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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
is daily studied, no sectarian ill-will nor narrow human dogma is
permitted to darken the face of the clear heaven which they
disclose. It is a children’s school, which is at the same time no
less a children’s home, a home not to be confided to the care of
cold or ignorant strangers, nor, by the nature of its foundation,
in the course of ages to pass into hands that have as much natural
right to deal with it as with the peaks of the highest mountains or
with the depths of the sea, but to be from generation to generation
administered by men living in precisely such homes as those poor
children have lost; by men always bent upon making that
replacement, such a home as their own dear children might find a
happy refuge in if they themselves were taken early away. And I
fearlessly ask you, is this a design which has any claim to your
sympathy? Is this a sort of school which is deserving of your
support?
This is the design, this is the school, whose strong and simple
claim I have to lay before you to-night. I must particularly
entreat you not to suppose that my fancy and unfortunate habit of
fiction has anything to do with the picture I have just presented
to you. It is sober matter of fact. The Warehousemen and Clerks’
Schools, established for the maintaining, clothing, and educating
of the Orphan and Necessitous Children of those employed in the
wholesale trades and manufactures of the United Kingdom, are, in
fact, what I have just described. These schools for both sexes
were originated only four years ago. In the first six weeks of the
undertaking the young men of themselves and quite unaided,
subscribed the large sum of 3,000 pounds. The schools have been
opened only three years, they have now on their foundation thirtynine
children, and in a few days they will have six more, making a
total of forty-five. They have been most munificently assisted by
the heads of great mercantile houses, numerously represented, I am
happy to say, around me, and they have a funded capital of almost
14,000 pounds. This is wonderful progress, but the aim must still
be upwards, the motto always “Excelsior.” You do not need to be
told that five-and-forty children can form but a very small
proportion of the Orphan and Necessitous Children of those who have
been entrusted with the wholesale trades and manufactures of the
United Kingdom: you do not require to be informed that the house
at New-cross, rented for a small term of years, in which the
schools are at present established, can afford but most imperfect
accommodation for such a breadth of design. To carry this good
work through the two remaining degrees of better and best there
must be more work, more co-operation, more friends, more money.
Then be the friends and give the money. Before I conclude, there
is one other feature in these schools which I would commend to your
special attention and approval. Their benefits are reserved for
the children of subscribers; that is to say, it is an essential
principle of the institution that it must help those whose parents
have helped them, and that the unfortunate children whose father
has been so lax, or so criminal, as to withhold a subscription so
exceedingly small that when divided by weeks it amounts to only
threepence weekly, cannot, in justice, be allowed to jostle out and
shoulder away the happier children, whose father has had that
little forethought, or done that little kindness which was
requisite to secure for them the benefits of the institution. I
really cannot believe that there will long be any such defaulting
parents. I cannot believe that any of the intelligent young men
who are engaged in the wholesale houses will long neglect this
obvious, this easy duty. If they suppose that the objects of their
love, born or unborn, will never want the benefits of the charity,
that may be a fatal and blind mistake – it can never be an excuse,
for, supposing them to be right in their anticipation, they should