The original / by the late Thomas Walker, edited and arranged under distinct heads; with additions by William A. Guy.

  • Walker, Thomas, 1784-1836.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The original / by the late Thomas Walker, edited and arranged under distinct heads; with additions by William A. Guy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    not to physical but to moral causes; who would repeal the Poor-Law, and discountenance indiscriminate almsgiving, and yet look forward to the result without the slightest fear or misgiving; for his perfect knowledge of all the facts of the case has cast out fear. It is to this important Part, extending to nearly 150 pages, that I have ventured to make very considerable additions. These consist of eight supplementary essays on the Poor-Law, with sugges- tions which, if acted on, would lead to its ultimate abolition; six essays bearing on crime and its punishment, growing out of the authors brief notice of Prison Discipline ; a short article on Kailways*; eight essays on Dole-giving and its results, on Mendicancy under some ol its leading forms, modifications, and disguises, and lastly one on the question which the author of “ The Original ” in his last address to the public announced his intention of discussing, namely, to what extent the injunctions in the New Testament with respect to almsgiving are applicable to the present state of things in this country.” These several additions, amounting, as I find, to upwards of eighty pages, or a fifth of the whole book, consist partly of original articles, partly of essays remodelled or rewritten, partly of short treatises into which I have introduced quotations from writings (some anony- mous, some under the thin disguise of a iVo»i de PLume^ some with name attached) that have been published at intervals during the last thirty years; for I find that my Lecture on the “ Unhealthiness of Towns” bears date 1845 (the dawn of the Sanitary Movement, in wdiich I bore an active part) and that my second Inaugural Address as Presi- dent of the Statistical Society, was printed in December, 1874. The period of my greatest literary activity began, naturally enough, with the Sanitary Movement, and extended through the year 1848, and the few years that followed that anxious and critical period. It was, as I have said, some time prior to 1848 that I first made acquaintance with “ The Original” and imbibed from its pages the strong impression I have ever since retained, that the vices of individuals contribute even more than errors of legislation to bring about that degradation of the masses which, in its turn, engenders “ distress of nations with per- jjlexity.” Having singled out the personal vice of indisci’iminate alms- giving, and our obstinate national adherence to a Poor law, as specially calling for condemnation, I embodied my views on these matters, and incidentally on other sources of poverty and destitution in a little work wdiich I entitled “ The Evils of England, Social and Economical. By a London Physician.” Of this book, which owed its form and anony- mous character to the advice of the well-known Publisher, John William Parker, of the Strand (to whose memory and to that of his