“Warm Zeal and Cool Judgement”: 


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“Warm Zeal and Cool Judgement”: 

The Cheap Repository and English Charity, 1794-1800 
 

Megan Clare Webber 

 

 
Abstract: In 1794, English philanthropist Hannah More spearheaded a venture to produce short 
tracts promoting morality and religion among readers ―the Cheap Repository. The predominant 
historiographical approach has been to examine the interaction of the Repository with the 
popular print marketplace. Historians such as Susan Pedersen emphasize that the tracts were 
intended to supplant subversive forms of popular literature, such as Thomas Paine’s Rights of 
Man, chapbooks, and broadsides. They argue that the Cheap Repository was an attempt at “top-
down” reformation; elite writers sought to suppress the turbulence and political participation of 
the poor. This paper takes an alternate approach. The tracts are charitable texts which 
addressed middling and gentry readers as much as (or even more than) they did the poor. The 
Repository did not isolate labouring people and their print culture as the sole threats to the 
stability of England, nor did it engage solely in “top-down” moralizing. This essay shows how the 
Repository lays blame on the charitable practices of state poor relief and rich beneficiaries ―as 
well as the poor― for encouraging immorality and unrest. The Cheap Repository seeks to 
reform the meaning and practice of charity amongst all members of English society.            

 
Key Terms: benevolence, charity, Cheap Repository, class/rank, deservingness, discernment, 
evangelicalism, frugality, material relief, Hannah More, Poor Law/parish relief, popular 
literature, radicalism, “top-down” reformation, workhouse  

 

 
Note on the Cheap Repository Texts 
 

Each Cheap Repository tract was printed multiple times, often under different titles. I cite the 
texts as they appear in their first penny pamphlet format and refer to them by their original titles. I 
employ the collected editions only to highlight later departures from or additions to the original texts, or 
when the first printed pamphlets are not available. As all the tracts are unsigned, determining the 
authors of particular tracts is difficult. Therefore, this paper refers to and lists the tracts by title, rather 
than by author. The quotations underneath the reproduced images are not original captions, but are 
excerpted from the text from which the image comes. I have modernized the long ‘s’ which appears in 
the tracts. 

 
Introduction 

 

Prosperity has made most of us careless. The thoughtless profusion of some of the rich could only be 
exceeded by the idleness, and bad management, of some of the poor. Let us now at last adopt that good 
old maxim, EVERY ONE MEND ONE. 
—The Way to Plenty; or, The Second Part of Tom White, 1795, p. 34. 
 

 In 1794, Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, was horrified to learn of English colliers who had 
pawned their Bibles in order to purchase Thomas Paine’s radical attack on hierarchy and heredity, The 
Rights of Man (Robinson, 2004). This was only one episode of many which led Porteus and his fellow 



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elites to believe that England was tottering dangerously on the verge of anarchy and apostasy in the last 
decade of the eighteenth century. Not only were poor harvests, famine, heavy wartime taxes, and 
unemployment creating misery among the poor, but radicalism threatened the very stability of the 
state. Presses churned out hundreds of thousands of subversive tracts, while the mobbing of the king in 
1795, naval mutinies in 1797, and rioting seemed awful premonitions of an English Revolution to rival 
that of France (Kidd, 1999; O’Gorman, 1997; Roberts, 2004). 

 
 In order to prevent such a horrifying event, Porteus turned to the evangelical writer and Sunday 
school philanthropist Hannah More (1745-1833). He proposed that she produce moral tracts which 
would compete with and, in due course, “supplant the corrupt and vicious little books and ballads which 
ha[d] been found highly mischievous to the Community” ―by which he meant the lewd and irreverent 
chapbooks and broadsides of popular literature (Cheap Repository for Moral, 1795, p. 1). With the aid of 
her evangelical collaborators, More produced a series of tracts (known collectively as the Cheap 
Repository) whose entertaining plots, eye-catching woodcut illustrations, inexpensive price, and simple 
format and diction followed the chapbook model, albeit with a strong dose of morality (Pedersen, 1986; 
Stott, 2003).

1
  In addition to the parables, hymns, and prayers of the “Sunday Readings,” there were 

criminal biographies, providential tales, ballads, non-fictional instructions and ―most popular of all― 
short stories featuring eighteenth-century settings. 

 
 Two million Cheap Repository tracts were printed in the first year alone (1794), and over one 
hundred distinct tracts were produced between 1794 and 1797 (two or three tracts being released every 
month) (The Cheap Repository for Moral, 1795; Haywood, 2004). The Repository ceased publication in 
1797 when More found the burden of writing too much to bear. However, the demand for tracts was 
hardly satiated. The original tracts were reprinted multiple times, even up until 1884, and dozens of 
spurious tracts surfaced in the wake of the Repository’s decline, including a series produced by John 
Marshall, the original publisher of the Cheap Repository, between 1797 and 1800 (which are considered 
in this essay) (Stott, 2003).  
 
 It is little wonder that scholars such as M.G. Jones dub More’s literature “Burke for Beginners” 
(Jones, 1952, p. 125). With titles including The Riot; or, Half a Loaf Is Better than No Bread (1795) and 
The Shopkeeper Turned Sailor; or, The Folly of Going out of Our Element (1796), the Cheap Repository is 
often typified as a knee-jerk reaction to the radical literature of the 1790s; evangelical writers sought to 
stifle working-class political participation. This argument has had a remarkably long run among 
historians, from G.H. Spinney writing in 1939, to E.P. Thompson in 1966, to Susan Pedersen in 1989. 
While the Cheap Repository writers undoubtedly sought to impose values of obedience, piety, 
contentment, and a Protestant work-ethic upon their readers, I argue that the Repository was not purely 
an attempt at “top-down” reformation, nor did it identify the mob and radical print as the sole threats 
to the stability of England.          
 The “top-down” argument neglects to consider that members of the middling and gentry classes 
were the primary consumers of the tracts. The very scarcity of documentary evidence describing 
working-class reactions to the texts hints that the Repository failed to make a significant impact in the 
popular marketplace. Indeed, the few extant records suggest that the poor were ambivalent or even 

                                                 
1
 As the tracts are unsigned, it is difficult to determine the identities of many of the authors. More was the most prolific writer, 

but Hannah’s sister Sally (Sarah) More, the poet William Mason, the abolitionists Henry Thornton and Zachary Macaulay, and 
the Reverend John Gilpin also contributed. Scholars have also advanced Patty (Martha) More, Elizabeth Bouverie, Hester Mulso 
Chapone, Selena Mills, Reverend John Venn ―Rector at Clapham― and the abolitionist preacher John Newton and his wife as 
possible authors. Despite the number of contributors, the authors’ common evangelical background and Hannah More’s editing 
ensured an ideologically cohesive body of work (Blanch, 2009; Jones, 1952; Pedersen, 1986; Spinney, 1939). 



