Mendicity

“ My own good nature prompts me here to draw the veil, only adding a word on the subject of mendicity.
In our beastly kingdom mendicity is unknown. We would rather starve than mimic all the ills of life in order to gain a beggarly living. ”

“ We are far enough, in this case, from that mendicity which is understood as a means of existence and the essential condition of a life of idleness. It is the opposite extreme, and we are true and just to St. Francis and to the origin of the mendicant orders only when we do not separate the obligation of labor from the praise of mendicity.4
No doubt this zeal did not last long, and Thomas of Celano already entitles his chapters, "Lament before God over the idleness and gluttony of the friars;" ”

“ Ever increasing poverty, and the spreading canker of mendicity invaded fields and cities. Lazy squalor, brutifying superstition, and the degrading and unmanly vices fostered by the morality of the confessional, marked the fallen region as their own! ”

“ If vagrancy and mendicity sprang from the innate qualities of man, there would always have been vagrants and mendicants, which is not the case. The appearance of these is due to the economic structure of society. ”

“ In the mean time, a slight sketch of the state and progress of mendicity in former ages may be neither unacceptable nor without its use.
The Beggar's calling, if not one of the most respectable, may doubtless be regarded as one of the most ancient. In every part of the globe where man is congregated, the inequality of his condition, the too frequent indolence of his habits, or the shifts to which human misery is occasionally reduced, will compel him to depend for his support on the generosity of his fellow-creatures, and even sometimes lead him to prefer this disgraceful state of existence. ”

“ When it is necessary to record a certain number of convictions for vagrancy and mendicity, although the economic conditions are most favorable, we shall not even then be able to say that this proves that the convictions fell only upon persons who could have found work, but did not wish it. ”

“ To sum up, it is evident that the principal causes of vagrancy and mendicity are lack of work, the want of care for the old, the sick, and the weak, the abandonment of poor children, the low wages and long hours of the workers. The persons who run most danger of being incorporated in the army of vagrants are the weak, whether mentally or physically, but this need not necessarily happen ”

“ Every person may for himself test the accuracy of these statements by the examination of the brick work near his own doorway—thus demonstrating that mendicity is a regular trade, carried out upon a system calculated to save time, and realise the largest profits.” These remarks refer mainly to provincial towns, London being looked upon as the tramps’ home, and therefore too FLY, or experienced, to be duped by such means. ”

“ The information contained in this article is chiefly drawn from the report of a committee of the House of Commons, appointed, in 1815, to inquire into the state of mendicity in the metropolis. Beggars are classed into those who beg from necessity, and those who beg from choice. ”

“ And thus mendicancy is made honourable at the expense of honest toil. It should be further remarked that there are a number of begging castes, in which all work is proscribed and mendicity exalted into a divinely ordained profession! ”

“ Therefore, if he is able-bodied he must be punished as unsocial, for it is his fault that he belongs to no one; or we must make him some one’s dependant, and so keep him; or if he is infirm, and therefore of no service to any one—if no one will keep him—we must organize his mendicity, for such mendicity is justified. ”

“ Yet how fruitlessly one may argue. To whom is the reproach, that while we may add our mite to aid the propagation of the Gospel abroad, we dare not relieve gaunt misery in the street at home, for fear of encouraging systematic mendicity ”

“ In some cases, then, it is more profitable, and in all cases more easy, not to work. In consequence of these facts we read very often that the public ought not to give to these idlers. But the public cannot distinguish this class of mendicants from the others. It is certainly true that professional mendicity would diminish if nothing were given to mendicants; but on the other hand the great misery among the other poor would be aggravated still more. ”

“ Too long already have the virtuous citizens of this metropolis seen with concern the growing numbers of the Beggars, their impudence, and their open and shameless debaucheries; yet idleness and mendicity (those pests of society) have been so feebly counteracted, that, instead of being checked and suppressed, they have triumphed over those weak attempts to restrain them and acquiring fresh vigour and activity from success, have spread their baleful influence far and wide. ”

“ On the other hand, to those who, in our states, are obliged to eat the bread of mendicity,436 children are a blessing; because as long as they are incapable of running alone, they increase their alms by exciting greater compassion, and afterwards by begging in the streets1057. ”

“ In any time of general pressure there is a desire to organize mendicity, to prevent the wandering of beggars, to create a kind of settled poor, distinguished from the rest as infirm and not able-bodied, and to keep these at least at home sufficiently supported by local and parochial relief; and this, in its simpler form all the world over, has in the past been by response to public begging. The argument may be summed up thus: We cannot have begging, which implies that the beggar is cared for by no one, belongs to no one, and therefore throws himself on the world at large. ”

“ If he cannot dig for the man to whom he does or should belong, he must beg. Then out of the failure to organize mendicity—for relief of itself is no remedy, least of all casual relief—a poor-law springs up, which, afterwards associated with the provision of employment, will, it is hoped, make relief in some measure remedial by increasing its quantity by means of compulsory levies. This argument, which combined statutory wage control and statutory poor relief, seems to have been firmly bedded in the English legislative mind for more than two centuries, from 1351 till after 1600 ”

“ To assume the semblance of misery 162is the business of the mendicant, and his success depends upon the skill with which he exercises deception. A mass of filth, nakedness, and squalor, is thus kept moving about the country, entering every house, addressing itself to every eye, and soliciting from every hand; and much of the filth and indolence observable in the cabins, clothing, and general conduct of the peasantry, may I think be traced to this source, and I doubt even if those above the class of labourers altogether escape the taint. ”

