The Chemistry of Cookery

of the public.’ He gives further particulars of their trading upon the misery of their own children, and their organisation to obtain alms by systematic intimidation. Previous attempts to cure the evil had failed, the public had lost all faith in further projects, and therefore no support was to be expected for Rumford’s scheme. ‘Aware of this,’ he says, ‘I took my measures accordingly. To convince the public that the scheme was feasible, I determined first, by a great exertion, to carry it into complete execution, and _then_ to ask them to support it.’ He describes the military organisation by which he distributed the army throughout the country districts to capture all the strolling provincial beggars, and how, on Jan. 1, 1790, he bagged all the beggars of Munich in less than an hour by means of a well-organised civil and military _battue_, New Year’s Day being the great festival when all the beggars went abroad to enforce their customary black-mail upon the industrious section of the population. Though very interesting, I must not enter upon these details, but cannot help stepping a little aside from my proper subject to quote his weighty words on the ethical principles upon which he proceeded. He says that ‘with persons of this description, it is easy to be conceived that precepts, admonitions, and punishments would be of little avail. But where precepts fail, _habits_ may sometimes be successful. To make vicious and abandoned people happy, it has generally been supposed necessary, _first_, to make them virtuous. But why not reverse this order? Why not make them first _happy_ and then virtuous? If happiness and virtue be _inseparable_, the end will as certainly be attained by one method as by the other; and it is most undoubtedly much easier to contribute to the happiness and comfort of persons in a state of poverty and misery than, by admonitions and punishments, to improve their morals.’ He applied these principles to his miserable material with complete success, and, referring to the result, exclaims, ‘Would to God that my success might encourage others to follow my example!’