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hostile toward the tracts (Smith, 1984; Stott, 2003). But while evangelicals found it necessary to bribe 
common hawkers into carrying Repository stock, middling and gentry readers enthusiastically bought 
the tracts for use at home or in the schoolroom. Such was the demand from these affluent readers that 
expensive collected editions, printed on paper “of a superior kind for Gentry,” appeared (The Cheap 
Repository for Moral, 1795, p. 2).  
 
 By typifying the Cheap Repository as a venture which seeks to transform popular literature by 
directly competing with chapbook culture, “top-down” arguments ignore contexts ―other than the 
marketplace― which the Cheap Repository engaged. The majority of tracts did not compete side-by-
side with Paine’s Rights of Man on bookstands but were bought in bulk by affluent benefactors and from 
thence distributed as charitable gifts in Sunday schools, hospitals, and prisons (The Cheap Repository for 
Moral, 1795; Kelly, 1987). Moreover, the venture itself relied upon charitable subscriptions to cover 
printing and distribution costs.      

 
  The publishing history of the Cheap Repository suggests that the tracts must be seen as more 
than working-class texts which were ingrained within the print marketplace; they are texts which 
reached a broad social audience and were intimately connected to charity. In its moral messages, too, 
the Cheap Repository addressed a broad swathe of society and charitable concerns. As the quote which 
heads this essay suggests, the Cheap Repository does not hold the dregs of society single-handedly 
responsible for immorality and vice: “most of us” are guilty. Although idle and wasteful, the poor are 
nonetheless victims of elites’ “thoughtless profusion.”   By providing charitable relief indiscriminately 
and extravagantly, state institutions and the rich have failed to provide lasting benefits to the poor and 
have degraded ― even endangered― the nation. Elites’ profuse charitable gifts have only provided the 
poor with the economic means to continue living their depraved lives. In this way, the Cheap Repository 
suggests that the condition of the poor is as much the fault of the rich as it is of the poor themselves. 
Only a complete overhaul of charitable practice can restore security; a regulated, frugal, and education-
based charity will allow the poor to develop the requisite self-sufficiency and morality. Through their 
fictional creations, Hannah More and her collaborators undertook to redefine the meaning and practice 
of charity amongst all ranks of English society.      

 
 The history of the Cheap Repository and its publication suggests that the tracts addressed 
society’s elite as much as they did the poor. Yet, the narratives, dialogue, imagery, characters, and 
illustrations contained within the tracts themselves are likewise designed to effect moral change in all 
levels of society. Far from focusing solely on the immorality of the poor (as we would expect purely 
“top-down” tracts to do), the Cheap Repository also addresses issues of particular concern to elites. The 
following sections explore how the Cheap Repository texts apply the basic tenets of evangelical charity 
to three distinct components of late eighteenth-century society: state poor relief (the Poor Law), 
benefactors, and poor beneficiaries. I explain how the tracts critique the impersonal institution of the 
Poor Law and replace it with an intimate and discerning charity. In the following section, I argue that the 
Cheap Repository constructs a new ideal of the Good Samaritan. By reinterpreting Christ’s example, 
evangelicals deemed frugality, discernment, and activity the touchstones of the pious benefactor. And 
finally, the tracts disassemble the “moral economy of charity” held by the labouring classes, seeking to 
transform their expectations of cash handouts to expectations of advice. More significantly, however, 
the Repository replaces the benefactor’s duty to give with the beneficiary’s responsibility to deserve. 
However, before examining how charity is constructed in the Cheap Repository texts, I will briefly 
outline the ideological underpinnings of evangelical philanthropy. A broad introduction to evangelical 
doctrines will prove useful before exploring how these doctrines are adapted with greater specificity 
within the tracts themselves.       



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Evangelical Philanthropy 

 

How many troubles and miseries are there in this land, which, if a few more of our independent ladies and 
gentlemen would be so good as to turn Christians (I mean zealous Christians!) would presently be 
relieved. What a great number of poor cottagers are there who drag on life both in wickedness and 
misery for the want of being overlooked, and instructed, and advised, and now and then assisted by their 
superiors who dwell near them? 
—Some New Thoughts for the New Year (1796), p. 16 

 
 Evangelical benefactors of the 1790s emphasized three concepts: “warm zeal” or personal 
Christian motivation; “scientific” discrimination and frugality; and information-based charity (On 
Carrying Religion, 1796, p. 3). Evangelicals were members of the Church of England; however, they 
stressed a vital personal faith above strict adherence to church doctrine. In everything they did, 
evangelicals strove to emulate Christ. Charity was no exception. The doctrine of sanctification, “of living 
a life of social usefulness in imitation of the life of Christ” (Andrew, 1989, p. 166), necessitated a 
personal and active benefaction. Just as Christ entered the homes of the poor to preach the Word, so 
too did evangelicals undertake personal missions of mercy. A heartfelt drive to do good was imperative 
and the “cult of sensibility” encouraged profuse expressions of sympathy for the suffering. While 
evangelicals held to salvation by faith, good works offered proof of the sincerity of this faith (Roberts, 
2004, p. 47).       

 
 The evangelicals’ emotional approach to charity co-existed (often uncomfortably) with 
“scientific” discrimination ―“cool judgement” rooted in level-headed rationality rather than in 
sentimentality (On Carrying Religion, 1796, p. 3). Philanthropists argued that charity ought to be treated 
as a science and perfected through carefully controlled procedures. Potential beneficiaries were to be 
carefully examined and to be subject to discriminatory selection. Time, funds, and effort were not to be 
lavished on any subject who excited sympathy but carefully directed towards initiatives which had been 
tested and deemed effective. The benefactor was thus sure to obtain the greatest return for his or her 
investment. This emphasis on frugal investment is suggested in the title of the Cheap Repository.             

 
 Evangelicals embraced the most inexpensive form of charity: learning. Whereas material relief 
(such as cash handouts or the provision of food, housing, or clothing) only offered temporary relief for 
the body, education and advice had much more lasting benefits not only for the body, but also for the 
soul. Moral and religious education activated the innate reason of the poor, and the Christian principles 
obtained through education prevented the contravention of the laws of men or God. While a gift of food 
might assuage hunger for a day, occupational and practical instruction outfitted the poor to become 
self-sufficient over a lifetime. The most prominent of evangelical charities specialized in the provision of 
education; Sunday schools offered religious instruction, and the Society for Bettering the Condition of 
the Poor (S.B.C.P.) distributed pamphlets which provided tips for household economy. The Cheap 
Repository, too, promised the educational gift of moral, religious, and practical improvement.     