“ The friars mendicant, who will live as their fathers lived.
The first figure that appears is a “friar mendicant, living by the alms of the king’s subjects, forming himself to the fashions of the people.” He is “going about from house to house, and when he comes to aged and simple people he will say to them, ‘Father or sister, what a world this is! It was not so in your father’s days. It is a perilous world. They will have no pilgrimages. They will not we should pray to saints, or fast, or do any good deeds. ”

“ Brother after brother tried, but the great creature still remained untouched, when a travelling mendicant stepped forward and cried aloud:
"That is no bird, but an evil magician who has taken that form to deceive you all. If he is not killed before he takes his own form again, he will bring misery and ruin upon this town and the surrounding country."
You know perhaps that mendicants or beggars in India are often holy men whose advice even kings are glad to listen to; so that, when everyone heard what this beggar said, there was great excitement and terror. ”

“ The poor, ragged, trembling mendicant, who is forced by hunger and cold to drag his feeble body from under some temporary shelter, to seek a bit of bread, or a coin from his more fortunate fellow-mortal, if he can only obtain a few crusts of bread to satisfy the hunger-worm that gnaws his vitals, and a few coppers to pay his lodgings, he has attained to the summit of his expectations, to what he sought for salvation, and he is comparatively happy, but his happiness vanishes with the shades of night, and his misery comes with the morning light. ”

“ That among the men I should find calumny, envy, and ill nature, in the highest degree, or else gluttony, drunkenness, and impurities of a more execrable kind than adultery itself: and as for the mendicant orders, that they fer in nothing but their habits from other sturdy beggars, who deceive people with a pitiful tone, and an outward show of misery, and as soon as they are out of sight, lay by their cant, indulge their appetites, and enjoy one another. ”

“ Once upon a time there was a town called Atpat.1 In it there lived a bania who had no son. Every day a religious mendicant used to come to his house and call out, “Alms! Alms! In the name of God, give me alms.” But when the bania’s wife offered him alms he refused them, because she had no children. She told her husband, who advised her to play a trick on the mendicant. She hid behind her door, and as he called out “Alms! alms!” she slipped a gold piece into his wallet. But the mendicant caught her and became very angry. ”

“ They do not whine or fawn like ordinary beggars, but lift their voices in execration when their appeals are not readily met and with their naked slate-coloured 96 bodies raised to their full height, they cast dust into the air to emphasise their maledictions. Whether by alms or thefts, the mendicant leads an easy, lazy life, his needs are well cared for by the charitable who firmly believe they “acquire merit” by ministering to them. ”

“ The transition from the one state to the other is not a very pronounced one, and the step into the position of a habitual beggar is not hard to take after a certain number of lessons in the mendicant's art have once been learnt. ”

“ Among the number of these Christian hermits there doubtless were some elevated, if mistaken, spirits, of whom, however, only a few can actually have found peace and satisfaction in such a manner of life. But the majority certainly consisted of petty souls, whom it cost but little to renounce many of those things by which man is really made man. The mendicant who in our day sits silent and solitary in the same spot in all weathers, waiting for the charity of the passers by, might perhaps, in those times and regions, have become a holy anchorite. ”

“ It has been well said that one-half of the world does not know how the other half lives, and the history of mendicants of every degree would furnish the outside public with strange revelations, many of which would appear almost incredible.
The mendicant poor are in every way a different race of beings to the working population of this country. ”

“ The women should know, the men too, that at the back doors or on the streets we cannot do the right thing. We can give only inadequate relief. We can only push a human being down the stairs of manhood to the level of a parasite.
THE HISTORICAL VIEW.
Let us look at the matter historically. We find that the mendicant of the Middle Ages stood in much the same relation to the community as the modern “tramp,” the homeless, wandering wage-earner. One existed, and the other exists, because of a certain sentimentality which permits one group of persons to live on the industry of another group. ”

“ If the master of the house passes his hand outside and puts a thing into the hand of the mendicant, or takes something out of the mendicant's hand and brings it into the house, the master of the house is culpable and the mendicant is free.2 If the mendicant extends his hand into the house and the master takes something out of it, or puts something into it which is drawn to the outside by the mendicant, they are both free. ”

“ Such men as these belong, of course, to the highest order of the religious mendicants. The majority of their fellows are of a much lower order, but one and all they practise poverty and live only upon alms. ”

“ Alas! the condition of the poorest and simplest mendicant in her fatherland would now be hailed by her as an inestimable blessing in her present forlorn state, her very existence being threatened to become a sacrifice to those most terrible-looking savages. ”

“ If the common man was saved from starvation only by support from the resources of the state, it was the necessary consequence of this mendicant misery—although it also reciprocally appears as a cause of it—that he addicted himself to the beggar's laziness and to the beggar's good cheer. ”

“ In whatever part of London I might be, if I asked for the residence of a mendicant, it was pretty sure to be in a quarter very remote from the one in which he asked relief.
The next was, that—
Those mendicants who professed to want work and not charity, always belonged to trades in which it was scarcely possible to give them employment without trusting them with valuable property. ”

“ Now, with the rich it is different; and the mendicant, while he takes the alms of those whose sins he has heard, may glow with conscious virtue, reflecting that the rich are much more exposed to temptation, and therefore, as a rule, more grievously weighed down with a sense of guilt than the poor. ”

“ The only thought which oppressed the spirit of the mendicant was, that his bones, when he came to die, would be deposited in the soil of strangers, and his only prayer was that he might be buried among his kindred. ”

“ Coming out from among those that lead a domestic mode of life, mendicants depend upon those very persons from whom they come. Those self-restrained men, by doing this, acquire and enjoy fame and power. One is not to be called a mendicant for his having only renounced his possessions, or for his having only adopted a life of dependence on eleemosynary charity. He who renounces the possessions and pleasures of the world in a sincere frame of mind is to be regarded a true mendicant. ”