MARTYRDOM FOR RESPECTABILITY.
/THE late Mr. Pritchard, Cigar-maker, recently of Bromley, has 1. been a great ethical problem to the London Press. There is no doubt as to the facts of his case. He lost 3,000/. by becoming security for a friend, and then starved slowly himself, his wife and five children, in order to avoid the—to him—apparently intolerable necessity of asking aid as a pauper. His rent was paid regularly to quarter-day, apparently by a lass needy brother. On Monday, the 2nd of December, when a charitable neighbour, Mr J H Ellis (who had tried perseveringly but unsuccessfully on the preceding Saturday to gain admittance), at length entered the house, he found, on entering the back kitchen, a very small back room on the ground floor, Mr. Pritchard stretched out dead upon the floor,—he had been dead two days,—Mrs. Pritchard quite insensible, and five children huddled together on a piece of bedding, without bedstead, in various stages of starvation. The shutter was closed, and the room quite dark. The furniture had all been pawned. None of the family had left it for days, and the room was, consequently, in an intolerable state. On -the pre- vious Friday half a loaf of bread had been divided between the children, the father and mother being too ill to eat. On the Saturday Mr. Pritchard had suddenly asked for food. There was none for him, and he soon after fell forward on his face and died, — or, as the poor child, his daughter, pathetically described it, "he was praying for mother and for us, and then he fell over on the floor, and has been sleeping there ever since." The few books in the holm seem to have been all religious books. They were worthless to pawn, and, indeed, the only things of the smallest value left were a portrait of Mr. Pritchard, and one, better executed, of Mrs. Pritchard's mother. Mr. Pritchard himself, though too poor to have a shirt, had on him a paper collar, with a bit of black silk inside it, apparently cut from his wife's apron, by way of ribbon. There was also a small Pembroke table, on which Mr. Pritchard had been in the habit of making up some cleaning-powders, by the sale of which he earned the little money they obtained in the latter days of his life. Apparently, the children had been all taught to love each other, and were very fond of their parents. The eldest girl, who had nursed the baby through these last days, was delirious when the state of the family was discovered, but in her delirium talked of nothing but food for the baby. When she came to herself, and found that fire had been provided, she remarked at once that now there was fire, it would be possible to make broth for her mother of a raw knuckle-bone,—well gnawed,—which had never been cooked, on account of the want of fire. Mrs. Pritchard, who would have died, the surgeon said, if assistance had been a single hour delayed, no sooner recovered her senses than she began to ask for George, of whose death she had never, known, though he had apparently been dead two days in the same room with her, during which, however, she herself had been insensible. When some friend prayed by her bedside, she immediately asked why George did not come into prayers, as he used to do. Every incident seems to show a thoroughly united and thoroughly pious family. Mr. Pritchard's last words were those of prayer; and yet, while praying for his wife and children, he had never been able to ask parish assistance for them. Our contemporary the Pall Mall Gazette denounces this pride of Mr. Pritchard's with a good deal of severity,—but not certainly without a very plausible -case,—as leading him into "a crime of the deepest dye." Can there be any justification, apology, or even excuse, for a man's so far involving the whole of his family in the range of his personal pride, that he sacrifices, or at least goes the way to sacrifice, their lives with his own, out of inability to ask for them the relief to which paupers are legally entitled? Can a man be justified in only praying for a starving family which might, by one humiliating effort, be placed at least out of the risk of starva-
tion ? It is possible enough, indeed, that Mr. Pritchard only delayed the application too long, and that after the Friday, when the last half-loaf was divided, he was physically in- capable of doing what he would have done had he retained his dearness of head. But in any case it is certain he intended -to let his whole family advance to the very vefge of famine before he applied for the aid extended to paupers. It is far from improbable that he deliberately preferred to see them die with him -of hunger, rather than make that application. Without deciding whether or not hewould have humiliated himself at the last moment, rather than see his wife and children starve, let us consider a little how we ought to characterize such a resolve, if it had been his.
