Beghards

“ Ah, me! there must be some genuine beggars, I suppose, and their state here is not such an enviable one that we should be very angry at it, as if they were getting all the good things to themselves. Look at these foreign paupers, at their faces, their clothes. Don’t you think they would gladly earn money if they could? Don’t you suppose it possible that many of them are so stupid, so ignorant, so awkward, that they never could master a handicraft, and have come to what they are after spending the prime of their lives in the lowest brute-like toil? ”

“ But the right understanding and true meaning of the book is, after all, this, viz. that princes, lords, counsellors of state, and everybody should be prudent, and cautious in dealing with beggars, and learn that, whereas people will not give and help honest paupers and needy neighbours, as ordained by God, they give, by the persuasion of the devil, and contrary to God’s judgment, ten times as much to Vagabonds and desperate rogues,—in like manner as we have hitherto done to monasteries, cloisters, churches, chapels, and mendicant friars, forsaking all the time the truly poor. ”

“ The question has to be faced by the traveller—What are you going to do with the beggars? I felt the need of a definite policy. At first, when we ourselves were near starving, I said “No” consistently, for I hadn’t any money. Then when money came I hardened my heart and said, “It is better to be a thief than a beggar: it is more manly. If I give to beggars I make it more profitable to be a beggar; I attract other people to beggary. If I withhold my money I drive some beggars to robbery, and then the police have to deal with them.” ”

“ The Observation which I shall add hereunto, is, That the vast number of Beggars, swarming up and down this City, do all live, and seem to be most of them healthy and strong; whereupon I make this question, Whether, since they do all live by begging, that is, without any kind of labour; it were not better for the State to keep them, even although they earned nothing? that so they might live regularly, and not in that Debauchery, as many Beggars do ”

“ These men, unlike the ordinary, old-fashioned beggars, look on the rich, not as on people who wish to save their souls by distributing alms, but as on highwaymen and robbers who suck the blood of the working classes. It often happens that a beggar of this sort does no work himself and carefully avoids work, and yet considers himself, in the name of the workers, not merely justified, but bound, to hate the robbers of the people—that is to say, the rich—and to hate them from the depths of his heart ”

“ These poor coins often serve to satisfy the superfluous wants which idleness breeds. A peasant rarely takes snuff; many beggars cannot do without it; they ask for it more eagerly than for bread. So the beggar is no more to be pitied than the labourer; but he is corrupt and debauched, when he is not a scoundrel and a brute, which, in truth, is seldom enough.
"'This, then, is what ought to be done,' I said to Edmée; 'and the abbé tells me that this is also the idea of your philosophers. ”

“ These retainers do not wear the brazen bracelet; they are free. Are there, then, no beggars? Yes, they sit at every corner, and about the gates of the cities, asking for alms.
Though begging makes a man forfeit to the State, it is only when he has thews and sinews, and can work. The diseased and aged, the helpless and feeble, may break the law, and starve by the roadside, because it profits no one to make them his slaves. And all these things are done in the name of morality, and for the good of the human race, as they constantly announce in their councils and parliaments. ”

“ And because many sound beggars do refuse to labour so long as they can live from begging alms, giving themselves up to idleness and sins, and, at times, to robbery and other crimes—let no one, under the aforesaid pain of imprisonment presume, under colour of piety or alms to give anything to such as can very well labour, or to cherish them in their sloth,—so that thus they may be compelled to labour for the necessaries of life. ”

“ Why have we hearts like other people, and anguish which breaks them?——Ah, the very beggar-women in rags in the street are less miserable! No handsome spy comes to them, to make their souls falter, and then flees-and after that their children are not taken away from them!——Your Empress would rather be a beggar, hungry and cold, but clasping her little one to her breast——Yes, a beggar I tell you, who holds out her hand to passers-by as she sits on the steps of a temple!—— [Sobbing, she throws herself on the terrace steps.] ”

“ Beggars and kings are in accord; they are all parasites, living on the same blood, stealing the same labor—one by beggary, the other by force. And yet in all this there can be found no reason for denouncing the man who has accumulated. One who wishes to tear down his bams and build greater has laid aside something to keep the wolf of want from the door of home when he is dead.
Even the beggars see the necessity of others working, and the nobility see the same necessity with equal clearness. ”

“ And they said to him, ‘It is a beggar and the child of a beggar, and we have driven him away.’
‘Nay,’ he cried, laughing, ‘but we will sell the foul thing for a slave, and his price shall be the price of a bowl of sweet wine.’
And an old and evil-visaged man who was passing by called out, and said, ‘I will buy him for that price,’ and, when he had paid the price, he took the Star-Child by the hand and led him into the city. ”

“ There would have to be an overseer or warden who knew all the poor and informed the city council or the priests what they needed; or some other better arrangement might be made. In my judgment there is no other business in which so much knavery and deceit are practised as in begging, and yet it could all be easily abolished. Moreover, this free and universal begging hurts the common people. I have considered that each of the five or six mendicant orders [211] visits the same place more than six or seven times every year ”

“ The life of a beggar is a delicacy without bone, an uninterrupted stream of pleasure, an employment exempt from trouble and vexation. How void of sense must my ancestors have been to have taken so much pains to live in wretchedness! In how many perplexities have they been involved for the sake of supporting their commerce and reputation! O absurd honour of this world, thou art but a millstone to sink such fools as consent to be burdened with thee! ”

