Pauper

“ The pauper, the insane, the deaf-mute, and the blind, appeal to charity; but these juvenile offenders excite both pity for their own condition, and solicitude for their potential influence for evil in society. ”

“ In small things honest, and in great a knave;
At home a tyrant, and abroad a slave.
COUPLET: ON A PAUPER WHOSE WEALTH GREW FASTER THAN HIS MANNERS. Paupers grown rich forget what once they've been,
Though, born a pig the snout is always seen. ”

“ I answered, impelled, somehow, with a desire to draw upon myself a portion of the wrath I felt was about to break upon his head. "His human fictions, as you choose to call them, make for nobility and manhood. You have no fictions, no dreams, no ideals. You are a pauper." ”

“ We came across a pauper who, trembling, held forth his cap.—I know nothing more disquieting than the dumb eloquence of those suppliant eyes which hold, for the sensitive man who can read within, both so great humility and so deep reproach. ”

“ What, then, is pauperism? The answer is, that it is in its essence a question of character rather than of externals. It is, so to speak, a negation, a loss of something, rather than a positive quality. Pauperism is associated in the minds of many with vice and crime, and it is true that these are often its ultimate development. But for all that they are not of its essence. Many a pauper is at first neither vicious nor criminal. ”

“ The tattered clothes, the haggard looks, the piteous pleading voice of the pauper on the public highway may awaken our pity, but the system of indiscriminate alms-giving is justly condemned as a weakness rather than a virtue. ”

“ But, the PAUPERS? Ought they to share in the making of the laws? And why not? What is a pauper; what is one of the men to whom this degrading appellation is applied? A very poor man; a man who is, from some cause or other, unable to supply himself with food and raiment without aid from the parish-rates. And, is that circumstance alone to deprive him of his right, a right of which he stands more in need than any other man? Perhaps he has, for many years of his life, contributed directly to those rates; and ten thousand to one he has, by his labour, contributed to them indirectly. ”

“ The sturdy pauper finds that in the hour of danger he is not despised; he sees the rich man puffing and panting, and draws the conclusion which he privately imparts to his companions,—‘that our people are not good for much;’ and as a sickly frame is made ill by a mere touch from without, or sometimes without external impulse is ready to fall to pieces of itself, so from the least cause, or with none at all, the city falls ill and fights a battle for life or death. ”

“ It is represented by a simple thread, which one wears under one’s clothes after a pauper has touched it, as a sign that poverty is holy, and that it will save the world. There is nothing good except in poverty; and since I have received the price of Les Blandices, I feel that I am unjust and harsh. ”

“ It's not at all difficult. I only have to avoid persons of moderate means.'
'But aren't you a person of——?'
'Exactly. That's why. So I choose either a pauper—when it's impossible—or an heiress—when it's preposterous. ”

“ There was a model pauper introduced in like manner, who appeared to me to be the most intolerably arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself in absolute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard. ”

“ Camperdown.
“Why would you do that?” asked the woman gently.
“Because they’re badly used; that is, the paupers.”
“I should make a distinction between paupers and poor people,” returned Stargarde. “A pauper is a person dependent upon charity. A poor person, or one who is not as well off with regard to this world’s goods as his neighbors, should be one of the happiest and most independent of mortals. When I am coming home these winter evenings I love to look in our Pavilion windows. ”

“ For with clean-washed hands and faces, In a long and hungry line The paupers sit at the tables, For this is the hour they dine. And the guardians and their ladies, Although the wind is east, Have come in their furs and wrappers To watch their charges feast; To smile and be condescending, Put pudding on pauper plates, To be hosts at the workhouse banquet They've paid for—with the rates. Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly With their "Thank'ee kindly, mum's"; So long as they fill their stomachs, What matter whence it comes? ”

“ I found you drunk in my birch, and it is well known that these are your customary habits. You are also a pauper. All property, everything that goes to support life, in these parts, of any amount, comes by the hard work of somebody,—either bone labor or brain labor,—the labor of those who now possess it, or of those from whom they inherited it. ”

“ They entirely ignore the whole question of pauperisation by the Poor Law, of which we have had, and still have, such bitter experience in this country—a question which appears to most Poor Law administrators to be of vital importance. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they profess to be able to cure pauperism by making everyone a pauper. ”

“ The word rendered 'poor' does not only signify one in a condition of want, but rather one who is aware of the condition, and seeks relief. If we may refer to Latin words here, it is mendicus rather than pauper, a beggar rather than a poor man, who is meant. ”

“ That I should ever be brought down to this!" was her thought, as she was borne across the court-yard of the poorhouse, where a few old women, in pauper's dress, scarcely turned their heads to observe a new sufferer carried to a place where sickness and sorrow were things too common to attract much notice. "I, well-born, highly educated, degraded to the position of a pauper! Why has God, in whom I trusted, forsaken me? Why has He placed me in a position where I can be but a burden to myself and to others? God gave me talents, and with a willing mind I had devoted all my powers to His service ”

“ Gifts and begging we look upon as mean and unbecoming, and the next thing to going on to the town as a pauper; though if I can sarve you lawfully, like, I'm just as willing to work for your money as for that of any other man. ”

“ When a poor creature comes to be buried—no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, or any one—the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks up and lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, they watch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less of him, and more of himself, he’ll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling piece, or perhaps even a sovereign! ”

“ But if he had the earth for his pasture, and the sea for his pond, he would be a pauper still. He only is rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy, or demon who possesses such power as that. ”

