Surely they are not classed according to rules in which age, and sex, and state of health are the only principles? The widow with the prostitute, the aged cottar with the aged vagrant. If this were all, the moral consequences would not be so fearful. Does the young girl, who is now innocent, associate daily with her who has wandered over half the neighbouring counties, sinking lower and lower each journey? If so, poison will be instilled, which produces certain moral death. Refer to any list, now seven years old, of the inmates of a workhouse, who were then aged from twelve to eighteen years, and then inquire what has become of them. Or inquire of those who have the administration in metropolitan parishes, or in manufacturing and sea-port towns, how many of those unfortunates, scarcely yet arrived at the state of womanhood, and suffering from loathsome diseases, were brought up, or were sometime inmates of one of these Unions. Then there are the children of all these;--the children of the farm-labourer associating with those of the vagrant, who has quartered himself in the Union during the rains.
The evils which this system occasions are not, unfortunately, either to be seen or understood by the casual observer. Even our observer may suppose that all is well, after he has inspected the place. He sees every thing clean and in order. There are no rags, no unshorn beards, no unclean flesh. The ordinary concomitants of virtue are here present--by compulsion. The rags, the filthiness of place and person, are absent--by order. This is forgotten; and, allowing the outward and visible to govern his judgment rather than the inward and spiritual, he leaves the place exclaiming, "Well! this is not so bad after all!" The outside is indeed white, but it is the whiteness of the sepulchre.
If this group is to be received into one building, there must be something peculiar in its arrangements. All these persons are suffering, more or less, from the want of food, or lodging, or clothing, or medical aid. They are now offered the whole of these blessings, and yet they do not feel blessed thereby. He has now that livelihood freely offered to him which had cost him many a sigh to procure, and he has often sighed in vain. What then can or must be the nature of the arrangements? It must be remembered that this Union is presumed to be a test of poverty, and therefore the condition of its inmates must be inferior to that of the independent labourer.