NOTE.
The “badging” of beggars was a favourite scheme of Swift's for
the
better regulation of the many who infested the city of Dublin
as
tramps and idlers. While many of these were really deserving
persons, there were a great many also who made the business of
begging a profession. Eleven years before this tract was
printed
Swift wrote to Archbishop King on the same subject, as will be
seen
from the letter quoted in the note on pages 326-327.
* * * * *
The present text is based on the original edition of 1737
collated
with that given by Sir Walter Scott.
[T. S.]
A
PROPOSAL
FOR GIVING
BADGES
TO THE
BEGGARS
IN ALL THE
PARISHES of DUBLIN.
BY THE
DEAN of St. PATRICK's
* * * * *
LONDON,
Printed for T. COOPER at the Globe in Pater Noster Row.
MDCCXXXVII.
Price Six Pence.
It hath been a general complaint, that the poor-house, especially
since the new Constitution by Act of Parliament, hath been of no
benefit to this city, for the ease of which it was wholly intended. I
had the honour to be a member of it many years before it was new
modelled by the legislature, not from any personal regard, but merely
as one of the two deans, who are of course put into most commissions
that relate to the city; and I have likewise the honour to have been
left out of several commissions upon the score of party, in which my
predecessors, time out of mind, have always been members.
The first commission was made up of about fifty persons, which were
the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs, and some few other citizens;
the Judges, the two Archbishops, the two Deans of the city, and one or
two more gentlemen. And I must confess my opinion, that the dissolving
the old commission, and establishing a new one of nearly three times
the number, have been the great cause of rendering so good a design not
only useless, but a grievance instead of a benefit to the city. In the
present commission all the city clergy are included, besides a great
number of 'squires, not only those who reside in Dublin, and the
neighbourhood, but several who live at a great distance, and cannot
possibly have the least concern for the advantage of the city.
At the few general meetings that I have attended since the new
Establishment, I observed very little was done, except one or two Acts
of extreme justice, which I then thought might as well have been
spared: and I have found the Court of Assistants usually taken up in
little brangles about coachmen, or adjusting accounts of meal and small
beer; which, however necessary, might sometimes have given place to
matters of much greater moment, I mean some schemes recommended to the
General Board, for answering the chief ends in erecting and
establishing such a poor-house, and endowing it with so considerable a
revenue: and the principal end I take to have been that of maintaining
the poor and orphans of the city, where the parishes are not able to do
it; and clearing the streets from all strollers, foreigners, and sturdy
beggars, with which, to the universal complaint and admiration, Dublin
is more infested since the Establishment of the poor-house, than it was
ever known to be since its first erection.
As the whole fund for supporting this hospital is raised only from
the inhabitants of the city, so there can be hardly any thing more
absurd, than to see it mis-employed in maintaining foreign beggars and
bastards, or orphans, whose country landlords never contributed one
shilling towards their support. I would engage, that half this revenue,
if employed with common care, and no very great degree of common
honesty, would maintain all the real objects of charity in this city,
except a small number of original poor in every parish, who might,
without being burthensome to the parishioners, find a tolerable
support.
I have for some years past applied myself to several Lord Mayors,
and to the late Archbishop of Dublin[189], for a remedy to this evil of
foreign beggars; and they all appeared ready to receive a very plain
proposal, I mean, that of badging the original poor of every parish,
who begged in the streets;[190] that the said beggars should be
confined to their own parishes; that, they should wear their badges
well sewn upon one of their shoulders, always visible, on pain of being
whipped and turned out of town; or whatever legal punishment may be
thought proper and effectual. But, by the wrong way of thinking in some
clergymen, and the indifference of others, this method was perpetually
defeated, to their own continual disquiet, which they do not ill
deserve; and if the grievance affected only them, it would be of less
consequence, because the remedy is in their own power. But all
street-walkers, and shopkeepers bear an equal share in this hourly
vexation.
I never heard more than one objection against this expedient of
badging the poor, and confining their walks to their several parishes.
