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month of June, 1774. Yet even when the affairs of his trust were thus happily settled, his troubles did not terminate. The unhealthiness of the season and intensity of his sufferings induced a violent fit of sickness, and he was detained at Reshd for three tedious months in a state bordering on dissolution. The vigour of his constitution, however, rose superior to this attack, and he returned in safety to St. Petersburg after an absence of one year and sixteen weeks, during which he had traversed about five thousand four hundred English miles. The circumstances of the undertaking having been submitted to arbitration, were ultimately adjusted with amicable feelings; and Hanway continued to reside at St. Petersburg until the month of July, 1750. At that period making his way back to England by land, he inspected the curiosities of the principal cities in the North of Europe, and fixed himself with a moderate fortune at a sister's house in the Strand, before a year expired.

The first occupation to which he now devoted himself was the publication of his travels, which appeared in January 1753, in four vols. 4to., and ran through four editions. This statement involves the praises of literary merit and popularity: the work was written in a plain style, and, though not the most masterly either in its order or views, was expensively decorated with plates, and read with the attention generally paid all books of the kind. The title ran thus:- An Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea, with the Author's Journal of Travels from England, through Russia into Persia, and back through Russia, Germany and Holland: to which are added, the Revolutions of Persia during the present Century, with the particular History of the great Usurper Nadir Kouli.'

Once successfully infected with the contagion of authorship, he continued to indite and publish whenever occasions brought a subject at all within the reach of his powers; so that if not one of the most able, he was at least one of the most indefatigable of writers. Thus, when the question of naturalizing the Jews came on for discussion in the House of Commons, Mr. Hanway, although at the time recruiting his health at Tunbridge Wells, sent up a manuscript pamphlet against the measure to London, which obtained two eitions. The part he acted in this business was one neither liberal nor philanthropic, and

therefore adverse to the humanity which characterised his life. If the inconsistency is to be in any respect extenuated, it can only be upon the plea that his faith was superstitious in the denunciations of the Bible. But the natural rights of all men are equal, and it ought always to be a matter of prudence as well as piety, to leave the punishment of those errors which a false religion may beget, to the justice of that power which can alone penetrate the merits of conscientious peculiarities. The Scriptures award no temporal penalty upon heathen or heretic; and thus the man, or body of men, who, from a belief in God and a future state of happiness or misery apportioned to good or evil, adopts that general system of morality which secures the order of society, has an inherent claim to every advantage in that state, of which the prosperity is maintained by his industry, and the honour upheld by his virtues. Persecution and exclusion are derivatively the same; the one is an hypocritical modification of the other, and so long as that is retained, no man can trust that the crimes of martyrdom are exterminated; for the barbarous sophistry which upheld the inquisition in Spain has only a shade of difference from the selfish bigotry which accords all the rewards of a Government to those only who conform to an established creed. In this respect the Catholic in Madrid, the Protestant in London, and the Turk in Constantinople, act together upon a common rule, and they all vary from the Pagan Roman, not so much in the principles of their conduct, as in the extremes to which they carry their views.

The opposition to this measure was strong and malignant, but the Parliament voted the act into a law, and for once the Jew born in England was allowed to inherit the privileges of a subject. The justice of the concession, however, was short-lived: the characteristic terrors of the country were excited, a clamour followed, and the bill was repealed during the very next session. To this unbecoming result, Hanway had the poor satisfaction of contributing, by three more pamphlets entitled A Review of the proposed Naturalization', Three Letters in reply,' and an 'Answer to Test and Contest. These performances are now deservedly forgotten, and it were therefore unavailing to condemn the warmth with which they were worded or the misapprehen sions on which they were founded.

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The next object which attracted his attention was one of evident utility in 1754, a Mr. Spranger of Covent Garden, proposed that Westminster should be paved in a uniform manner; and Hanway immediately addressed a letter to the projector, in which he developed a plan for reducing the idea into practice. Striking as this improvement certainly was, yet six years were permitted to intervene before any thing was effected; but when at last the reformation was undertaken, all the changes he wished to introduce were adopted. Thus the streets first began to be divided into carriage road and footway; the shopkeepers' old signs-those massive impediments to a free prospect and air-were demolished; a paving-board was established, street-keepers were appointed, and the stranger's progress through the metropolis was facilitated by the inscription of the name of every street at its corners.

