night, about twelve oclock in a fierce blast of wind and rain. In
Princes Street, a shivering boy with a piteous voice, pressed me to buy a
tract. I asked the child why he was out in such a night, and at such an hour.
He had not got his money; he dared not go home without it; he would rather
sleep in a stair all night. I thought, as we passed a lamp, that I had seen him
before. I asked him if he went to church. Sometimes to Mr.
Guthries, was his reply. On looking again, I now recognized him as
one I had occasionally seen in the Cowgate Chapel. Muffled up to meet the
weather, he did not recognize me. I asked him what his father was? I have
no father, Sir; he is dead. His mother? She is very poor.
But why keep you out here ? Then reluctantly the truth came out. I
knew her well, and had visited her wretched dwelling. She was a tall, dark,
gaunt gipsy-looking woman, who, notwithstanding a cap of which it could be but
premised that it had once been white, and a gown that it had once been black,
had still some traces of one who had seen better days; but, now she was a
drunkard. Sin had turned her into a monster; and she would have beaten that
poor child within an inch of death, if he had been short of the money, by her
waste of which she starved him, and fed her own accursed vices.
Now, by
this anecdote illustrating to my stranger friend the situation of these unhappy
children, I added that, nevertheless, they might get education, and secure some
measure both of common and Christian knowledge. But mark how, and where. Not as
in the days of our blessed Saviour, when the tender mother brought her child
for his blessing, The jailor brings them now. Their only passage to school is
through the Police Office; their passport is a conviction of crime; and in this
Christian and enlightened city it is only within the dreary walls of a prison
that they are secure either of school or Bible. When one thinks of their own
happy boys at home, bounding free on the green, and breathing the fresh air of
heaven, - or of the little fellow that climbs a fathers knee, and asks
the oft-repeated story of Moses or of Joseph, - it is a sad thing to look in
through the eyelet of a cell-door, on the weary solitude of a child spelling
its way through the Bible. It makes one sick to hear men sing the praises of
the fine education of our prisons. How much better and holier were it to tell
us of an education that would save the necessity of a prison- school! I like
well to see the life-boat, with her brave and devoted crew; but with far more
pleasure, from the window of my old country manse, I used to look out at the
Bell Rock Tower, standing erect amid the stormy waters, where in the mists of
day the bell was rung, and in the darkness of the night the light was kindled.
Thus mariners were not saved from the wreck, but saved from being wrecked at
all. Instead of first punishing crime, and then, through means of a prison
education, trying to prevent its repetition, we appeal to mens common
sense, and common interest, to humanity, and Christianity, if it were not
better to support a plan which would reverse this process, and which seeks to
prevent, that there may be no occasion to punish.
It may be asked, would
not this be accomplished by the existence and multiplication of schools, where,
in circumstances of necessity, a gratis education may be obtained? We answer,
Certainly not. Look how the thing works, and is working. You open such a school
in some poor locality of the city; where among the more decent and
well-provided children there is a number of shoeless, shirtless, capless,
ragged boys, as wild as desert savages. The great mass of those in the district
you have not swept into your school; but granting that through moral influence,
or otherwise, you do succeed in bringing out a small percentage of these, -
mark what happens. In a few days this and that one fail to answer at roll-call.
Now, an essential element of successful education is regular attendance. In
truth, the world would get on as ill were the sun to run his course to-day, and
take a rest or play the truant to-morrow, and be so irregular in his movements
that no one could count upon his appearance, as will the work of education with
an attendance at school constantly broken and interrupted. Feeling this, the
teacher seeks the abode of the child, climbs some three or four dark stairs,
and at length finds himself in such an apartment as we have often seen; there
is neither board, nor bed, nor Bible. Around the cinders, gathered from the
street, sit some half-naked children, - his poor ragged pupil among the number.
Your child, says he to the mother, has been away from
school. Now let the Christian public listen to her reply. I could
not afford to keep him there; he maun do something for his meat. I
venture to say, I confidently affirm, that there are now many hundreds of
children in these circumstances in Edinburgh. I ask the Christian public, What
are we to do? One of two things we must do. Look at them. First we may leave
the boy alone. Begging, the trade in which he is engaged, being next neighbour
to thieving, he soon steals. He is apprehended and cast into prison; and having
been marched along the public street, shackled to a policeman, and returned to
society with the jail-brand on his brow, any tattered shred of character that
hung loose about him before is now lost. As the French say, and all the world
knows, Ce nest que le ire mier pas qui coute. He descends,
from step to step, till a halter closes his unhappy career; or he is passed
away to a penal settlement, the victim of a poverty for which he was not to
blame, and of a neglect on the part of others for which a righteous God will
one day call them to judgment.
There is another alternative; and it is that
we advocate. Remove the obstruction which stands between that poor child and
the schoolmaster and the Bible, roll away the stone that lies between the
living and the dead. Since he cannot attend your school unless he starves, give
him food; feed him, in order to educate him; let it be food of the plainest,
cheapest kind; but by that food open his way; by that powerful magnet to a
hungry child, draw him to school.
Strolling one day with a friend among the
romantic scenery of the Crags and green valleys around Arthur Seat, we came at
length to St. Anthonys Well, and sat down on the great black stone beside
it, to have a talk with the ragged boys who pursue their calling there. Their
tinnies were ready with a draught of the clear cold water, in hope of a
halfpenny. We thought it would be a kindness to them, and certainly not out of
character in us, to tell them of the living water that springeth up to life
eternal; and of Him who sat on the stone of Jacobs Well, and who stood in
the Temple and cried, If any man thirst, let him me unto me and
drink. By way of introduction, we began to question them about schools.