The objection was this: What shall we do with the foreign beggars? Must
they be left to starve? I answered, No; but they must be driven or
whipped out of town; and let the next country parish do as they please;
or rather after the practice in England, send them from one parish to
another, until they reach their own homes. By the old laws of England
still in force, and I presume by those of Ireland, every parish is
bound to maintain its own poor; and the matter is of no such
consequence in this point as some would make it, whether a country
parish be rich or poor. In the remoter and poorer parishes of the
kingdom, all necessaries for life proper for poor people are
comparatively cheaper; I mean butter-milk, oatmeal, potatoes, and other
vegetables; and every farmer or cottager, who is not himself a beggar,
can sometimes spare a sup or a morsel, not worth the fourth part of a
farthing, to an indigent neighbour of his own parish, who is disabled
from work. A beggar native of the parish is known to the 'squire, to
the church minister, to the popish priest, or the conventicle teachers,
as well as to every farmer: he hath generally some relations able to
live, and contribute something to his maintenance. None of which
advantages can be reasonably expected on a removal to places where he
is altogether unknown. If he be not quite maimed, he and his trull, and
litter of brats (if he hath any) may get half their support by doing
some kind of work in their power, and thereby be less burthensome to
the people. In short, all necessaries of life grow in the country, and
not in cities, and are cheaper where they grow; nor is it equal, that
beggars should put us to the charge of giving them victuals, and the
carriage too.
But, when the spirit of wandering takes him, attended by his female,
and their equipage of children, he becomes a nuisance to the whole
country: he and his female are thieves, and teach the trade of stealing
to their brood at four years old; and if his infirmities be
counterfeit, it is dangerous for a single person unarmed to meet him on
the road. He wanders from one county to another, but still with a view
to this town, whither he arrives at last, and enjoys all the privileges
of a Dublin beggar.
I do not wonder that the country 'squires should be very willing to
send up their colonies; but why the city should be content to receive
them, is beyond my imagination.
If the city were obliged by their charter to maintain a thousand
beggars, they could do it cheaper by eighty per cent. a hundred
miles off, than in this town, or any of its suburbs.
There is no village in Connaught, that in proportion shares so
deeply in the daily increasing miseries of Ireland, as its capital
city; to which miseries there hardly remained any addition, except the
perpetual swarms of foreign beggars, who might be banished in a month
without expense, and with very little trouble.
As I am personally acquainted with a great number of street beggars,
I find some weak attempts to have been made in one or two parishes to
promote the wearing of badges; and my first question to those who ask
an alms, is, Where is your badge? I have in several years met
with about a dozen who were ready to produce them, some out of their
pockets, others from under their coat, and two or three on their
shoulders, only covered with a sort of capes which they could lift up
or let down upon occasion. They are too lazy to work, they are not
afraid to steal, nor ashamed to beg; and yet are too proud to be seen
with a badge, as many of them have confessed to me, and not a few in
very injurious terms, particularly the females. They all look upon such
an obligation as a high indignity done to their office. I appeal to all
indifferent people, whether such wretches deserve to be relieved. As to
myself, I must confess, this absurd insolence hath so affected me, that
for several years past, I have not disposed of one single farthing to a
street beggar, nor intend to do so, until I see a better regulation;
and I have endeavoured to persuade all my brother-walkers to follow my
example, which most of them assure me they do. For, if beggary be not
able to beat out pride, it cannot deserve charity. However, as to
persons in coaches and chairs, they bear but little of the persecution
we suffer, and are willing to leave it entirely upon us.
To say the truth, there is not a more undeserving vicious race of
human kind than the bulk of those who are reduced to beggary, even in
this beggarly country. For, as a great part of our publick miseries is
originally owing to our own faults (but, what those faults are I am
grown by experience too wary to mention) so I am confident, that among
the meaner people, nineteen in twenty of those who are reduced to a
starving condition, did not become so by what lawyers call the work of
GOD, either upon their bodies or goods; but merely from their own
idleness, attended with all manner of vices, particularly drunkenness,
thievery, and cheating.
Whoever enquires, as I have frequently done, from those who have
asked me an alms; what was their former course of life, will find them
to have been servants in good families, broken tradesmen, labourers,
cottagers, and what they call decayed house-keepers; but (to use their
own cant) reduced by losses and crosses, by which nothing can be
understood but idleness and vice.