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In the following year much alarm was created by the equipment of a formidable armament at Brest, and Mr. Hanway offered the country his Thoughts on Invasion.' From a consideration of the additional number of seamen who might thus be required for the service of the state, he was now prompted to those exertions by which the Marine Society was ultimately established. This commendable charity took its rise from a suggestion given by a barrister named Fowler Walker to Sir John (then Mr.) Fielding, for collecting such boys as might be brought before him in his magisterial capacity, either as petty thieves or vagabond beggars, and fitting them out by subscription for sailors. Four hundred boys had in this manner been withdrawn from the haunts of domestic vice, and sent to serve at sea, when Mr. Hanway called a public meeting at the Royal Exchange, for the purpose of founding a Society to recruit the fleet with landsmen and boys. The proposal was received with considerable approbation, and the object prosecuted with great vigour and perseverance. Mr. Walker's design was incorporated with Mr. Hanway's; a large contribution was gathered, and a house of business erected in Bishopsgate-street, at a cost of 4000/. The general prosperity of the concern may be inferred from one statement: in less than six years from the period of the foundation, the governors contributed no less than ten thousand two hundred and thirty-eight sailors to the public service.

After purchasing a Governorship of the Foundling Hospital, in 1758, and publishing a pamphlet against some of the customs then observed in that institution, Hanway addressed his cares to provide an asylum for those most miserable of all miserable beings, the prostitutes of the metropolis. The first refuge of this kind was opened at Rome in 626; the second at Naples in 1324; the third at Seville in 1550; and the fourth at London in 1758. Dr. Johnson may be said to have been the first man in England who advocated such a merciful abode. But its establishment was directly occasioned by a pamphlet from Mr. Dingley, the Russian merchant already mentioned in this sketch, who, in 1758, printed 'A Proposal for establishing a Place of Reception for penitent Prostitutes.' Ever upon the alert, Hanway immediately adopted the idea, and recommended it to the public in a series of Letters. Upon this occasion, as well as in the cases of the Marine Society, and metropolitan paving project, he compensated by an eager industry, for the absence of original merit, and thus acquired the honour of being ranked amongst the primitive founders of a most vital charity. How well these labours prospered is universally attested by the Magdalen Hospital, in Great Surrey-street, Blackfriars.

To expatiate upon the various acts of so busy a character, and exemplify the many good reasons he had for exertion, were enough to fill a volume: it must, therefore, suffice to observe that he beneficially filled the office of Steward to the Stepney Society, instituted by some masters in the merchants' service, during the year 1674, for the purpose of apprenticing orphans and poor children to marine trades; that he endeavoured to obviate the cruelty of impressment, by employing a large muster of Government sailors in the merchant service during the intervals. of peace; that he contributed to abolish the custom of giving vails, by publishing Eight Letters to the Duke of that he helped to get an Act of Parliament for alleviating the hardships of the poor chimney-sweeper; tried to reform the police of London; and also that he made himself somewhat ridiculous by printing Thoughts on Musick,' in 1765. His plans for the preservation of parish poor are marked by a geneYous perseverance and essential benevolence, which, in justice, require a more particular notice. After five years spent in exploring the work-houses of London, he printed the observations

he had made during the period of his inquiries; and, although he failed in rousing that degree of sympathy and extent of refor. mation to which he aspired, the virtue of his intentions was unquestionable, and the necessity of some correctives may be judged by the following melancholy extracts from his publications on the subject:

He found that twenty-three children had been committed to one nurse, in the parish of St. Clement Danes, during the year 1765, and that out of this number, in January 1776, two had been discharged, and only three remained alive: that out of seventy-eight children received into the workhouses of the united parishes of St. Andrew and St. George, Holborn, during the same period, sixty-four died before a twelvemonth elapsed: that thirty-seven out of forty-eight perished within another year in the workhouse of St. Luke's parish; and, in short, that there were some parishes to be found which had not a single child living in the workhouse at the year's end. That such a state of things as this could have been exposed, and yet a purification from the mortality be opposed, seems hardly credible; yet such was the fact; and it demanded all the energy and perseverance of Mr. Hanway to ameliorate the condition of the London poor. He had, however, the satisfaction of ultimate success; for he obtained, by his own exertions, and at his sole expense, two acts of Parliament to redress these evils; by the one of which, in 1761, every parish within the bills of mortality was compelled to keep and publish an annual list of all the children received, distharged, and demised under its care; and by the other, in 1766, all infants belonging to the same parishes were directed to be nursed under special guardians until the age of six years, at a certain distance from town.

It would seem, according to the present constitution of society, that no talent can be held to be thoroughly appreciated, and that no merit can carry its meed, unless it is specifically rewarded by the crown. At least this appears the best reason that could have occasioned a request, which was made to Lord Bute, in 1762, by a deputation of merchants from the city of London, with Mr. Hoare, the banker, at their head, requesting that some beneficial notice might be taken of Mr. Hanway by Government. The

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