As for Parliamentary Committees
upon this or any other subject, they are, with reverence be it spoken,
thoroughly contemptible. They will summon and examine witnesses who, for
the most part, know little about the habits or distresses of the poor;
public money will be wasted in defraying their expenses and in printing
reports; resolutions will be passed; something will be said about it
in the House of Commons; and, in a few weeks, after resolving and
re-resolving, it is as little thought of, as if it had never been the
subject of investigation. In the meantime the evil proceeds--becomes
more inveterate--eats into the already declining prosperity of the
country--whilst those who suffer under it have the consolation of
knowing that a Parliamentary Committee sat longer upon it than so many
geese upon their eggs, but hatched nothing. Two circumstances, connected
with pauperism in Ireland, are worthy of notice. The first is this--the
Roman Catholics, who certainly constitute the bulk of the population,
feel themselves called upon, from the peculiar tenets of their religion,
to exercise indiscriminate charity largely to the begging poor. They act
under the impression that eleemosynary good works possess the power of
cancelling sin to an extent almost incredible. Many of their religious
legends are founded upon this view of the case; and the reader will find
an appropriate one in the Priest's sermon, as given in our tale of the
"Poor Scholar.
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