We may observe that economists,-at all events, are never weary of insisting on the immense importance to the national prosperity of the growth of a 'second nature' in every class resisting anything like declension into the clam beneath. Without this second nature, -economists tell us that there would be a constant tendency to degradation in the standard of comfort and respectability to which each class has accustomed itself, and every period of general dis- trews would result in each class sinking a step in the scale of physical and moral comfort. Consequently, the disposition to pinch in every direction in a time of difficulty, rather than submit to be ranked with a lower class in the mode and scale of living, is always reckoned one of the highest of economical virtues. It is because the Irish slip so easily and unresistingly down to a lower ;level that they axe the favourite "awful warnings" of economists. Nor does any one ever fail to sympathize to the utmost with the efforts of such a clergyman as Mr. Crawley,—the hero of the Last Chronicle of Barset;—to keep his black coat and the appear- .ance of a gentleman, and to close his lips to anything like begging, even though his wife and children are quite insufficiently -warmed and fed, and he himself is in imminent danger of low fever,—the fever of poverty,—in consequence. Had Mr. Pritchard in his days of prosperity been a clergyman, or even a professional man—say, a physician—instead of a cigar manufacturer, we doubt if so strong a censure would have been passed on his intolerance of workhouse aid even for a starving wife and children. "There is something in the name of cigar-maker,—in other words, probably tobacconist,—which suggests to literary men a smaller -chasm, and one more easily stepped over, than that between professional life and the poor-house. It is clear, however, that it -would be a crime of no deeper dye in a cigar-maker to refuse the assistance of a workhouse for starving children, than _for a clergyman or physician. If the guilt or guiltlessness of such -R proceeding depend in any -degree on the mere effort needed to humiliate yourself to the condition of a pauper, there is no evi- dence that it might not be even more terrible to a cigar-maker than to a man of higher education. The paper collar and silk ribbon were evidently as cherished symbols of decency to Mr. Pritchard as black cloth to a clergyman. Would the effort to ask assistance of Poor Law Guardians have been easier to him ? There is, at least, nothing to show it. When a man really dies, in the midst of a half-dead family, for his caste, it is impossible to conceive that the struggle necessary to ask relief could in any other case have been severer.
But granting thus much, that the disposition which finds it .hard,—almost intolerable,—to descend greatly in the scale of life, is a great economical virtue, and at all events, of the utmost value to the life of a nation, it is still obvious that there are limits beyond which this disposition, even if esteemed a virtuous one, might lead to crime. But where is this limit to be drawn? Is a father warranted in depriving his children of all -education, —mental food, —rather than apply for the aid on which he would have a claim as a pauper ? If not, to what point may a father identify his children with himself, so far as to deny them a benefit which as a pauper he could obtain for them? Is it really very easy to argue that he may rightly keep them ignorant up to maturity,—sacrifice their intelligence, and possibly their morals,—rather than ask for them the education of paupers, and yet is wholly wicked for contemplating the sacrifice of their physical lives, rather than incur for them the same humilia- tion? Again, where does the love of decency cease to be an imperious natural instinct, carrying its own sense of obligation with it, and become a mere piece of personal fastidiousness and pride? Suppose a father and his children starving with others in a boat at sea after a wreck, and that any of the other passengers dies. Would it be thought "a crime of the deepest dye" for the father to forbid his children, in the last pangs of hunger, to feed on the flesh of the dead, as so many have done, in the hope of preserving life till a ship came in sight ? We suspect that a man who refused such a means of prolonginglife, not only for himself, but for his
children, would be completely justified by most men, on the ground of the strong instinctive aversion to so unnatural a resource, and certainly would not be accused of a crime of the deepest dye. Yet no one could show that to prolong life by such means was not right. It is, indeed, very doubtful if it would not be, apart from very intense natural instincts of loathing, a duty to save life to the last moment by a means which involves at least no moral wrong to any other person. Yet if intense natural aversion be a justification for a father not only in refusing to prolong his own life, but in refusing to let his children prolong theirs,—it is not only possible, but in the highest degree probable, that Mr. Pritchard was so far justified in what he did. He could not have undergone what he did, and died with prayers for his wife and children on his lips, without the most intense natural loathing for the act of placing himself and them in the position of paupers. God only can tell whether that loathing was of such a nature as to liberate him from all guilt in failing to ask relief. We only care to show that it is quite possible for a mere natural instinct to assume such strength, that impartial spectators would justify a man in refusing to force it, not only for himself, but even for children dependent on him. We do not say this was the case with Mr. Pritchard, for no one can know. -We feel pretty sure that such a horror of pauperdom as that would be exaggerated, and to a balanced mind, clearly wrong. But we can at least easily conceive the possibility of its having been in Mr. Pritchard so strong as to entirely exonerate him from the charge of selfish and guilty pride. He may easily have conceived that his children would be permanently degraded by going into a work- house, in exactly the same sense in which the father we have sup- posed, might have conceived that his children would be permanently degraded by supporting their own life longer in so unnatural a fashion.
But what ought we to feel? How far is it right to permit our- selves to cherish any artificial second nature,—to admit any moral impossibilities which are not grounded on absolute morality, on strict right and wrong ? We believe that such conventional impossibilities—such false bottoms to the mind, as it were—cer- tainly could not exist for men of the highest nature,—men who could realize that there is no such thing as humiliation, except in deliberate sin against conscience and God,—and that the man who lives wholly on the charity of others may often be infinitely the superior of those who give it But we do think that this is a degree of spiritual freedom which very few attain,—that there are, for most people, what we may call conventional moralities, for which, without being able to assert their real moral obligation, they could not but sacrifice not only themselves, but not unfre- quently those dependent on them. And these conventional moralities are so very often conditions of the happiness of nations, that were they to vanish before the whole morale of society had gained a very high standard, nations would Buffer otherwise far more than they ever suffer from their unhappy intensity in minds like that of the late unfortunate Mr. Pritchard.
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