ever. The struggle is a hard one, especially to those who are on the borderland, but it is by it that character is made. The temptation to take what seems the easier way is ever present. Every unhappy tramp or mendicant has learnt his first lesson in dependence from some dole of charity or of the Poor Law, and "calamity has overtaken him."
"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. … To relax the industry by a very little, or to let down to a small and imperceptible extent the economical habits, … these are the simple expedients by which, when once the mighty hold of self-dependence is loosened, the daily increasing thousands of a city population may in the shape of famished wives, ragged children, or destitute old men inundate the amplest charity." These words were written by Dr Chalmers more than half a century ago. They are as true now as ever they were. The first step towards pauperism is the crucial one. The virtue has gone out of a man and the inward decay has begun.
Pauperism, therefore, is a question of character affecting large masses of the people. Till within the last few years it had been a gradually disappearing factor in this country. But since, roughly speaking, the beginning of the nineties there has been a reaction. Our great object - lesson in pauperism in England is the old Poor Law, and we may take it for granted that every one has some knowledge of the conditions of those times. It is only necessary to say that it brought this country nearer to ruin than anything before or since, and that before 1834 pauperism was a canker