As to the boys themselves, one was fatherless, the son of a poor widow; the
father of the other was alive, but a man of low habits and bad character. Both
were poorly clothed. The one had never been at school; the other had sometimes
or attended a Sabbath-school. These two little fellows were self-supporting, -
living by such shifts as they were then engaged in. Encouraged by the success
of Sheriff Watson, who had the honour to lead this enterprise, the idea of a
Ragged School was then floating in my brain; and so, with reference to the
scheme, and by way of experiment, I said, Would you go to school, if,
besides your learning, you were to get breakfast, dinner, and supper there
? It would have done any mans heart good to have seen the flash of
joy that broke from the eyes of one of them, - the flush of pleasure on his
cheek, as, hearing of three sure meals a-day, the boy leapt to his feet, and
exclaimed, Aye will I, Sir, and bring the hail! land too ; and then, as
if afraid I might withdraw what seemed to him so large and munificent an offer,
he exclaimed, Ill come for but my dinner, Sir.
I have
abundant statistics before me to prove that there are many hundreds of children
in this town in circumstances as hopeless as those I describe. They must be
fed, in order to receive that common moral and religious education, without
which, humanly speaking, they are ruined both for this world and the
next.
How many there are in still more hopeless circumstances, I never knew,
till I had gone to see one of the saddest sights a man could look on. The Night
Asylum was not then established; but the houseless, the inhabitants of arches
and stair-foots, - those, like the five boys lately sent to prison, who had no
home but an empty cellar in Shakspeare square, - found, when they sought it, or
dared to seek it, a shelter in the Police Office. I had often heard of the
misery it presented; and, detained at a meeting till past midnight, I went with
one of my elders, who was a Commissioner of Police, to visit the scene. In a
room, the walls of which were thickly hung with bunches of skeleton keys, the
dark lanterns of the thief, and other instruments of housebreaking, sat the
lieutenant of the watch. Seeing me at that untimely hour, handed in by one of
the Commissioners, he looked surprise itself. Having satisfied him that there
was no misdemeanour, we proceeded, under the charge of an intelligent officer,
to visit the wards.
Our purpose is not to describe the strangest, saddest
collection of human misery I ever saw, but to observe that not a few children,
having no home on earth, had sought and found there a shelter for the night.
They had not where to lay their head. Turned adrift in the morning,
and subsisting as they best could during the day, this wreck of society, like
the wrack of the sea-shore, came drifting in again at evening tide. After
visiting a number of wards and cells, I remember looking down from the gallery
on an open space, where five or six human beings lay on the bare pavement
buried in slumber; and right opposite the stove, with its ruddy light shining
full on his face, lay a poor child, who attracted my special attention. He was
miserably clad ; he seemed about eight years old; he had the sweetest face I
ever saw; his bed was the hard stone pavement, - his pillow a brick; and, as he
lay calm in sleep, forgetful of all his sorrows, he looked a picture of injured
innocence. His story, which I learned from the officer, was a sad one; but one
such as too many could tell. He had neither father nor mother, brother nor
friend, in the wide world. His only friends were the Police, - his only home
their office. How he lived they did not know; but, sent away in the morning, he
usually returned at night. The floor of a ward, the stone by the stove, was a
better bed than a stair-foot. I could not get that boy out of my head or heart
for days and nights together. I have often regretted that some effort was not
made to save him. Some six or seven years are by and gone since then; and
before now, launched on the sea of human passion, and exposed to a thousand
temptations, he has too probably become a melancholy wreck. What else could any
man who believes in the depravity of human nature, and knows the danger of the
world, expect him to become? These children, whom we leave in ignorance, and
starve into crime, must grow up into criminals, - the pest, the shame, the
burden, the punishment of society; and in the increasing expenses of public
charities, work-houses, poor-rates, prisons, police- officers, and superior
officers of justice, what do we see, but the judgments of a righteous God, and
hear, but the echo of these solemn words, Be sure your sin will find you
out !"
From statistics before me, I repeat it again, - and it ought to be
repeated till a remedy be provided, - that there are at least a thousand
children in this city (others say some thousands, but I would rather understate
than in the least exaggerate the case) who cannot receive such an education as
will bless them, and make them a blessing, unless, along with the means of
education, they are provided with the means of keeping body and soul together.
Let the Christian public observe, that while such schools as Lady
Effinghams, Lady Andersons, and the Duchess of Gordons, and
others of the same description, are most creditable to the large-hearted
benevolence of these ornaments of the upper and best friends of the lower
classes, and are the means of incalculable good to a low class, yet they hardly
touch that lowest class for whose interests I have stepped forth from my own
peculiar walk, and now venture, through the press, on this appeal. The fact may
be doubted by some who have never left their drawing-rooms to visit, like
angels of mercy, the abodes of misery and crime; but no visitor of the
Destitute Sick Society, - no humble and hardworking city missionary, - no
enlightened governor of our prisons, - no superintendent of Night Asylum or
House of Refuge, - none who, like myself, has been called on to explore, amid
fever and famine, the depths of human misery in this city, and has come in
close, and painful, and heart-sickening contact with its crimes and poverty, -
I say, none of these will doubt it, - at least I have met with none who doubted
it. I implore the public to remember, that we have not here the miserable
consolation that the infected will die off. They are mixed with society, - each
an active centre of corruption. Around them you can draw no Cordon
Sanitaire. The leaven is every day leavening more and more of the lump.
Parents are begetting and breeding up children in their own image; while
ignorance, and vice, and crime, are shooting ahead even of the increase of that
population.