As this is the only Christian country where people contrary to the
old maxim, are the poverty and not the riches of the nation, so, the
blessing of increase and multiply is by us converted into a curse; and,
as marriage hath been ever countenanced in all free countries, so we
should be less miserable if it were discouraged in ours, as far as can
be consistent with Christianity. It is seldom known in England, that
the labourer, the lower mechanick, the servant, or the cottager thinks
of marrying until he hath saved up a stock of money sufficient to carry
on his business; nor takes a wife without a suitable portion; and as
seldom fails of making a yearly addition to that stock, with a view of
providing for his children. But, in this kingdom, the case is directly
contrary, where many thousand couples are yearly married, whose whole
united fortunes, bating the rags on their backs, would not be
sufficient to purchase a pint of butter-milk for their wedding supper,
nor have any prospect of supporting their honourable state, but
by service, or labour, or thievery. Nay, their happiness is
often deferred until they find credit to borrow, or cunning to steal a
shilling to pay their Popish priest, or infamous couple-beggar. Surely
no miraculous portion of wisdom would be required to find some kind of
remedy against this destructive evil, or at least, not to draw the
consequences of it upon our decaying city; the greatest part whereof
must of course in a few years become desolate, or in ruins.
In all other nations, that are not absolutely barbarous, parents
think themselves bound by the law of nature and reason to make some
provision for their children; but the reasons offered by the
inhabitants of Ireland for marrying is, that they may have children to
maintain them when they grow old and unable to work.
I am informed that we have been for some time past extremely obliged
to England for one very beneficial branch of commerce: for, it seems
they are grown so gracious as to transmit us continually colonies of
beggars, in return of a million of money they receive yearly from
hence. That I may give no offence, I profess to mean real English
beggars in the literal meaning of the word, as it is usually understood
by protestants. It seems, the Justices of the Peace and parish officers
in the western coasts of England, have a good while followed the trade
of exporting hither their supernumerary beggars, in order to advance
the English Protestant interest among us; and, these they are so kind
to send over gratis, and duty free. I have had the honour more
than once to attend large cargoes of them from Chester to Dublin: and I
was then so ignorant as to give my opinion, that our city should
receive them into bridewell, and after a month's residence,
having been well whipped twice a day, fed with bran and water, and put
to hard labour, they should be returned honestly back with thanks as
cheap as they came: or, if that were not approved of, I proposed, that
whereas one English man is allowed to be of equal intrinsic value with
twelve born in Ireland, we should in justice return them a dozen for
one, to dispose of as they pleased. But to return.
As to the native poor of this city, there would be little or no
damage in confining them to their several parishes. For instance; a
beggar of the parish of St. Warborough's,[191] or any other parish
here, if he be an object of compassion, hath an equal chance to receive
his proportion of alms from every charitable hand; because the
inhabitants, one or other, walk through every street in town, and give
their alms, without considering the place, wherever they think it may
be well disposed of: and these helps, added to what they get in
eatables by going from house to house among the gentry and citizens,
will, without being very burthensome, be sufficient to keep them alive.
It is true, the poor of the suburb parishes will not have altogether
the same advantage, because they are not equally in the road of
business and passengers: but here it is to be considered, that the
beggars there have not so good a title to publick charity, because most
of them are strollers from the country, and compose a principal part of
that great nuisance, which we ought to remove.
I should be apt to think, that few things can be more irksome to a
city minister, than a number of beggars which do not belong to his
district, whom he hath no obligation to take care of, who are no part
of his flock, and who take the bread out of the mouths of those, to
whom it properly belongs. When I mention this abuse to any minister of
a city-parish, he usually lays the fault upon the beadles, who he says
are bribed by the foreign beggars; and, as those beadles often keep
ale-houses, they find their account in such customers. This evil might
easily be remedied, if the parishes would make some small addition to
the salaries of a beadle, and be more careful in the choice of those
officers. But, I conceive there is one effectual method, in the power
of every minister to put in practice; I mean, by making it the interest
of all his own original poor, to drive out intruders: for, if the
parish-beggars were absolutely forbidden by the minister and
church-officers, to suffer strollers to come into the parish, upon pain
of themselves not being permitted to beg alms at the church-doors, or
at the houses and shops of the inhabitants; they would prevent
interlopers more effectually than twenty beadles.
