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    rupture * he has a ticket for the 4 C Rupture Society" or for the * ' City of London Truss Society . " For a pulmonary complaint , he attends the " Infirmary for Asthma , Consumption , and other Diseases of the Lungs . " And for scrophula , or any other disease which may require sea-bathings he is sent to the " Royal Sea-bathing Infirmary" at Margate . In some of these medical institutions , too , he has the extra advantage of board , lodging , and other accommodations . * By the time the child is eighteen months or two years old , it becomes convenient to his mother to " get him out of the way ; " for this purpose he is sent to the 4 t Infant School , " and in this seminary , enters upon another wide field of eleemosynary immunities . 44 By the age of six he quits the 4 * Infant School , " and ha 3 before him an ample choice of schools of a higher class . He may attend the Lancasterian School for 2 d . a week , and the National for Id . or for nothing . His parents naturally enough prefer the latter school , —it may be less liberal in principle , but it is lower in price . In some instances , too , it is connected with a cheap clothing society ; in others it provides clothing itself to a limited number of children . And in others , again , it recommends its scholars to the governors of a more richly endowed clothing charity school . To be sure , these are only collateral advantages . But it is perhaps excusable in a parent delivered by the " Royal Maternity Society , " to value these above any of the more obvious and legitimate benefits to be derived from a system of education .

    A parent of this kind , however , has hardly done justice to herself , or to her child , till she has succeeded in getting him admitted into a school where he will be immediately and permanently clothed . This advantage is to be found in the Protestant Dissenters "—in the ' * Parochial , " or in 4 t the Ward Charity School ; " and she secures him a presentation to one of these , either by a recommendation from " the National School" —by the spontaneous offer of her husband ' s employer

    —or by her own importunate applications at the door of some other subscriber . It is true , some few industrious and careful parents in the neighbourhood object to putting their children into these charity schools . With more independence than wisdom , they revolt at the idea of seeing their children walk the streets for several years in a livery which degrades them , by marking them out like the parish paupers of former days , as the objects of common charity . But the parent in

    question has no such scruples—she has tasted the sweets , and , therefore , never feels the degradation of charity . She is saved the expense of clothing her own child herself ; and she observes that almost all her poor neighbours , like the dog in the fable , have come to think what is really disreputable to be a badge of distinction . She knows , too , that most of the " gentlefolks * who support these charities openly proclaim ( Oh monstrous absurdity !) that they were more especially designed for 4 < an aristocracy among the poor . " 4

    It is possible that she may not succeed in getting her child into a clothing charity school—at is more than possible , too , that she may find a more profitable employment for him than attendance at the * ' National ; " she may keep him at home all the week to help her nurse her fourth and fifth babies , or she may earn a few pence by sending

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    368 Poor Laws and Pavpers .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 368, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/8/