I have long felt inclined to add my experience to that of many
benevolent and Christian men who have gone before me, regarding the deplorable
and dangerous state of the class who form the substratum of society, the
miserable provision made even for decent poverty, - for those whom the hand of
God has smitten, - and the manifold temptations the poor are thereby exposed
to. But the pressure of other avocations, the difficulty of getting the public
ear in times of excitement, and the lack of any approved remedy for the evil in
its first causes, must explain my silence in the past.
We had been for some
time inclined to hold that such a remedy was only to be found in such schools
as we now propose; but till the experience of Aberdeen and of Dundee had turned
what was but a presumption into a fact, we had not courage to venture on the
proposal. We see no way of securing the amelioration and salvation of these
forlorn, outcast, and destitute children, but by making their maintenance a
bridge and stepping-stone to their education. It has been tried and proved,
that without some such instrumentality you cannot get these children to school;
at least you cannot get more than the smallest per-centage of them; and though
you could, - though you got the hungry shivering creature into your class, -
what heart has he for learning, whose pale face and hollow eyes tell you he is
starving? What teacher could have the heart to punish a child who has not
broken his fast that day? What man of sense would mock with books a boy who is
starving for bread? Let Christian men answer our Lords question; let
every parent think of it : - What father, if his child ask for bread,
would give him a stone? And what is English grammar, or the Rule of
Three, or the A, B, C, to a hungry child but a stone?
I have often met this
difficulty in dealing with the grown up, who possessed what the child does not,
- sense to understand the importance of the lesson. I have seen it in a way not
to be forgotten. In the depth of a hard winter, when, visiting in the Cowgate,
I entered a room, where, save a broken table, there was nought of furniture but
a crazy bedstead, on which, beneath a thin ragged coverlet, lay a very old,
grey-headed woman. I began to speak to her, as to one near eternity, about her
soul; on which, raising herself up, and stretching out a bare withered arm, she
cried most piteously, I am cauld and hungry. My poor old
friend, I said, we will do what we can to relieve these wants; but
let me in kindness remind you that there is something worse than either cold or
hunger. Aye, but, Sir, was the reply, if ye were as
cauld and as hungry as I am, ye could think o naething else. She
read me a lesson that day which I have never forgotten; and which, as the
advocate of these poor forlorn children, I ask a humane and Christian public to
apply to their case. The public may plant schools thick as trees of the forest;
but be assured, unless, besides being trees of knowledge, - to borrow a figure
from the isles of the Pacific, - they are also bread-fruit trees, few of these
children will seek their shadow, far less sit under it with great delight
Is any one so ignorant of human nature as to suppose that, offered nothing
but learning, these destitute children may be brought to school by the mere
power of moral suasion? I would like to know how many of the well-fed,
well-clothed, well- disciplined children, who crowd our schools, would prefer
the school-room to the play-ground, unless their parents compelled their
attendance. It may be answered, try the power of moral suasion on the parents.
Now, we put it to any reasonable man, if it be not true, that to expect an
abandoned drunken: ruffian, - a miserable, ignorant, poverty-struck widow,
whose powers, both of body and mind, grief and want have paralyzed, - those who
themselves are strangers to the benefits of education, - who are living without
God and without hope in the world, - who are partly dependent for their own
stinted subsistence, and, in too many instances, the feeding of: their vices,
on the fruits of their childrens plunder or begging, - we ask, if to
expect that such will compel their children to attend school, is not seeking
for grapes on thorns, or figs on thistles?
We have already indicated how we
propose to meet these difficulties: let us be a little more explicit. What we
then propose to do, with the intent of meeting, and the confidence of
overcoming, difficulties never yet fairly grappled with, and, with Gods
blessing, of engrafting on the fair stock of civilization and Christianity
these wild vines, so that they shall yield the wine which is pleasant both to
God and man, is this : in place of one great institution, which would be
attended by many disadvantages, let there be an adequate number of schools set
down in the different districts of the city, so that each school shall contain
no more than a manageable number of children,_fbt more than a teacher can
thoroughly control and break in. These Arabs of the city are wild as those of
the desert, and must be broken into three habits, - those of discipline,
learning, and industry, not to speak of cleanliness. To accomplish this, our
trust is in the almost omnipotent power of Christian kindness. Hard words and
harder blows are thrown away here. With these, alas! they are too familiar at
home, and have learned to be as indifferent to them as the smiths dog to
the shower of sparks. And without entering into many details, it may be enough
to say, that in the morning they are to break their fast on a diet of the
plainest fare, - then march from their meal to their books; in the afternoon
they are again to be provided with a dinner of the cheapest kind, - then back
again to school; from which, after supper they return, not to the walls of an
hospital, but to their own homes. There, carrying with them many a holy lesson,
they may prove Christian missionaries to these dwellings of darkness and sin.
This is no vain expectation. Our confidence is in Him who has said, Out
of the mouths of babes and sucklings He ordaineth strength. And we are
all the more confident of his blessing, because we are in this the best way
fulfilling the duty laid on us in his promise to the forlorn, When thy
father and thy mother forsake thee, then the Lord will take thee up. A
faithful God, He does not this by way of miracle, but by way of means; putting
it into the hearts of kind and Christian people to do a fathers and a
mothers part to those who are fatherless and motherless, or to those
still more unhappy children who have parents, but, would be better without
them.
To work this scheme to its greatest advantage and capability of good,
we would strongly recommend the adoption of some such plan as this. In place of
benevolent individuals contenting themselves with subscribing to its funds, and
taking no further interest in the welfare of its objects, let each select one
child or more, as his means may warrant, - say one child. The expenses of its
education and maintenance at school are met by him: this is known to the child;
and thus, taught to regard him as its benefactor, the better and kindlier
feelings of its nature are brought into activity, and nurtured into strength.