And, here I cannot but take notice of the great indiscretion in our
city-shopkeepers, who suffer their doors to be daily besieged by crowds
of beggars, (as the gates of a lord are by duns,) to the great disgust
and vexation of many customers, whom I have frequently observed to go
to other shops, rather than suffer such a persecution; which might
easily be avoided, if no foreign beggars were allowed to infest them.
Wherefore, I do assert, that the shopkeepers, who are the greatest
complainers of this grievance, lamenting that for every customer, they
are worried by fifty beggars, do very well deserve what they suffer,
when a 'prentice with a horse-whip is able to lash every beggar from
the shop, who is not of the parish, and does not wear the badge of that
parish on his shoulder, well fastened and fairly visible; and if this
practice were universal in every house to all the sturdy vagrants, we
should in a few weeks clear the town of all mendicants, except those
who have a proper title to our charity: as for the aged and infirm, it
would be sufficient to give them nothing, and then they must starve or
follow their brethren.
It was the city that first endowed this hospital, and those who
afterwards contributed, as they were such who generally inhabited here;
so they intended what they gave to be for the use of the city's poor.
The revenues which have since been raised by parliament, are wholly
paid by the city, without the least charge upon any other part of the
kingdom; and therefore nothing could more defeat the original design,
than to misapply those revenues on strolling beggars, or bastards from
the country, which bear no share in the charges we are at.
If some of the out-parishes be overburthened with poor, the reason
must be, that the greatest part of those poor are strollers from the
country, who nestle themselves where they can find the cheapest
lodgings, and from thence infest every part of the town, out of which
they ought to be whipped as a most insufferable nuisance, being nothing
else but a profligate clan of thieves, drunkards, heathens, and
whore-mongers, fitter to be rooted out of the face of the earth, than
suffered to levy a vast annual tax upon the city, which shares too deep
in the public miseries, brought on us by the oppressions we lye under
from our neighbours, our brethren, our countrymen, our fellow
protestants, and fellow subjects.
Some time ago I was appointed one of a committee to inquire into the
state of the workhouse; where we found that a charity was bestowed by a
great person for a certain time, which in its consequences operated
very much to the detriment of the house: for, when the time was
elapsed, all those who were supported by that charity, continued on the
same foot with the rest of the foundation; and being generally a pack
of profligate vagabond wretches from several parts of the kingdom,
corrupted all the rest; so partial, or treacherous, or interested, or
ignorant, or mistaken are generally all recommenders, not only to
employments, but even to charity itself.
I know it is complained, that the difficulty of driving foreign
beggars out of the city is charged upon the bellowers (as they
are called) who find their accounts best in suffering those vagrants to
follow their trade through every part of the town. But this abuse might
easily be remedied, and very much to the advantage of the whole city,
if better salaries were given to those who execute that office in the
several parishes, and would make it their interest to clear the town of
those caterpillars, rather than hazard the loss of an employment that
would give them an honest livelyhood. But, if that would fail, yet a
general resolution of never giving charity to a street beggar out of
his own parish, or without a visible badge, would infallibly force all
vagrants to depart.
There is generally a vagabond spirit in beggars, which ought to be
discouraged and severely punished. It is owing to the same causes that
drove them into poverty; I mean, idleness, drunkenness, and rash
marriages without the least prospect of supporting a family by honest
endeavours, which never came into their thoughts. It is observed, that
hardly one beggar in twenty looks upon himself to be relieved by
receiving bread or other food; and they have in this town been
frequently seen to pour out of their pitcher good broth that hath been
given them, into the kennel; neither do they much regard clothes,
unless to sell them; for their rags are part of their tools with which
they work: they want only ale, brandy, and other strong liquors, which
cannot be had without money; and, money as they conceive, always
abounds in the metropolis.
I had some other thoughts to offer upon this subject. But, as I am a
desponder in my nature, and have tolerably well discovered the
disposition of our people, who never will move a step towards easing
themselves from any one single grievance; it will be thought, that I
have already said too much, and to little or no purpose; which hath
often been the fate, or fortune of the writer,
J. SWIFT.
April 22,
1737.