and then
slander the "twice blessed" name, by calling it Mercy. But mercy is
impossible to a magistrate to whom an appeal is made on behalf of a
suffering child, save as he is the indignant champion of the child.

4. Medical men, too, but with far more cause than all the rest, have made
child slaughter safe. Dispensaries give death certificates, knowing
nothing of the case save from the possible criminal's own mouth. And
before coroners, they certify the final not the real cause of the child's
not being alive.

5. Even charity (so called) has lent its patronage against little
children. In no country as in England do children so directly appeal to
human sensibilities; and in no other country are pitiful charities so
readily shown to them. And so it comes about, that for persons using puny
and ill children for the purposes of gain in the streets, England is
perhaps the most scandalous country in the world. A child's bad cough, two
sore eyes, or emaciation through wasting disease, is a living to its
owner. To move charity, children are made to tramp and stand about on cold
stone pavements, weary and hungry, all day long. Parents, who ought to be
flogged for such ways with children, are, because of them, kept in comfort
and idleness. For them to cure their child of its ailments, even to nurse
it, or to give it reasonable food and rest, would be to lose bread and
cheese, and pipe and beer; a sacrifice they do not think of making. And
why should they think of making it, while "lovely charity" gives its
patronage!

Take one illustrative case:--A baby nine months old, dying of starvation,
was the other day taken from the arms of a woman who was exposing its
ghastly face and thin limbs to the passers-by in Whitechapel, pleading
that she was a widow, and her child was starving. Under the new law, the
child was taken from her. It was found not to be her child. She had the
loan of it, and night after night, till eleven o'clock, she moved the
compassion of the passers-by, and out of baby's shivers, dying, she made
her living. She knew how blind and lazy "charity" patronises a wrong-doer
to a child. The wickedest, it patronises the most.

Charity has still further been against the suffering child. By its
institutions for the ill-used and destitute, in not a few cases it has
been an inducement to their ill-usage and destitution. Whilst the kind and
honest poor may do as best they can for their children, the vicious have
had their