Within the arms of his gratitude man can embrace a benevolent individual, but
not a benevolent community. What pauper ever left a charity workhouse with a
blessing on its Directors? But individual charity has been remembered in the
widows prayer; and some have walked our streets who could say with the
patriarch, When the eye saw me, then it blessed me. We attach the
utmost importance to this plan. By means of it, the person through whose
kindness the child is placed and paid for at school, - who comes there
occasionally to watch the progress of a plant which he had found flung on the
highway, to be trodden under foot, but which he has transplanted into this
nursery of good, - becomes an object of kindly regard to the child. The boy
fears his displeasure, and aims at his approbation. Kindness softens the
childs heart; his love and gratitude are kindled and so we call in the
most effectual allies in our effort to save him from ruin. In this way,
moreover, the child has secured a patron and protector, - one to take him by
the hand when his term at school is closed, and to stand by him in the battle
of life. Selecting a boy in whom we have learned to take a kindly interest, we
will feel it to be our business to guide him, by our counsel and influence,
into some way of well-doing. We will charge ourselves with his welfare. He will
not have to complain, - No man careth for my soul. And thus
through the influence of kindly feelings on his part, and Christian care on
ours, in many a now unhappy child society might gain a useful member, instead
of receiving an Ishmaelite, whose hand is against every man, and every
mans hand against him.
On the management of these schools we
have only to add, that alongside a common and Christia education, we will
introduce such work as may suit the age of the children, and their condition in
life, with the double advantage of lessening, by its profits, the expense of
maintenance, and forming in the children habits of industry, which will fit
them for, an honest and useful life. And thus, through these, schools, heaven
smiling upon them, we will be able: to address these children in the language
of God to: the patriarch, - I will bless thee, and make thee a
blessing.
We know no solid objection to which our scheme is open. Not
that we mean to say it will prove a good without any mixture of evil, or that
it cannot by any possibility be abused; but only that, if these are objections,
they are objections to which: the best and noblest schemes of Christian
benevolence are exposed. However, our extreme anxiety for the success of this
scheme leads us to address ourselves to some objections that may be conjured up
against it.
Now, we beg, in the first place, to observe, that this is no
scheme to relieve those whose vices have brought them to ruin, or whose
indolence keeps them in poverty. We fully accord with this sentiment of the
apostle, He that will not work should not eat. This is both the
judgment of Scripture and of reason. In very mercy to this world, God has
linked crime and suffering together; and it is a short-sighted benevolence
which, interfering with that law of Providence, attempts to dissolve the
connection. Let guilty parents suffer. They have eaten sour grapes, - let their
teeth be set on edge. But has not God said, What mean ye, that ye use
this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, the fathers have eaten sour
grapes, and the childrens teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the
Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in
Israel. And the question which we put to a humane and Christian public is
this : - Are we, without any efficient effort to save their innocent and
helpless offspring, to allow these guilty parents to draw them down into the
same gulf with themselves? We do not propose to contaminate our hospitals with
such children. Surely it would be one thing to rear the children of the wicked
in affluence, to provide them with a finished education, to house them in
splendid palaces; and another thing to save them from the pangs of hunger, and
from the crimes to which hunger tempts and drives them; to bless them with a
simple education, by which they might live decently in this world, and be
taught the way to a better.
Let me put a case! In the College Wynd of the
old Greyfriars parish, I found a mother, with some three young children
by her side, and a pale sickly infant in her arms. She was a drunkard. But
there was no bed there save some straw; there was no fire save some smouldering
cinders; there was not a morsel of bread in the house. I learnt this from being
constantly interrupted, while speaking to her, by the miserable object in her
arms incessantly saying something to its mother. On asking what it said, she
burst into tears, and told me it was asking for bread, and she had none to give
it. They had not broken their fast that day; and it was now past noon. Fresh
from a happy country parish, I was horrified at such a scene; and sent out for
a loaf. They fell on it like ravenous beasts. Now, the question I ask, and to
which I crave an answer, is this :- Should I have left these children to die of
hunger because their mother was a drunkard? If not, - if what I did was rather
to be commended than condemned, - how ought this scheme to commend itself to
the zealous support of Christian men? That food, perhaps, served to spin out
for but a little while their feeble thread of life it secured to them no
permanent benefit. But let the public observe, that the charity given in the
way we plead for does what common charity does not ; - it secures for every
child whose hunger it allays, and whose life it saves, the blessings of a
common and a Christian education.
We can fancy some people being at first
sight alarmed at our scheme, as one which will entail additional burdens on the
public. Grant that it did : - the benefit would more than compensate for the
burden. There is he that scattereth and yet increaseth ; and, -
never were the words more applicable, - there is he that withholdeth the
hand, and it tendeth to poverty. But it is not thus that we meet the
objection. We meet it fairly in the face. We deny that any additional burden
worth mentioning will press on the public. Do you fancy that, by rejecting this
appeal, and refusing to establish these schools, you, the public, will be saved
the expense of maintaining these outcasts? A great and demonstrable mistake.
They live just now; and how do they live? Not by their own honest industry, but
at your expense. They beg and steal for themselves ; or their parents beg and
steal for them. You are not relieved of the expense of their sustenance by
refusing my plea. The Old Man of the sea sticks to the back of Sinbad. Surely
it were better for Sinbad to teach the old man to walk on his own feet. I pray
the public to remember that begging and stealing, while in most cases poor
trades to those who pursue them, are dear ones to the public.
A friend just
now tells me of an old beggar, accomplished in his vocation, who used to lament
over the degeneracy of the age, saying, that men now-a-days didna ken how
to beg; that Kelso weel beggit was worth fifteen shillings ony day. These
beggars that you are breeding on the body politic are costly as well as
troublesome members of society. Catch yon little fellow, with his pale face and
piteous whine, and search, as some of us have done, his wallets. You will be
astonished at the stores of beef and bread concealed beneath his rags.