    

The Poor Law 

[H]ow many are there who shamefully run to the parish for relief, without any necessity...?  These are 
people who either want industry in providing for their families — or frugality, in not making the best use 
of what they provide... Let them consider, how directly they break a scripture command, by eating other 
men’s bread for nought; and by becoming chargeable without necessity. 



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— The Life of William Baker, with His Funeral Sermon, 1795, pp. 15-16 
 

  Poor harvests and want in the 1790s led to the establishment of the most generous statutory 
relief system in Europe. English parishes offered various types of “outdoor relief” or non-institutional 
charity, including allowances-in-aid-of-wages (the basis of the “Speenhamland system”); payments to 
labourers with large families; and payments to seasonally unemployed agricultural labourers (Kidd, 
1999). Although capable of relieving fewer applicants than outdoor relief, workhouses were also 
widespread. The influx of applicants in the 1790s was such that parishes could no longer uphold the 
discriminatory practices encoded within the Elizabethan Poor Law. The “workhouse test,” which had 
divided “deserving” from “undeserving” candidates for relief in the early seventeenth century, was 
suspended. Christie (1984) argues that the Poor Law in the late eighteenth century “contributed greatly 
to the degree of social peace in the country, and that without it elements of instability would have been 
far more formidable” (pp. 116, 113, 104, 99).   

 
 Evangelicals believed differently. Rather than relieving labouring people, workhouses and 
indiscriminate outdoor relief merely rewarded careless economy and cultivated idle (read: turbulent) 
working classes. Not only did the system impose heavy rates on those already struggling under wartime 
taxation, but its cash-based model fostered corruption and indifference toward the poor. The Cheap 
Repository highlights the downfalls of public relief and seeks to replace it with a personal and education-
centred philanthropy in all but exceptional circumstances of disability, advanced age, or extreme 
honourable poverty.       

 
 If not the most far-reaching, the workhouse was nonetheless the most visually prominent 
element of parish relief in late-century England. As such, it is often the scapegoat of criticism in the 
Cheap Repository. In spite of their name, workhouses in the tracts are not places of industry. Indeed, 
they are quite the opposite ―overrun with “pilfering idle children” (The Apprentice Turned Master, 
1796, p. 12). One parish inmate “stand*s+ at the *alms-house] door, where she passe[s] most of her time 
quarrelling with women as idle and dirty as herself” (The Apprentice Turned Master, 1796, p. 11). 
Evangelicals attacked parish relief for failing to distinguish between claimants who truly deserved relief 
and those who merely chose not to work. Such indiscriminate relief rewarded idleness and lack of 
foresight; as relief was virtually assured to all who applied, there were few incentives for the poor to 
work industriously or to save for unforeseen trials. Amy Talbot finds herself in the workhouse after 
having squandered the inheritance “which might... have afforded her a comfortable maintenance,” 
while Mrs. Betty is admitted after having “taken no care by frugality and prudence to avoid it” (The 
Hubbub, 1797, p. 4; ’Tis All for the Best, 1797, p. 3). The illustration for The Hubbub; or, The History of 
Farmer Russel the Hard-Hearted Overseer (1797) depicts a large number of able-bodied alms-house 
beneficiaries who have little to do but to heckle the local overseer (Fig. 1). The tracts imply the question: 
if these beneficiaries are strong enough to brandish frying pans and ring warming pans, should they not 
be working?   

 
 The idle poor fostered by parish relief not only harmed the economy and the pockets of rate-
payers, but threatened the very social fabric of England. Workhouses offered material relief which 
temporarily reduced want and the motivation to beg or steal but did not offer the moral, religious, or 
occupational instruction which equipped labouring people to lead self-sufficient lives over the long 
term. Moreover, in parish institutions, “all ages and tempers were met together” (The History of 
Jonathan Griffin, 1799, p. 8). Elite critics of parish relief decried the fact that, in these institutions, 
children resided beside depraved adults, women with men ―a mixture inevitably resulting in the 
corruption of all. By removing the poor from the land and by making them entirely dependent on the 



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goodness of others, parish relief created a demoralized populace. Parish inmates in the tracts are 
degenerated beasts; they are dirty, “abject and base-minded,” “half-starved and half-naked,” and 
“languid wretches, with faces sodden, pale, and dropsical,” who desire nothing better than to have gin 
in their “clutches.”  By contrast, an honest and hardworking individual “feels his own consequence, and 
is beholden only to his Heavenly Master: he wants no assistance, but... the use of his limbs” (The Life of 
William Baker, 1795, p. 18). Influenced by Malthus (1978), the Cheap Repository suggests that welfare 
encourages the propagation of a dangerously depraved underclass (pp. 67-68). 

 
 With unlimited idle time, an unawakened reason, no property, and little self-respect, parish 
recipients in the tracts have little to lose if they choose to riot. According to the tracts, the animal 
instincts which flourish in workhouses are dangerous. The Hubbub forcefully links parish relief to 
political unrest. The crowd which gathers outside the alms-house seems to have little compunction 
against openly attacking social superiors. Accepting relief is often depicted as akin to stealing (those who 
do so are “little better than thieves”) or even leads directly to crime (The History of Jonathan Griffin, 
1799; The Life of William Baker, 1795). For example, Black Giles progresses from begging around the 
parish to stealing apples (Black Giles... Widow Brown’s Apple-Tree, 1796, p. 8). 
 
 Parish relief was a cash-based system. Not only did various types of outdoor relief take the form 
of cash pensions, but funds were raised through the compulsory taxation of parishioners. Moreover, it 
was quite common for an appointed overseer to pay an inferior to perform his duties. Critics of the Poor 
Law believed parish rates to be too exorbitant, especially as the extent of post-war poverty increased 
taxation. At the same time, they argued that such an enforced monetary system of relief fostered 
corruption, inhumanity, and ambivalence toward the poor. The Cheap Repository tracts often describe 
parish relief as corrupted. For instance, an appointed overseer of the poor offloads his duties onto an 
inferior man who is “in such low circumstances as to be under great temptation to be dishonest” and 
parish officers routinely shirk their duties in order to save money (The History of Jonathan Griffin, 1799, 
p. 13). Mr. Simpson, the farmer who “is ignorant and worse educated than his plowmen” and is thus 
hardly fit to be in a position of authority, evicts a man from the parish for refusing to work on the 
Sabbath (’Tis All for the Best, 1797, pp. 10-11). The Sunday school benefactress Mrs. Jones uncovers “a 
scheme to take a large family off the parish,” a man in a workhouse perishes from neglect, and a nurse 
hired by parish officers to care for infant charges succeeds only in starving them (The History of Mr. 
Fantom, 1797; The Parish Nurse, 1798; The Sunday School, 1797). Farmer Russel is worst of all. He 
refuses to replace the decayed thatch of the poor house, and melted snow soon pours onto an inmate’s 
bed, crippling her. He seizes the land of the poor for his own use and is accused of dragging a dying 
soldier into a neighbouring parish “in order to save *his own parish+... a trifling expence *sic+” (The 
Hubbub, 1797, pp. 7-8, 10, 11).    