“ To illustrate this change, we may suppose both a king and a pauper to become insane: there is, of course, a vast difference between them, but the king may be so changed by the disease as to believe that he is a pauper, and himself and his family starving, and he may also wish and even try to work and dig like a laborer to support them; or a pauper may think himself a king, and try to act like one. ”

“ How dare I--how dare I?--yes, that is what they would have said--How dare I encourage pauperism by giving money to little boys and girls and ragged men and women, whom I have never seen in my life before, whom I have never heard of in my life before? ”

“ How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker! yet do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read the "true ballad," where King Cophetua wooes the beggar maid?
Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbour grice." ”

“ An' thin he takes the pauper that she give him, an' he folds it up like one o' them—divilops, if that's the name of 'em; and thin he pulls a stick o' salin'-wax out of his pocket, an' a stamp, an' he takes the pauper an' puts it into th' other pauper, along with the rest of the paupers, an' thin he folds th' other pauper over the paupers, and thin he lights a candle, an' he milts the salin'-wax, and he sales up the pauper that was outside th' other paupers, an' he writes on the back of the pauper, an' thin he hands it to Miss Badlam. ”

“ It sounds harsh to say that it falls upon the sufferers. We shrink from saying to a pauper, "It serves you right". That sounds brutal, and is only in part true. Still, we should not shrink from stating whatever is true, painful though it may be. ”

“ It is reluctance on the part of the poor man to become a pauper which forms the mighty barrier against the extension of pauperism. ... There is not a labourer in the country, however well paid he might be, who might not become a pauper at the first moment of his decaying strength or declining wages. ”

“ The king, who, under the influence of disease, thinks himself a pauper and that he and his family are starving, and the pauper, who thinks himself a king, with [Pg 15] all the wealth and power of one, have each insane delusions. ”

“ Yes, we are paupers. I am ruined by the cruel lies of that prospectus, and the wickedness which deluded me, and I know not how many others, out of my money.' I have been foolish, and am punished: but those people, who will punish them? ”

“ One dislikes to use the word pauper, it so frequently carries with it an unreasonable and cruel contempt. Yet there are paupers in the human household, and when the temper is once present it is most difficult of removal. ”

“ The poor in London may be born for nothing, nursed for nothing, clothed for nothing, educated for nothing: they may he put out apprentice for nothing, and have medicine and medical attendance all their lives for nothing. The pauper is thus born, nursed, clothed, fed, educated, established and physicked all for nothing. He begins a pauper and dies a pauper, and at the expense of the parish he is provided with a shroud, coffin, pall and burial-ground. ”

“ The old pauper was accustomed in the house, and out of the house when permitted to go beyond its walls, to laud the praises of her kind doctor, who, on his visits to the place, would inquire after her, who would find her very often ailing, and who very frequently ordered her luxuries that did not fall to the lot of other paupers not so cared for. ”

“ There are 1,100,000 paupers on the books, and not a tenth of them will be taken off by any revival whatever, for not a tenth of them are workers. The rest are children—350,000 of them alone—widows, people past work, cripples, lunatics, incapables, human drift of one sort or another, the detritus of commerce and labour, a compost of suffering, helplessness, and disease. ”

“ To say to the poor, Ye shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the water of affliction, and be very miserable while here, required not so much a stretch of heroic faculty in any sense, as due toughness of bowels. If paupers are made miserable, paupers will needs decline in multitude. ”

“ When we say that pauperism has decreased we are juggling with words, because the actual burden of pauperism and the actual number of de facto paupers is far larger than it has ever been before in the history of the country. ”

“ No more afoot the poor man roams; in gorgeous car he scoots; we’ve mortgages upon our homes, our furniture, our boots. We’ve banished all the ancient cares, we paint the country red, we live like drunken millionaires, and never look ahead. The paupers, on the poorhouse lawn, are waiting in a group; they know we’ll all be there anon, to share their cabbage soup; they see us in our costly garb, and say: “Their course is brief; we see the harbingers that harb of bankruptcy and grief.” Be patient, paupers, for a span, ye friendless men and dames! ”

“ This is how Pauper in the tract in question states the true Christian teaching as to the duties of riches, and impresses upon his readers the view that the owners of worldly wealth are but stewards of the Lord: “All that the rich man hath, passing his honest living after the degree of his dispensation, it is other men’s, not his, and he shall give full hard reckoning thereof at the day of doom, when God shall say to him, ‘Yield account of your bailywick.’ For rich men and lords in this world are God’s bailiffs and God’s reeves, to ordain for the poor folk and to sustain them.” ”

“ If they wos paupers, it wouldn’t be a big sum for ’em to give out o’ any pocket-money they might chance to git from their pauper friends, but they’re well-dressed people, Dick, and they seems to be well off! ”

“ 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. ”

“ O my lord, paupers like myself are of no value in thine eyes; but how, with due respect to my own generosity, can I take a price for the boon which fortune hath vouchsafed me of thy favour and thy visit to my poor abode? ”

“ The unhappy injurer, thus punished by the reception of wealth, finds himself helpless; and where the injury is great, the injured man may bestow upon the other all his wealth and attain to the envied condition of a pauper. ”

“ Ardent spirits has made at least two hundred thousand miserable paupers in the United States, many of whom once enjoyed a competence, if not wealth.
It has annually destroyed thousands of our fellow-citizens, consigning them to a drunkard's grave, and seriously multiplying widows and orphans. ”

“ From a condition approaching pauperism they were at once placed above want; they could earn money, and spend it as they pleased; and could gratify their tastes and desires without restraint, and without rendering an account to anybody. ”