Dont blame him, however, because he whines on ; - he must reach his den
at night, laden like a bee with plunder. You forget that a sound beating may
await him if he returns empty-handed; for he has to keep his mother in whisky,
as well as his brothers and sisters in food. You have often tried to put down
public begging, the dearest and most vicious way of maintaining the poor; but
till some such plan as ours is adopted, you never can. Not to speak of the
beggars that prowl about our streets, hundreds of children set out every
morning to levy their subsistence for the day, by calls at private houses. They
beg when they may: they steal when they can. Is not such a system a disgrace to
society? Its evils are legion : and I can fancy no plan that goes so directly,
and with such sure promise of success, to the root of these evils, as that I
advocate. We say with Daniel Defoe, that begging is a shame to any country: if
the beggar is an unworthy object of charity, it is a shame that he should be
allowed to beg; if a worthy object of charity, it is a shame that he should be
compelled to beg.
We can again fancy some filled with fear lest such
institutions should prove a bounty on indolence, improvidence, and
dissipation. We might answer, that the same objection may be urged
against all charity; and that unless we are prepared to run some risk, we shall
never either obey the command of God to feed the hungry and clothe the naked,
or yield to the better feelings of our nature. But let us look more directly at
this objection. We are ready to meet it. Grant that the scheme were to act so
in some cases on the parents; still the good more than counterbalances the
evil. You are employing the only means whereby the children can be saved from
habits of indolence, improvidence, and dissipation. Suppose a man
already indolent, improvident, and dissipated, to have four children; without
this institution, these grow up in their fathers image. And what happens?
Let the public observe what happens. The evil is multiplied fourfold. These
four, again, become in course of time heads of families, - say, each the parent
of four children. And what happens now? The evil by this time is multiplied
sixteenfold ; and so it rolls on and deepens, like the waters of the
prophets vision; first reaching the ankle; then rising to the knee; then
to the loins; and by and by it is a river that cannot be passed over -
waters to swim in.
How easily and successfully the child is trained
to the vices of the man, we have had abundant evidence. We have heard a little
child of eight years of age confess that he had been carried home intoxicated;
and when he gaily and glibly told this story of early dissipation, it only
called forth the merriment of the ragged urchins around. The sucking babe is
drugged with opium; and spirits are administered to allay the cravings of
hunger. When examined on the state of her school, an excellent female teacher
in this town acknowledged to us, that she had often been obliged from her own
small salary to supply the wants of her hungry scholars. She had not the heart
to offer the letters to a child who had got no breakfast; and some days ago,
smelling spirits from a fine little girl, she drew from her this miserable
confession, that her only dinner had been the half of a biscuit and a little
whisky. How early this hapless class are initiated in the use of spirits, came
out the other day, to the astonishment of a friend of ours. While walking along
the streets, she observed some boys and girls clustered like bees on and around
a barrel. She asked them if it was a sugar barrel; and on learning that it was
a spirit one, she said, You surely dont like whisky?
For my pairt, Mem, says one, a little girl, - thinking, perhaps,
thereby to recommend herself - deed, Mem, for my pairt, I prefer the
strong ale.
In sober sadness we ask, is it not worth running some
risk to cure such evils, - such a moral gangrene, - as facts like these
disclose? But grant, again, that the dissipated father, because he sees his
poor children fed, educated, and disciplined at your expense, and not his own,
is thereby encouraged in habits of vice. What happens? If his children are
saved by this lnstltution,and remember, they cannot be saved without it, - at
his death society suffers no longer. The evil ceases with himself; and, instead
of extending along the line of his posterity, and multiplying with their
multiplication, it is buried in the drunkards grave.
That any decent,
sober, church-going, affectionate father, who is at present educating and
honestly maintaining his family, will cease to work and take to drinking,
because he will get the children whom he loves, and for whom he loves to
labour, educated and fed in such a school as we suggest, along with the
sweepings of the neighbourhood, is an idea too absurd to be entertained by any
reasonable man. It were waste of time, paper, and public patience, to answer an
objection so utterly repugnant to human nature, and contrary to all experience.
But I am not content simply to repel the objection, and show that such an
institution will prove no bounty on indolence, improvidence, and dissipation. I
believe the truth lies altogether the other way; and having had more to do than
many with the victims of these vices, I may be permitted to express my thorough
conviction, that the uncared-for and desperate circumstances of the poor often
prove strong temptations to the waste that leads to want. They are helpless
because they are hopeless. It is after they get desperate that they get
dissipated. Man thirsts for happiness; and when everything in his neglected,
and unpitied, and unhelped sorrows is calculated to make him miserable, he
seeks visions of bliss in the day-dreams of intoxication; and from the horrors
that follow on excess he flies again to the arms of the enchanter. The
intoxicating cup brings - what he never has without it, - though a passing,
still a present feeling of joy and comfort. Of course, I here speak of one who
is a stranger to the consolations of religion, and the faith of Him who said,
Though the fig-tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit in the
vine, I will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation. It
is easy for those who walk through the world rolled in flannels and cased in
good broad cloth, - who sit down every day to a sumptuous, at least a
comfortable dinner, - who have never had to sing a hungry child to sleep, nor
to pawn their Bible to buy bread, - it is very easy for such to wonder why the
poor, who should be so careful, are often so wasteful. What have they to
do with drink ? it is said; what temptation have they to drink
? I pray them,-not that I defend the thing, but detest it, - but I pray
them to hear the testimony of one who knew human nature well. The Laird and
Maggie are haggling about a fish bargain.