 
 The Cheap Repository also underlines the failure of parish relief to cultivate Christian 
enthusiasm. The tracts present the Poor Law as a sad excuse for charity, lacklustre and lethargic. This 
lack of enthusiasm is illustrated by the incidence of uneducated characters (often farmers) becoming de-
facto parish officers when gentry superiors refuse to perform the job themselves. Evangelicals believed 
that the involuntary demands of parish rates and officer appointments destroyed the “warm zeal” ―the 
voluntary compulsion to do good― which was a vital component of Christian charity (On Carrying 
Religion, 1796; M.J.D. Roberts, 2004). William Peterson bemoans the lack of dedication to parish work:  

 
Not that I mean to say it is right for them, when they are chosen church-warden 
or overseer to shift the burden from their own shoulders... because a Christian 



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should never mind his own trouble when he has an opportunity of being useful to 
his fellow creatures. (The History of Jonathan Griffin, 1799, p. 13)   

 

A reforming impulse could exist only when money was not a consideration. Indeed, many well-off 
characters are entirely drained of charitable feeling due to constant demands on their purses. When 
approached for a charitable contribution, Farmer Hoskins explodes with: “well, madam, what is it now?  
Flannel or French? or weavers, or a new church, or large bread, or cheap rice?” (The Sunday School, 
1797, p. 10). Several times the tracts remind working-class readers not to be offended if they are 
refused relief “since the kind hearts of the wealthy are often imposed upon” by undeserving claimants 
(The History of Tom White, 1795, p. 15; The Hubbub, 1797, p. 6; The Two Soldiers, 1795, p. 13). 
Exhausted and disillusioned by an inefficient and ineffective system of parish relief, beneficiaries are left 
bereft of reforming zeal. The Cheap Repository critiques local authorities for abandoning their flocks to 
dissipation and riot.      

 
 The critiques of the Poor Law in the Cheap Repository mirror those emerging in wider society. In 
1786, Joseph Townsend initiated a fierce pamphlet debate with his scathing criticism of parish relief in 
his Dissertation on the Poor Laws. Wood (1791) promises houses of industry as a substitute for the 
parish relief which merely supports “undeserving, artful cheats” in idleness (p. 6). An S.B.C.P. tract 
proposes to reduce parish taxation to one-tenth of its current rates by establishing the poor in self-
sufficiency on their own plots. The author of the tract, Thomas Bernard, argues that independent labour 
and property ownership, rather than relief, provide psychological fulfillment: “*i+n his cottage, *a poor 
man] has his family around him, he has something he can call his own... and is the master of his own 
actions. Domestic connections, property, hope, liberty... exist not in a workhouse” (Bernard, 1797, p.7). 
The Philanthropic Society, too, argues that parish relief destroys social ties and encourages crime by 
removing beneficiaries’ stake in society (e.g. property and labour): 

 
no mutual tie connects [a charitable benefactor and a beneficiary], the one is not held by interest, nor the 
other bound by gratitude... no affection holds the beggar to the public who supports him; alms and 
plunder are alternate and indifferent to him... The nuisances, pests, and disturbers of society, are found 
almost exclusively among those who enjoy its gratuitous benefits. (Plan and Particulars, 1792, p. 13) 

 

The idle and ungrateful beggars populating the pages of the Cheap Repository are representative of the 
social breakdown which evangelicals and Poor Law critics alike took to be the result of the Poor Law’s 
ambivalence.    

 
 In order to right the wrongs of parish relief, the Cheap Repository sought to radically redefine 
the meaning and practice of public charity. It did this in two ways. Firstly, it argued that poverty is a 
natural condition which should be made tolerable through education, but never entirely alleviated. 
Secondly, it sought to make the Poor Law more discriminating and to attach a social stigma to the 
workhouse.            

 
 Ironically, the ideal evangelical charity was no charity at all. In a perfect world, the poor would 
be so very industrious and frugal that parish intervention would be entirely unnecessary. Both 
evangelicals and their Cheap Repository argued that education in economy and self-sufficiency would 
negate the need for material relief. After having been taught how to avoid distress, the working classes 
could manage for themselves.   
 



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 Furthermore, More’s contemporaries suggested that poverty was not necessarily a condition 
which demanded rectification. Throughout the tracts, poverty is presented as a God-given condition 
which should not be altered. For example, A Hymn of Praise for the Abundant Harvest of 1796 (1796) 
presents scarcity as a divine chastisement for war and “domestic hate” (pp. 4-5). The struggle with the 
fluctuations of the market was merely part of the broader Christian struggle “of temptation, trial and 
exemplary suffering.”  As Kidd (1999) argues: 

 
Since the individual was responsible for his own salvation, the sustenance of the labourer 
merely because of his poverty was in contravention of the laws of God. To remove this 
unthinking paternalism [of the parish] would be to restore the natural order and to foster self-
denial, spiritual growth and moral virtue. (p. 22) 

 

The goal of evangelical charity was not to abolish suffering (the fallen nature of the earth made this 
impossible) but to inure the poor to hardship.  

 
 The most fulfilled and upstanding characters, such as the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, the 
Lancashire Collier Girl, and the Happy Waterman, are those who steadfastly refuse all public relief 
(Cheap Repository Shorter Tracts, 1798; The Lancashire Collier Girl, 1795; The Shepherd of Salisbury 
Plain, 1795). William Baker, for example, “bred up a large family, without receiving a single farthing from 
the parish” (The Life of William Baker, 1795, p. 20). Furthermore, benefactors in the texts contribute to 
schemes for supporting the poor in their own homes, rather than in the poorhouse. They fund 
schooling, allow their inferiors to purchase things at cheaper rates during scarcity, provide loans to keep 
families in business, arrange employment or apprenticeship, or pay doctors to treat the sick in their own 
homes (The Apprentice Turned Master, 1796; Cheap Repository Shorter Tracts, 1798; The Good Parish 
Priest, 1799; The History of Fanny Mills, 1799; The Honest Publican, 1798; The Life of William Baker, 
1795; Sweep Soot O!, 1799). As late-century evangelicals attempted to replace cash handouts with 
saving banks and friendly societies, so too did the Cheap Repository privilege self-sufficiency.

