reater part of their support; yet,
however they may promise, they will continue to sleep in the day-time,
and prowl about as homeless outcasts in distant neighborhoods at night.
It is useless to offer them the workhouse; they will refuse it, and
make, the offer a ground of appeal to the benevolent. As regards the
children, the medical officer declares that his medicines are useless,
and even dangerous. They are taken in the morning, the child is exposed
in the evening, and in a few months it dies--_a natural death_? Here is
lower depth of crime and misery which baffles the benevolent and
wise.[5]

The aged, the infirm, the sufferers from chronic disease, the
permanently disabled, the several classes of widows, the single women
who have one or more children, and those who are chargeable mainly from
temporary illness, have been collected and separated from the dense mass
of pauperism. Who are those that remain? There is much error abroad upon
this question. They are legion, whether they be regarded in connexion
with the causes which have led to their impoverishment, or with
reference to their various modes of obtaining a livelihood. Reference
has already been made to that portion of the population of England who
are in a transition state--_i.e._ those whose ordinary employment has
been superseded by more rapid and cheaper methods, and who have thereby
lost their ordinary means of livelihood, and been drifted down from
stage to stage until they have reached the lowest depth, and have at
last been compelled to ask for a morsel of bread at the workhouse door.
Then it will appear upon inquiry that each separate locality will
present its peculiar species of casual poor, who fall into a state of
destitution from the action of peculiar causes. It frequently happens
that the individuals were never trained to any ordinary species of
labour. At an early period of their lives, they were put in the way to
learn a trade, but from early habits of idleness, from the criminal
neglect of masters or parents, from natural incapacity for the
particular trade, or from an unconquerable dislike to it, they have
never been able to earn "salt to their porridge," as the saying is. They
never received a regular or an average amount of wage. If they are
tailors, they compete with old women in making "slopwork" for the lower
class of salesmen. Or they convert old coat tails into decent cloth
caps, and may be industrious enough to supply a tribe of wo