"Ill gie them," says
Maggie, "and - and - and - half-a-dozen o partans to mak the sauce,
for three shillings and a dram."
Half-a-crown then, Maggie, and
a dram, replies the Laird.
"Awed, your honour maun haet your am
gate, nae doubt; but a drams worth siller now, - the distilleries is no
working."
"And I hope theyll never work again in my time, said
Oldbuck.
"Ay, ay, its easy for your honour, and the like o you
gentle folks, to say sae, that hae stouth and routh, and fire and fending, and
meat and claith, and sit dry and canny by the fire-side; but an ye wanted
fire, and meat, and dry claise, and were deeing o cauld, and had a sair
heart, - whilk is warst ava, - wi just tippence in your pouch, - wadna ye
be glad to buy a dram wi t, to be eilding and claise, and a supper and
hearts ease into the bargain, till the morns morning?"
There is
a world of melancholy truth in this description.
I quote the above as the
testimony of a man who had studied human nature: and I now quote what follows,
as the inspired words of one whose proverbs contain the most remarkable record
of practical observation and every-day wisdom that the world contains. What
says Solomon? The destruction of the poor is their poverty. He saw
the connection between desperate circumstances and dissipated habits; and
elsewhere he says, Let him drink to forget his poverty, and remember his
misery no more. The truth is, that a poor widow, with a babe at her
breast, with three children at her side, and with only a sixpence a week
allowed for each, to meet therewith the cost of food, fuel, house-rent,
clothes, and education, is often driven to desperation. She struggles on for a
while; and, turning into temporary floats, by the help of the pawnbroker, this
article and that, with her children hanging on her, she keeps her head awhile
to the stream. At length, having taken her last decent bit of furniture or
dress to the pawn, she can contest it no longer. She loses heart. Seeing no
hope, she seeks to drown in drink the consciousness of her misery, and is borne
down the flood of ruin. If you cannot understand this temptation, I will help
you to do so. Look at that door, where an officer stands with a sword in one
hand, and a finger of the other on the trigger of a pistol ! Who and what are
these desperate and haggard men that press in upon him? A band of pirates who
have boarded his ship? Does he stand there to guard its freight of gold? No, he
guards its spirit-room. Six days ago, the sea was calm, - hope was bright as
heaven, - the good ship bounded over the billows, - and not a man of that band
but he had only to say to him, Go, and he goeth. But the storm
came, and the sails flew into ribbons, and the masts went by the board, and the
seams gaped to the sea, and the pumps were choked, and the vessel now lies
water-logged. The men have strained their eyes for a sail on the wide round of
waters, and have ceased to hope. The cry has been raised, To the
spirit-room ! and by this time they had drowned their sorrows in
intoxication, but that that calm, determined man stands there, and having drawn
a chalk line across the passage, assures them he will cut down the first that
attempts to cross.
Far be it from me to say a word in defence of a crime
which is the curse of our people, the shame of our country, and the blot of our
Churches. But dont deceive yourselves; you will never starve men into
sobriety. No; but you can starve many into drunkenness. One demon never cast
out another; although some seem to know as little of human nature as did the
Jews of old, when they blasphemously said of our Divine Redeemer, He
casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. I have seen and
admired the efforts which the poor put forth when a ray of hope breaks through
the gloom; and, instead of aggravating the evils of dissipation, I am confident
that the hope which such an institution would shed on the gloomy prospects of
many a forlorn family, would help to charm and chase the demon away. It would
make the widows heart sing for joy. It would keep up her sinking head, -
to see that now her poor, dear children had the prospect of being saved. It
would have the same effect on her as the cry of A sail ! has had on
the mutinous crew, when, in that blessed sight and blessed sound, Hope boards
the sinking ship. They return once more to their right mind, and now strain
every nerve to keep themselves afloat.
It cannot be denied that at this
moment many of our poor are miserably provided for: and, let me ask, how could
an addition be so well or wisely made to their wretched pittance, as by
securing for their children such an education, as with the blessing of God,
would train them up into honest and useful members of society? The present
system is vicious and defective. If the State or society is bound to maintain
the children of the destitute, it is bound to do, what it does not, - educate
them also. It pretends to do the first, - to a large extent it does not even
pretend to do the second. By our scheme both would be done. If parents and
others are inclined to abuse our charity, and make it minister to their own
vices, instead of their childrens maintenance, this scheme goes like a
knife to the root of that evil. The children, - the innocent sufferers, - those
who, in the case of dissipated parents, become all the more objects of
Christian pity, - are, in the institutions we plead for, made sure of food,
knowledge, habits of discipline and industry; in short, they are placed beyond
the reach of their parents rapacity. The principle of our scheme lies
here: we feed in order to educate; just because we believe that if you seek the
good of the individual child, the benefit of society, and the glory of God, it
is better to pay for the education of the boy, than for the punishment of the
man.
We never could clearly see our way to the justice which punishes the
child, in cases when it may be truly said, that he has less sinned than been
sinned against. We are confident that the sentence which condemns is often
wrung from reluctant judges. I cannot transfer to paper the touching
description of a trial I heard from my friend Mr. Lothian, Procurator-Fiscal
for the county of Edinburgh. On the occasion I allude to, he was the advocate
of a boy who was charged with theft. The prisoner was a mere child. When he
stood up, the crown of his head just reached the top of the bar. The crime was
clearly proved; and now came Mr. Lothians time to shield him from the arm
of the law. By the evidence of two or three policemen, he proved that that
untaught, unschooled, untrained, uncared-for infant, had a parent, by whose
brutal cruel usage he was compelled to steal. Then, causing the poor child to
be lifted up, and placed upon the bar, in the sight of the wondering, pitying
court, he turned round to the jury-box with this simple but telling appeal : -
Gentlemen, he said, remember what I have proved; look on
that infant, and declare him guilty if you can.