2
       

 
 The Cheap Repository reserves parish relief for those who are labelled “deserving” through 
sickness, disability, old age, or an abundance of young children. The pious labourer William Peterson 
only enters the workhouse after enduring a ridiculous number of trials. Sickness “reduce*s+ him to a 
skeleton,” then his wife falls ill, his children nearly starve, a fire destroys his cottage and possessions, 
and his wife dies. And it does not end there. Peterson explains how, nearly blind, he: 

 
supported myself for years by making cabbage nets... but a stroke of the palsy in 
my right hand quite disabled me. My son indeed, the only child I have left, would 
fain have taken me to live with him; but he has a wife and six children, and, God 
knows, they fare but badly as it is. (The History of Jonathan Griffin, 1799, pp. 7-8, 
11-12)         
 

The message is clear. Parish relief should only be for those who truly have no viable means of support. 
Even then, the poor house is not for rest. Inmates are to labour, like good Mrs. Apsley, who mends stays 
and quilts petticoats in her spare time, or Mrs. Simpson, who, upon entering the alms-house, declares 
that her “cares are at an end, but not *her+ duties” (The Hubbub, 1797, p. 7; ’Tis All for the Best, 1797, p. 

                                                 
2
 Evangelicals increasingly promoted ‘self-supporting’ charitable ventures. Labouring people regularly contributed to saving 

banks, friendly societies, and benefit clubs in return for financial or material support in the event of personal hardship. 
Dispensaries provided medicine to contributors, friendly societies offered financial assistance to the temporarily unemployed 
and covered funeral expenses, while women’s benefit societies lent out childbirth linens (Andrew, 1989, p. 201).    



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13). Decades before the Poor Law Act of 1834 officially encoded policies of discrimination (“less 
eligibility”) and forced labour, and Dickensian workhouses were designed to make their inmates prefer 
the outside world, evangelicals and the Cheap Repository pushed to reduce the availability of parish 
relief.  
 

Benefactor 

The Miser and the Sensual Find 
How each misused the gifts assigned; 
While he who spends and gives, 
To the true end of living lives; 
’Tis self-denying moderation 
Gains the GREAT FATHER’S approbation. 
— The Plum-Cakes; or, the Father and His Three Sons, 1797, p. 8 
 

Scholars such as Susan Pedersen (1986) argue that the tracts attack “popular culture” (pp. 107-
108). However, the Cheap Repository’s decidedly unflattering portrait of state relief indicates that 
evangelicals were just as prepared to blame official institutions for post-war turbulence and to bend 
even the most long-standing and widespread charitable institution to the evangelical will. The Cheap 
Repository is replete with bad benefactors. There are “Miser*s+” like the aptly named Lady Blithe, who 
never lifts a finger for the poor, and the “over-frugal” Squire, who will help Mrs. Jones with any of her 
plans ―so long “as it cost*s+ him nothing” (The Cottage Cook, 1797, p. 4; The Deceitfulness of Pleasure, 
1799). Then there are “Sensuals” like Sir John, who lavishes gifts upon his dependents but never 
questions whether he truly benefits them (The Cottage Cook, 1797, p. 4). Worst of all, however, are 
radicals like Mr. Fantom, the New-Fashioned Philosopher, who dreams up plans for aiding labouring 
people but succeeds only in alienating those whom he would theoretically help (The History of Mr. 
Fantom, 1797).  

 
 The Poor Law was not the sole institution in late eighteenth-century England which evangelicals 
attacked for encouraging social unrest. By offering indiscriminate material relief or by neglecting their 
paternal duties, benefactors also fuelled disaffection. This section illustrates how the Cheap Repository 
condemns the miserliness, open-handed largesse, and innovation of benefactors. I argue that the tracts 
reform the practice of giving by manipulating Christian doctrine. Frugality, discernment, and advice 
replace largesse as touchstones of the Good Samaritan.    

 
 Misers are the most benign type of wayward benefactor; their worst effects are sulky 
dependents. Indeed, the tracts suggest it is better to give nothing than to give indiscriminately and 
extravagantly. By offering material relief, Sensuals encourage idleness and immorality. Sir John has all 
the requisite humanity of the Christian but misapplies it. For example, he provides his tenants with beer 
because the “poor fellows... work hard,” but neglects to consider “that while the man is enjoying 
himself... his wife and children are ragged and starving” (The Cottage Cook, 1797, p. 10). He puts no 
thought into charity, as he “subscribe*s+ with equal readiness to a cricket match or a charity school” (The 
Cottage Cook, p. 4), and he favours inactive subscriptions to personal interaction with his beneficiaries. 
Furthermore, his charity does nothing to address morality or religion. Indeed, his benevolence 
encourages moral license. He “take*s+ it for granted that the poor are to be indulged with bellringing and 
bonfires, and to be made drunk at Christmas” (The Cottage Cook, p. 4). Sir John’s entertainments are 
hardly harmless fun. For elite readers, Sir John’s charity must have carried suggestions of riot. 

 



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 Elsewhere in the tracts, indiscriminate giving merely supports idleness and unrest. Both the 
Giles children and Madge Blarney, “the Gipsey Girl,” progress from begging handouts to outright 
stealing (Black Giles... Widow Brown’s Apple-Tree, 1796; Madge Blarney, 1798). Far from forging ties 
between a benefactor and beneficiary, material relief secures only ingratitude: 

 
 the gentleman... threw down a shilling, which the lad picked up, with very little 

gratitude in his countenance, but with no small conceit, at his own quickness and 
cleverness in seizing hold of it; after which, he grew as proud as could be of 
having got possession of the piece of money, not considering at all that it was a 
mere present, and that he had not given the gentleman a single match for it out 
of his basket. (The Beggarly Boy, 1798, pp. 5-6) 

  
According to the tracts, the poor cannot distinguish cash handouts from the profits of stealing. 
Indiscriminate charity does not instil in the poor a respect for property but teaches that rewards can be 
had with deception ― not industry.  

 
 Evangelicals were also highly critical of innovation purely for the sake of innovation. Thomas 
Bernard (1798), for example, condemned past philanthropic projects which were based upon 
conjecture: “the good effects... have been limited and uncertain: the project having originated not in 
*the poor+, but in the projector; ―not in fact, but in speculation” (p.xiii). The Cheap Repository 
characters similarly voice their concerns respecting the “new whim-wham[s]... foolish inventions, and 
new-fangled devices” of charitable ventures “which do more harm than good” (The Sunday School, 
1797, p. 10). Mr. Fantom is a telling example of the pitfalls of such charitable day-dreaming. Seeking 
fame, he spends his days concocting elaborate (but ultimately untenable) plans for liberating the poor 
from poverty. In spite of his assertion that he will “make all mankind good and happy,” he cannot even 
secure the happiness of one and fails to help those who are right in front of him (The History of Mr. 
Fantom, 1797, pp. 2, 8). He refuses to help Mr. Trueman release an old friend from debtor’s prison. 
Furthermore, Fantom’s footman ―following his master’s profligate example― soon turns to stealing 
and commits murder. Fantom even refuses to forgive his ex-servant when William is in his condemned 
cell (The History of Mr. Fantom). Expansive schemes were not only uneconomical but inhumane. They 
were not propelled by the “warm zeal” of Christian sympathy, but from selfish motives. 

