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Updated: May 26, 2025
If the lower orders in the towns have become addicted to extravagance, idleness, and mendicity, it is because they have discovered the impossibility, even by the most heroic efforts and the most rigid economy, of gaining either capital or independence or position.
Matthew Martin, a gentleman distinguished for his active benevolence, having been for some time engaged, under the sanction of Government, in a laborious enquiry concerning the "State of Mendicity in the Metropolis," was desired to make a Report upon that subject for the information of Government. From the statement which Mr.
Instead of this set of Grub Street authors, the mere canaille of letters, this corporation of Mendicity, this ragged regiment of genius suing at the corners of streets in forma pauperis, give me the gentleman and scholar, with a good house over his head and a handsome table 'with wine of Attic taste' to ask his friends to, and where want and sorrow never come.
These persons contribute nothing to the poor, except the various evils which their absence entails upon them. On the other hand, the resident gentry never in any case assist a beggar, even in the remote parts of the country, where there are no Mendicity Institutions. Nor do the beggars ever think of applying to them.
In the immediate precincts of the church, where the hurly-burly of piety, traffic, and mendicity reaches its climax, are the vendors of candles for the chapel and of food for the pilgrims, whose diet is chiefly melon and bread. Creysse, by the Dordogne, produces melons in abundance, which are brought to Roc-Amadour by the cartload, and sold for two or three sous apiece.
A difference in opinion might easily spring up and gain ground amongst those who already were divided in national character, in manners, customs, and laws. Moreover, in a country where industry was the most lauded virtue, mendicity the most abhorred vice, a slothful body of men, like that of the monks, must have been an object of long and deep aversion.
The old-time prophets desired to reduce the rich to the level of the poor, and a man denuded of all worldly goods was held up as an ideal to be followed. This naturally necessitated mendicity, and it was not till some centuries had passed that the Church herself became reconciled to the possession of riches.
If the municipal authorities have set themselves the task of putting down mendicity, they have succeeded. French enterprise, French capital is enriching the population from one end of the Alpes Maritimes to the other. At the present time there must be tens of thousands of workmen employed in the building of hotels and villas between Marseilles and Ventimille.
The number of beggars at Mekka and Djidda is very great, and it is a common remark among the merchants of the latter place, that a Djiddawy will never work while he can possibly maintain himself by begging. Mendicity is much encouraged by the pilgrims, who are fond of displaying their charity on first touching holy ground at this place.
It is a metropolis of beggardom, a mendicant's Mecca, a citadel of Jules Richepin's cherished Gueux. Here, indeed, Elia need not have lamented over the decay of beggars, "the all sweeping besom of societarian reformation your only modern Alcides' club to rid time of its abuses is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity.
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