In such cases justice
is perplexed what to do It is not the heart only, but the head also, which is
dissatisfied with the punishment. It is not on Mercy, but on Justice, that we
call to interpose her shield, and protect the victim from the arm of the law.
The guilty party is not at the bar; and when the arm of Justice descends on a
child whom its country has neglected, abandoned to temptation, and left without
protection from a parents cruelty, she reminds us of the figure that
stood some years ago over the courts of law in Londonderry. A heavy storm had
swept across the country, and, tearing away the scales, had left poor Justice
nothing but her sword. The law in such cases may pronounce its sentence; but
humanity, reason, and religion, revolt against it. In Scotland, if a man is
charged with crime, the jury, in the case of his acquittal, may return either a
verdict of not guilty, or not proven. Where there is strong ground to suspect
the party guilty, yet some slight flaw in the legal proof of his guilt, - the
prisoner is acquitted under a verdict of not proven; and if there are cases
where the verdict is in truth, guilty, but not proven, - in the
case of these unhappy children who are suffering for the crimes of their
parents and neglect of society, with what truth might this verdict be returned,
proven, but not guilty!
No offence can be committed but there
is guilt somewhere. In the cases I refer to, however, the guilty party is not
the child at the bar. In the parents who have trained the child to crime, and
in society, that has made no effective effort to save for him, there are other
two parties. It may not be easy for us to decide where the guilt lies, or in
what proportion it is shared between them; but we are thoroughly persuaded,
that in the day of final judgment there will be found many an unhappy child who
has stood at the bar of man, for whose crimes other parties shall have to
answer at the bar of God. We dont say that society can remedy every
wrong; nor do we entertain the Utopian expectation that, by these schools, or
by any other means, crime can be banished from this guilty world; but certainly
institutions which will secure to these children a common and Christian
education, and habits of discipline and industry, are rich in promise. We know
that the returns of autumn fall always short of the promise of summer, - that
the fruit is never so abundant as the flower; still, though not so Utopian as
to expect that these schools will save all, we have good ground, both in reason
and Scripture, to expect that they will save many who seem otherwise doomed to
ruin.
To take the lowest of all ground, - to descend from the high
considerations of humanity, morality, and religion, look only at the pecuniary
saving. To come down from the profit and loss of souls, to the profit and the
loss of money, - we claim for this scheme the public support. It may be laid
down as an axiom, that the prevention of crime is cheaper than its punishment.
Our schools will more than repay the outlay. Put out of view the return which
their work brings in, and which in Aberdeen amounts to a considerable item of
the expense, and enter on the one side the expense of these schools, and on the
other the saving to the country, through the diminution of crime, and, when the
account is closed, we have a large balance in our favour. We pray those who are
afraid of the probable expense of our Ragged Schools, to look at the actual
expense of our criminal prosecutions. To confine ourselves to the case of
convicts ; - does the reader know that there are about three hundred of these
annually transported from Scotland? Do the inhabitants of Edinburgh know that
our city furnishes about one hundred of these? And that, overlooking the
expense of previous convictions, and the money which the subjects of them cost
when living by theft and beggary, the actual expense of their conviction of the
offence for which they are transported, and of the transportation itself, is
not less than One Hundred Pounds a head! For convicts belonging to this city we
pay Ten Thousand Pounds a year; and for the single item of the trial and
transportation of convicts, who are, after all, but a handful of the other
criminals, Scotland pays annually about Thirty Thousand Pounds. Look at the
following table, which Mr. Smith, governor of the prison, has kindly furnished.
If sensible men only knew what enormous sums are paid for the punishment of
crimes, they would, as a matter of mere economy, hail with pleasure a scheme so
likely to prevent it. This table will convince many, that in doing so little
towards the education and salvation of the unhappy outcasts at our doors, we
have been for a long time, to use a vulgar but expressive saying, penny
wise and pound foolish.
Statement of the Expenditure for
Criminal Prosecutions, Maintenance of Criminals, &c., for Scotland, for the
year 1846.
Expense of Prosecutions carried on in name and by authority
of the Lord Advocate . . . . £13,775
Sums required by the Sheriffs in
Scotland to settle accounts for prosecutions . . . . . . . . . £49,000
Expenditure of Prison Boards of counties in Scotland, for maint., &c.,
of prisoners . . . .. £43,366
Proportion effeiring to Scotland for
convicts sent to Millbank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .£3,932
Total Brought forward -£110,073
Proportion effeiring to
Scotland for convicts sent abroad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. £28,830
Proportion effeiring to Scotland for convicts at home,
Bermuda, Gibraltar, &c. . . . . . . . .£7,193
Expense of Prison
Board in Scotland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .£1740
Prison Inspectors allowances, including
travelling charges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .£1200
Justiciary Court and Crown agent for stationery, printing, &c. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . £1009
Grand Total . .
£150,045
In addition to the above, vast expenses are incurred in
the punishment of crime, the amount of which we cannot specify, such as, -
Expense of Court of Justiciary, including judges salaries, travelling
expenses on circuits, macers, &c.; salaries of the Lord Advocate,
Solicitor-General, and Depute-Advocates; Crown agents salary, including
assistants, &c.
The following should also be included :- Expenditure by
the several counties, cities, and burghs in Scotland, in supporting their
respective police establishments; expenditure by ditto in precognitions and
summary prosecutions in criminal cases, not reported by the Sheriff to the Lord
Advocate; one years interest on capital expended in building prisons,
lock-up houses, &c.