“ Suppose that in this community there are ten beggars who beg from door to door for something to eat, and that nine of them are impostors who beg to escape work, and with an evil heart practise imposition upon the generous and sympathetic, and that only one of the ten who visit your doors is worthy of your bounty; which is best, to give food to the ten, to make sure of helping the truly needy one, or to repulse the ten because you do not know which is the worthy one? ”

“ Idle beggars are such either through other men’s occasion or through their own default—by other men’s occasion (as one way for example) when some covetous man (such, I mean, as have the cast or right vein daily to make beggars enough whereby to pester the land, espying a further commodity in their commons, holds, and tenures) doth find such means as thereby to wipe many out of their occupyings and turn the same unto his private gains. ”

“ Judge you of the influence this gave me over the populace, who are without comparison the most considerable in all public disturbances. For the rich never come into such measures unless they are forced, and beggars do more harm than good, because it is known that they aim at plunder; those, therefore, who are capable of doing most service are such as are not reduced to common beggary, yet so straitened in their circumstances as to wish for nothing more than a general change of affairs in order to repair their broken fortunes. ”

“ Every beggar, every pauper, born and bred amongst us, is a reproach to us, and condemns our civilization. For how has it come to pass that in a land of abundance here are men, for no fault of their own, born into want, living in want, and dying of want? and that, while we pretend to a religion which says all men are brothers! There is a horrid wrong somewhere. ”

“ It provided that any able-bodied beggar or idle vagrant, having no land or master, and using no lawful merchandise, craft, or mystery for his living, should be brought before a justice of the peace, or in a corporate town the mayor, who should see him whipped at the cart-tail, and then, if a beggar, returned to his place of birth or residence, there to work as a true man ought to do, or if an idle person but no beggar, either put to labour or set in the stocks until he found surety to go to service. ”

“ Let the pampered daughter of wealth and social fame, who goes astray, share the pitiless fate of the beggar who does likewise, or, better still, let the beggar be shown such mercy, and justification and pardon as is granted her sister in high life. In the sight of God crime is the one color, why not so with men? ”

“ And surely no one can wonder at the great army of beggars, most of them able-bodied men, with whom the police carries on perpetual war. But the beggary of these men has a peculiar character. Such a man usually goes about with his family singing a pleading song in the streets or appealing, in a speech, to the benevolence of the passers-by. And it is a striking fact that these beggars are seen almost exclusively in the working-people’s districts, that it is almost exclusively the gifts of the poor from which they live. ”

“ Long live the Beggars!’ What a millstone of a curse hath therefore fallen upon this bewitched and foolish folk, ah! Jesus! Everywhere, rich and poor, noble and base, young and old, men and women, all cry out: ‘Long live the Beggars!’
“And what are all these lords, these scald leather seats that have come to us from Germany? All their having is gone on harlots, or gaming, lechery, lewdness, long-drawn debauchery, rooted villainies, abominations of dice and ostentation of outward array. They have not even a rusty nail to scratch themselves with where they itch. ”

“ The beggars, of course, are worse; crawling across your path and dragging themselves after you to display their physical damages, often self-inflicted, in quest of a soldo of sympathy. Express compassion in other than monetary terms and you get it back instanter, along with a dazing assortment of vitriolic maledictions. As the visitor’s patience gives way under the strain, it presently becomes a very pretty question as to whose language is the most horrific, his own or the beggar’s. ”

“ But the fact disproves these amateur opinions. The beggar lives by his knowledge of the average man. He knows what he is about when he bandages his head, and hires and drugs a babe, and poisons life with “Poor Mary Ann” or “Long, long ago”; he knows what he is about when he loads the critical ear and sickens the nice conscience with intolerable thanks; they know what they are about, he and his crew, when they pervade the slums of cities, ghastly parodies of suffering, hateful parodies of gratitude. ”

“ The other classes, in proportion to their numbers, contribute just about as many beggars to the community as the working population, and such beggars are generally the most hardened and villainous specimens of their tribe. With the beggar sprung from the working population one is sometimes able to do something, but a beggar who has descended from the higher walks of life is one of the most hopeless, as well as one of the most corrupt creatures it is possible to conceive. ”

“ It was an Englishman's spirit; but in our country, I imagine, a beggar considers himself a kind of outlaw, and would hardly assume the privileges of a man in any place of public resort. Here beggary is a system, and beggars are a numerous class, and make themselves, in a certain way, respected as such. ”

“ They are so surprised at receiving unsolicited charity that they forget to offer any thanks. The man whom I have just mentioned, who had a parcel of food every morning, would rather you passed him by without giving him money, for fear a policeman would see the act and accuse him of begging, and move him from his favourite seat. As I have said, most of them know places where they can get food without begging, outside large factories and elsewhere. They are seldom to be seen in private streets, because they do not beg houses. ”

“ Giving the beggar an old coat, only to be called on by some other beggar for a like coat, and never seeking to abolish beggary and its attendant sufferings by some judicious means of abolishing beggars themselves, by destroying the causes which create them, is unscientific, paltry, and in every way unwise at best. ”

“ Some of the large boarding houses in England are kept by them, and they hire men, women, and children to beg; they are licensed beggars. The women borrow their neighbor's children and carry them out to deceive the industrious and wealthy population, and thus they excite the sympathies of, and beg from, every passenger going into or coming out of a conveyance, and perhaps go to their homes twice or three times a-day loaded down with money. ”

“ They found that the amiable, careless, unquestioning alms-giving was breeding a class of paupers, people who did not seek work nor wish to work, but who lived, and who meant to live, by beggary, who bred their children to do likewise, and whose haunts and associations and habits became great nurseries of crime. ”