the end of his days. It sometimes happens that the beggar who has
taken to mendicancy as a profession is obliged to go to the workhouse
as a kind of temporary refuge. This is not so frequent considering the
sort of life a vagrant has to lead; but when it does occur, the
labour-master of the Union very often finds it next to impossible to
got him to perform the task every able-bodied person is expected to
complete when taking shelter in a Casual Ward. As a result the
habitual beggar has sometimes to appear before the magistrates as a
refractory pauper, but a short sentence of imprisonment, which usually
follows, has lost all its terrors for him; he prefers enduring it to
doing the task allotted to him at the workhouse.

From this it will be seen that habits of indolence, and not the stress
of destitution, are responsible for a great deal of the begging which
goes on in England; but these habits are not answerable for the whole
of it. When times are bad begging has a decided tendency to increase,
and this arises from the fact that a considerable proportion of the
community possess wonderfully few resources within themselves. Even in
depressed times it is astonishing how well men who can turn their
hand, as it is called, can manage to live. Men of this stamp are not
beaten and rendered helpless by the misfortune of losing their usual
employment; they are capable of devising fresh methods of earning a
livelihood; they are persistent, persevering, energetic; they are not
content to stand by with their hands in their pockets and their back
at the wall; at times they even create an occupation, and devise new
wants for the community. Such men exist in large numbers among the
working population, and are able to tide over periods of slackness and
depression in a truly admirable way. But there are others who are
utterly lost the moment trade ceases to flourish. As soon as they lose
the job they have been accustomed to work at they at once sink into a