Some one has said, How cheap is charity
! This beautiful saying might form the motto of our Industrial Schools.
No man, we think, can read this table of expense without the conviction being
borne in on his mind, that it is high time to be doing more in the way of
preventing, that we may have to do less in the way of punishing, crime.
Nothing more strongly recommends the scheme to me than the fact, that it
reconciles two great and good philanthropists, who seem to be opposed to each
other, - both lovers of the poor, both earnest for their good, - both proposing
for the same end what appear different plans, - and yet both right. With Dr.
Chalmers we have always thought that it was through moral and Christian
machinery that our degraded and deep-sunk population were to be raised. For
their permanent good we have no faith in any other scheme. With Dr. Alison,
again, we always thought that the maintenance of the poor was miserably
inadequate to their wants; and that this stood as a barrier between them and
the moral influences by which Dr. Chalmers would ameliorate and permanently
improve their character. We agreed with both, and confess that we could never
very well see how they seemed to disagree with each other. In, as it were, the
presence of such men, I speak on this subject with unfeigned humility The two
schemes may go hand in hand. Nay, more, lik the Siamese twins, the presence of
the one should insure the company of the other. Our scheme furnishes a common
walk for both these distinguish philanthropists. Under the self-same roof the
temporal and the moral wants of our forlorn poor are provided for: and both
these Doctors meet harmoniously in our school-room. Dr. Alison comes in with
his bread, - Dr. Chalmers with his Bible: here is food for the body, - there
for the soul. Dr. Alisons bread cannot be abused, - Dr Chalmers
Bible is, heard by willing ears, and so this scheme, meeting the views of both,
lays its hands upon them both
We have been dealing with objectors and
objections, if any such there be If any man into whose hands this appeal may
fall is ready to toss it aside as an effort made on behalf of those who are not
worth saving, either for this world or the next, let him read the following
passage -
Push it aside, and let it float down the stream, said
the captain of a steam-boat on a small western river, as we came upon a huge
log lying crosswise in the channel, near to a large town at which we were about
to stop. The headway of the boat had already been checked, and with a trifling
effort the position of the log was changed, and it moved onward toward the
Mississippi. On it went, perhaps to annoy others, as it had annoyed us, - to
lodge here and there, until it becomes so water-soaken, that the heavier end
will sink into a sand-bar, and the lighter project upward, thus forming a
sawyer, or a snag. It would have taken a little more
effort to cast it high upon the land; but no one on board appeared to think of
doing that, or anything else, save getting rid of it as easily as possible, for
it had not yet become a formidable evil. By and by, if a steam-boat should be
going down the river, and strike against it, causing a loss of thousands of
dollars, if not of life, hundreds will ask the old question, if something
cannot be done to remedy such evils, without stopping to inquire whether they
cannot be prevented.
Now, this is the way in which some of us work,
who profess to have a better knowledge than that which belongs to the world. We
forget that old proverb, that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of
cure, - that that is the truest wisdom which advises the overcoming of the
beginnings of evil. It may cost us less seeming labour to push
aside the boy who stands at the corner of the street on the Sabbath, with
an oath on his lips, than to put forth a little extra effort to get him into a
Sabbath-school. But he is not yet a formidable evil to society, and so is left
to float down with the current of vice, - to continue his growth in sin, and
reach his manhood steeped in habits of evil, and fixed in a position that may
work the ruin of more than one soul.
Yes, it is easy to push aside
the poor boy in the street, with a harsh and unfeeling refusal, saying to your
neighbour, These are the pests of the city. Call them, if you
choose, the rubbish of society; only let us say, that there are jewels among
that rubbish, which would richly repay the expense of searching. Bedded in
their dark and dismal abodes, precious stones lie there, which only wait to be
dug out and polished, to shine, first on earth, and hereafter and for ever in a
Redeemers crown.
Dr. Chalmers has eloquently expounded, and often
practically exemplified, the principle, that when convinced ourselves, we ought
to begin at once; nor delay action till all are ready to move. And in drawing
these remarks to a close, we have to mention, that, acting on this principle,
an Interim Committee of gentlemen have secured premises, and taken steps for
the speedy opening of a Ragged School in this city. We cast ourselves with
perfect faith on God, and the support of a humane and Christian public. We hope
to see the matter taken up on a large and general plan, worthy of its merits
and worthy of the metropolis of Scotland. In the meantime, we are content to be
the mere pioneers of this movement; and for such a noble experiment we trust to
be provided with funds amply sufficient for the expenses we incur. For such
assistance we can promise a richer return than our thanks, - even the blessing
of those that are ready to perish.
In closing this appeal, I have only
further to add, that we are all but confident of public support. We have
brought forth revelations of the state of the poor, which will be new to many.
If any of these read this appeal, their ignorance cannot henceforth excuse
their apathy. Such schools, in smaller or greater numbers, are needed in many
towns. We hope to see Christians of all denominations, and politicians of all
parties, throughout the country as well as in Edinburgh, putting forth cordial
and combined efforts to establish and extend Ragged Schools. Though, for the
sake of the perishing, we may regret the defects and inadequacy of this appeal,
we will never regret that it has been made. It were better far in such a cause
to fail, than to stand idly by and see the castaway perish. If the drowning man
sinks before we reach him, it will be some consolation to reflect that we did
our best to save him. Though we bore home but the dead body of her boy, we
should earn a mothers gratitude and blessing. We had tried to save him:
and from that blessed One who made Himself poor that He might make us rich,
-who was full of compassion, kind and patient to the bad, - and who hath set us
an example that we should follow His steps, - we shall at least earn this
approving sentence, They have done what they could.