Page:Farm labourers, their friendly societies, and the poor law.djvu/15

 who are only too glad to get all they can, and could not help the parents much, even if they recognised the duty of so doing, having children and cares of their own. Once in the union, he parts from his wife, to meet her but for a short half-hour in each week of the brief term remaining to them before they turn "to the unremembered and unremembering dust." She soon pines away of no disease in particular, and he remains a desolate old man, so far as desolation consists in the destruction of home and family associations and sympathies, and the want of every human kindness, but the conventional kindness contracted for and paid by the poor-rate. His associates in the old men's ward by day, his companions in the old men's ward by night, in all the feebleness and with something of the petulance and peevishness of the aged, are (with one or two exceptions ) men whom he never would have been, from a feeling of self-respect, familiar with so long as he could help it, men some of whom have eaten their Christmas dinners in the gaol, in their time, and say they enjoyed them more than in the workhouse. His relations seldom go near the old man, and he can no longer walk over to the scene of his home, and he waits with such patience and resignation as religion and experience have combined to teach him till the jest of the club day becomes sober truth, for the parish has to pay for the funeral after all.

Now that man had the intelligence, the industry, and the will, which would have secured him independence and a home in his old age. But he had no fair chance. In addition to the ancient difficulty of earning such provision by the sweat of his brow, he fell under the modern contrivance of a law which unintentionally, but yet with deadly certainty, hindered his making the effort. He had the natural wish for the friendship and help of his neighbours, and the desire to reciprocate their kindness, and the friendly society secured these advantages. Further than this, and reaching to permanent provision, the society must not, in his opinion go, unless he would jeopardise his presumed right to a share of the poor-rate. His society exacted the cost of his independence, so far as money goes, and the natural and unavoidable consequence was his gradual fall in social position, till he became a permanent pauper. Under auspicious legislation the man might have saved not only himself, but, by example and influence, others from such a fate. But having no moral support or encouragement