 
 The Cheap Repository is critical of benefactors who have sensibility but no sense and, equally, 
benefactors who have sense but no sensibility. The ideal benefactors are those who, like Mrs. Jones, 
combine “good sense, activity, and piety” (The Sunday School, 1797, p. 5). She need  not give up her 
money but devotes her time to spreading good economy and religion. The evangelical doctrine of 
sanctification required one to perform good works in imitation of Christ. The Cheap Repository 
constructs a frugal and discriminating version of Christ as benefactor ―an image which provided the 
ideal model for gentry and middle-class philanthropists of the late eighteenth century to follow.    

      
        Christ in the Cheap Repository is, first and foremost, discriminating. He cautiously considers the 
merits of potential beneficiaries and offers material relief only in exceptional circumstances where there 
is no possibility of self-sufficiency. He provides loaves and the fishes to his followers only because his 
mission requires the abandonment of labour: “this multitude being in the way of duty, were so far from 
being allowed to starve while ‘following Christ,’ that a miracle was wrought on their behalf” (Hints to All 
Ranks, 1795, p. 11). The image of the discerning Christ also appears in Thomas Bernard’s writings. He, 
too, claims that Christ gave food only in times of exceptional need: “*w+e do not read of any 
extraordinary, or gratuitous, supply of food; except in the wilderness, where there were no ordinary 



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means of human industry” (Bernard, 1802, p. 11). In Hints to All Ranks of People (1795), more than one 
half of a single page is composed of a footnote which implores the reader not to misunderstand the 
parable of the loaves and the fishes. The footnote suggests a discordance between Christ’s expansive 
generosity and evangelical discrimination. The writer of the tract reminds the reader that “*n+o miracles 
will be wrought for those, who merely on a religious pretence break off their proper and necessary 
work” (emphasis added, p. 11). It is hardly “miracles” of multiplying bread and fish which readers might 
mistakenly expect. Evangelical writers transform the biblical miracle of a mere five loaves feeding five 
thousand into the miracle of receiving material relief at all. Just as a miracle is rare, so too is the 
evangelical philanthropist’s material relief limited and exceptional. 

 
 Christ in the Cheap Repository is not only discriminating, but frugal. The parable of the loaves 
and the fishes emphasizes his divine frugality over his divine bounty. The tract underscores Christ’s 
injunction to “*g+ather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost” ―and includes this verse as a 
caption for the illustration (Fig. 2) (Hints to All Ranks, 1795, pp. 15, 19). Furthermore, the author argues 
that Christ demonstrates his economy by providing coarse brown bread and cheap fish, rather than 
costly white bread and meat. 
 
 The Cheap Repository also emphasizes the educational nature of Christ’s charity. Not only does 
Christ attend to the bodies of his followers but to their souls. He distributes loaves but, more 
importantly, also preaches to his followers. The example of Christ demanded an active concern for 
education, as opposed to material relief: 

 
the best mode of showing charity to the poor is that which our Savior has set the example; I mean the 
uniting charitable help and religious instruction both together, for many a one may take from the same 
hand which has given him bread, a bible, or some religious book which may prove a far greater benefit 
than all the money which he may have received (Hints to All Ranks, 1795, p. 14)    

 

Just as Christ ministered to his people in their homes, so too were eighteenth-century beneficiaries to 
look personally to amend the morals and religion of those surrounding them. Simply ministering to the 
poor is the most refined charity. The Christian allegory Bear Ye One Another’s Burthens (1796) presents 
a series of characters who travel along the Valley of Tears and aid each other to carry loads of poverty, 
oppression, and sickness. While material relief “might be of real use, *it+ seemed, by galling the 
travellers, to add to the load.” By contrast, “so cheap a kindness as a mild word, or an affectionate look” 
works wonders (p. 5). The tract suggests that true Christian charity takes the form of encouragement, 
rather than relief. Indeed, by encouraging the poor to bear their burdens humbly and graciously, the 
benefactor serves them better than had he attempted to remove the burden. After all, a God-given 
burden (such as poverty) is not designed to be alleviated, but to be borne.         

 
 Thompson (1966) has argued that “the humanitarian tradition became warped beyond 
recognition” under the influence of More in the 1790s (p. 57). Utilitarian and Malthusian doctrines 
narrowed the scope of benevolence. Thompson is certainly correct in his suggestion that elite fears of 
radicalism influenced the expression of charity as much as did the depravity of the poor. However, the 
discriminating and personal charity which the Cheap Repository promotes was certainly not perceived 
by evangelicals as “warped” ―as an alien and unfamiliar concept. Rather, they genuinely sought to 
reconstruct what they took to be a simple and pure biblical paternalism. The “Selfish System” of 
Malthusian-inspired charity co-existed with a revival of paternalist feelings. Mutual obligation and 
paternal ties of affection were fostered, albeit through ties of advice rather than cash (Perkin, 2002; D. 



  109 

  

Roberts, 1979; Lawes, 2000). At the same time, by turning its reforming gaze towards elites, the Cheap 
Repository acknowledges commonality between rich and poor: 

 
The traditional Christian discourse of the struggle of the individual sinner against 
the temptations of vice was... modified so that the whole of society, particularly 
the gentry, shared responsibility for helping the weak resist temptation. 
(Dodsworth, 2008, p. 602) 

     
By re-interpreting the Christian example, the Cheap Repository tracts mediate (however awkwardly) 
between an ancient paternal ideal and Enlightenment values of scientific regulation and reason.  
 

Beneficiary 

What tho’ I be low and mean 
I’ll engage the rich to love me, 
While I’m modest, neat and clean, 
And submit when they reprove me. 
 
If I should be poor or sick, 
I shall meet I hope with pity 
Since I love to help the weak 
Tho’ they’re neither fair nor witty. 

 
— Divine Songs... for the Use of Children, 1795, p. 30 
 

 Elliott (2009) argues that evangelical charity was a “gift exchange, where one side, more wealthy 
and advantaged, gives a benefit that the other has an obligation to reciprocate” (p. 108). However, the 
gift-exchange system is by nature voluntary; reciprocity is expected but not always provided. As advice 
and education “were a ‘gift’ to the poor, not a contractual bargain, the recipients were not bound to 
respond as the donors hoped they would” ―that is, with gratitude (Elliott, p. 108). The Cheap 
Repository tracts abound with instances in which the poor neglect to perform their part in the gift 
exchange. Jack deems his benefactor to be “cheap and shabby,” while John rails against the parish priest 
for refusing to provide him aid in cash (The Good Parish Priest, 1799, p. 6; Jack Brown in Prison, 1796, p. 
5). Mothers adamantly refuse to send their children to Sunday school, and Tawny Rachel promptly 
pawns for gin the shoes which Mr. Wilson gives her son (Black Giles... With Some Account of a Family, 
1796; The History of Fanny Mills, 1799; The History of Hester Wilmot... Second Part, 1797; Sorrowful 
Sam, 1795). Through these characters, the Cheap Repository voices objections to the “moral economy 
of charity” ―the poor’s expectations that charity be material in nature, impersonal in its application and 
offered without conditions. 

 
 More and her fellow writers seek to redefine the expectations of the poor and to inure 
labouring people to the advice-based, personal, and discriminatory evangelical charity. The tracts 
present charity not as an unavoidable duty of the rich (a “natural debt” for their God-given wealth), but 
as a gift which may be withheld at will. In the Cheap Repository, the degree of charity offered is entirely 
dependent upon the degree to which the beneficiary both deserves and can profit from aid. In this final 
section, I examine how the Cheap Repository first presents the “moral economy of charity” and, 
secondly, redefines its boundaries. 

 



  110 

  

 Rebellious Cheap Repository characters are adamant that charity be material in nature. John 
Hobson rails against Mr. Dormer after the latter refuses to provide a cash handout and chooses instead 
to pay the Hobson family’s nursing bills and rent. When Hobson’s neighbour, Fisher, suggests that the 
Parson’s investments are as worthy as cash-in-hand, Hobson objects: 

 
Just the same thing indeed!  No, truly, I think it as different a thing as a nail and a hammer. I 
should never think putting a boy to school, was half so good a thing as giving me the six-pence 
a week to get a dram would be. If the parson would do that now [i.e. provide cash]... I promise 
you I should think he did much more for me, than all his gifts to my wife, and all his long 
lectures to me put together have ever yet been. (The Good Parish Priest, 1799, p. 5)      
 

For a poor character like Hobson, virtuous charity takes the form of simple gifts which provide 
temporary relief. He rejects entirely advice (the Parson’s “long lectures”) and aid which seek, in the long-
term, to foster self-sufficiency. Hobson shares his opinion with Jack Brown:  incarcerated in prison, 
Brown bemoans the fact that Mr. Stock has not “sent him a good sum of money to procure his liberty, or 
even a trifle to make merry with his companions” (Fig. 3). All he has received is the “empty comfort” of 
“dry advice” (Jack Brown in Prison, 1796, p. 5). Temporary relief is more valued than religious 
instruction. 

 
 Characters also bemoan the personal nature of charity. The supervisory presence of benefactors 
is deeply annoying. Hobson calls Mr. Dormer “impertinent, and officious, and... a busy-body... Why I 
never meet him, that he does not begin with his questions, and enquires about this, about that, and 
about the other” (The Good Parish Priest, 1799, p. 5). Not only this, but intervention denies the poor 
control over their finances, families, and leisure. Hobson’s rampage against the Parson’s charity is 
fuelled not only by the type of charity offered, but also by the manner in which it is given. By funding 
schooling and by providing funds to Hobson’s wife, Dormer effectively removes all decision-making 
power from Hobson (The Good Parish Priest). Many parents resent their loss of discretionary power. 
Mrs. Williams begs Mr. Stock to give her cash rather than fund her son’s schooling, “for nobody could do 
so well by *her son+ as his own mother,” while Mrs. Waters denies her children education and, by so 
doing, asserts her power over her offspring: “nobody shall hector them but myself” (The Apprentice 
Turned Master, 1796, p. 12; Sorrowful Sam, 1795, p. 11).    

 
 Evangelical charity not only threatens to override the powers of patriarchs and parents in poor 
families, but education actively fragments the working-class family. Education raises children above the 
moral and occupational standards of their parents. Mrs. Williams claims that education “makes a child 
despise his own mother because she *i+s poor” and “set*s+ men, women, and children against their own 
flesh and blood” (The Apprentice Turned Master, 1796, p. 12). Mrs. Wilmot worries that her daughter’s 
Sunday school education will make her too haughty to perform her chores about the house (The History 
of Hester Wilmot... Second Part, 1797). These parents reject the evangelical notion of a “gift” designed 
to strengthen the family unit as a social, moral, and economic unit. For Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Wilmot, 
the evangelicals’ educational charity is no gift, but a curse.    

 
 Evangelical charity is not only perceived as an attack on the family and the family economy, but 
also on leisure. Hobson and Brown resent the replacement of alcohol by education and advice (The 
Good Parish Priest, 1799; Jack Brown in Prison, 1796). Furthermore, Sunday schools steal the single day 
allotted for entertainment and rest in a long working week. Mrs. Waters claims her children “don’t love 
confinement, and they shan’t go *to school+ to be put upon;” the children “shall have their own way, for 
they are likely to have nothing else” (Sorrowful Sam, 1795, p. 11). Boys argue that schooling denies them 



  111 

  

enjoyment by “shut*ting] them up with godly books, when they ought to be taking a little pleasure” 
(Black Giles... Widow Brown’s Apple-Tree, 1796, p. 7). The boys further argue that Sunday schools 
encourage crime by cooping them up. Once released from school, children expend their energy by 
stealing.  

 
 The Cheap Repository easily counters the objections of the poor. Those who receive material 
charity waste it on gin, serving only to aggravate underlying poverty. Education in household economy 
and subsidized purchases are better than cash, for they enable a poor family to save money over the 
long term. Furthermore, evangelical charity empowers the poor rather than usurps their control. 
Whereas material relief cultivates a demoralizing dependence on the goodness of others, education 
provides labouring people with the tools with which to manage independently. Rather than creating 
disobedient and lazy sons and daughters who have too great an opinion of themselves, religious 
education teaches children to be obedient and happy in their own place. Mothers who defend the 
leisure of their children do so at the cost of the eternal happiness of their charges. Keeping children 
from school may give them leisure, but it does not secure salvation as does a religious education.  

 
 Rather than benefactors living up to the standards of working-class expectations, it is the poor 
who must work for charity in the Cheap Repository. The tracts argue that the poor must deserve aid in 
order to receive it. They must adopt standards of cleanliness, piety, and good management in order to 
become candidates. Charity is an exchange, and benefactors expect a return for their investment. As aid 
is offered in order to support the poor in their own homes, beneficiaries must demonstrate that the gift 
is instilling self-sufficiency. Cheap Repository benefactors often cease giving to those who continue in 
their depraved ways. The gentry refuse to give to the Giles family when they see the family’s decrepit 
cottage and the children who spend all day begging by the gate (Black Giles... With Some Account of a 
Family, 1796). Jem’s benefactress explains that she will not help him “if he would not work for his 
bread,” echoing another donor who declares her willingness to help only those “who are willing to help 
themselves” (Betty Brown, 1796, p. 13; Sweep Soot O!, 1799, p. 7). Mr. Britton gives half a crown to the 
industrious Mrs. Apsley, while he provides the immoral Amy Talbot “only a few halfpence... which he 
thought was more than such an idle and dirty woman deserved” (The Hubbub, 1797, p. 5). In other 
instances, benefactors refuse to give to those who patronise gin shops, or who refuse to go to school or 
church (The Gin-Shop, 1795; The Way to Plenty, 1795).  

 
 Ironically, those who receive the most attention from their social superiors are those who are 
least affected by want and immorality. They are those who, like Sarah Sanday, are most industrious:  

 
she had, by unremitting diligence and œconomy, maintained herself and her 
child, with a credit that recommended her to the notice of every worthy 
person...she is ... so neat and respectable in her appearance, so honest, and 
pains-taking, that it is a duty to encourage her, and a pleasure to see her in the 
house. (The Two Cousins, 1798, pp. 3-4) 
 

More and her fellow contributors redefine the obligations at the heart of the charitable gift. Roberts 
(1998) argues that in the late eighteenth century:                     

        
educated citizens came to accept the view that charity was not a duty performed 
as a result of holding resources on trust for communal benefit: it was an act of 
mercy performed as a result of morally refined sensitivity in the giver to the sight 
or knowledge of human suffering. Because the act of giving was now voluntary in 



  112 

  

a moral as well as legal sense, it was reasonable for the donor to expect the 
recipient to conform to certain continuing standards of deservingness. (p. 70)  

 

The Cheap Repository directly outlines these standards of deservingness. It rejects the “moral economy 
of charity” which necessitates little effort on the part of benefactors and replaces it with a set of moral 
compunctions for the poor to deserve the charity which they receive. While contributions are 
considered emphatically voluntary on the part of “gift”-givers, for beneficiaries, gratitude and 
deservingness are non-negotiable. 

 

Conclusion 

[H]e had found out that two things were necessary to the promoting of Religion among his friends; a 
warm zeal to be always on the watch for occasions, and a cool judgement to distinguish which was the 
right time and place to make use of them. To know how to do good is a great matter, but to know when to 
do it is no small one.  
— On Carrying Religion into the Common Business of Life, 1796, p. 3 
 

 It is no easy task to discern whether the Cheap Repository truly grasped the occasion, igniting its 
benevolent plan at “the right time and place.” The tracts were met with a spectrum of responses, from 
outright hostility to apathy to enthusiasm. As noted in the introduction, the poor showed little interest 
in the tracts. Those who were considered the lowest of the low ―prostitutes and sailors’ wives― were 
decidedly unimpressed by Cheap Repository wares when the evangelicals Selina Mills and Mary 
Thatcher came knocking (Stott, 2003).    

 
 However, there is much evidence that the charitable ideals endorsed by the Cheap Repository 
were dominant in nineteenth-century discourses on poverty, welfare, and relief. Societies such as the 
Religious Tract Society (1799), the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), and the Society for the 
Promotion of Christian Knowledge (1805) specialized in the distribution of similar didactic literature, 
testifying to the continued importance of textual advice to charity (Pickering, 1976; Stott, 2003). The 
New Poor Law of 1834 incorporated discrimination, while self-supporting charities flourished, and an 
evangelical style of charity was favoured in Victorian prostitute reclamation schemes. However, whether 
the Cheap Repository succeeded in its goal to reform charitable conduct among all classes in English 
society is the work of a future paper.      

 
 The image of the pitchfork-wielding, chapbook reading, and Sabbath-breaking Englishman is 
never far from the pages of the tracts. But to characterize the Cheap Repository as a simple attack on 
the popular literature and radical sympathies of the working classes is to fail to grasp the breadth of the 
evangelical reforming gaze. Historians have often revealed their dislike of Hannah More and her 
contemporaries, describing her as a hypocritical pedant intent only on the suppression of the masses 
(Thompson, 1966). Although every stereotype has a foundation in truth, the characterization is largely 
misleading. As demonstrated in this essay, the Cheap Repository writers heaped blame for the 
immorality and instability of England not only on the unwashed masses, but also upon the well-healed 
―their own peers, and indeed, their gentrified superiors. The Cheap Repository was conservative in its 
aim to strengthen hierarchy. In one respect, however, the tracts were more egalitarian than a one-sided 
attack. Every Englishman and Englishwoman has a responsibility to practice safe charity for the good of 
the whole.  

 

 

 



  113 

  

Appendix- Figures 

 

 
Fig. 1  “A number of men, women, and children, had formed a ring around one farmer Russel... whom no 
one loved, and every one feared; for his love of money had led him to be hard-hearted; and his power over 
the poor had made him indulge his natural insolence” (p. 3). The poor townspeople gather outside the alms-
house to mock the hated overseer in the woodcut illustration to The Hubbub; or, The History of Farmer 
Russel the Hard-Hearted Overseer (1797). The image illustrates the downfalls of parish relief: corrupted 
overseers and idle poor (note the large numbers of unemployed able-bodied adults).     

 

 

 

 



  114 

  

 
Fig. 2  “What a striking lesson of œconomy does our Savior give us by this precept” (p. 15). Christ oversees 
the distribution of the loaves and fishes to the five thousand in the woodcut illustration to Hints to All Ranks 
of People, on the Occasion of the Scarcity of 1795 (1795). Both the text and the caption emphasize the 
frugality of Christ’s charity and the educational, as well as physical, nature of his gift.      

    

 

Fig. 3  “If Mr. Stock had sent him a good sum of money to procure... a trifle to make merry with his wretched 
companions, Jack would have thought him a friend indeed.... Unfortunately, *Mr. Stock’s+ letter came just as 
he [Jack] was going to sit down to one of those direful merry-makings which are often carried on with brutal 
riot within the doleful walls of a jail” (pp. 5-6). Jack and his companions have a riotous feast in prison in the 
woodcut illustration to Jack Brown in Prison; or, The Pitcher Never Goes So Often to the Well But It Is Broke 
at Last... (1796). Mr. Stock avoids contributing to social unrest by withholding monetary relief from the 
undeserving Jack.  



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References 

Primary Sources 

Cheap Repository (All available on E.C.C.O. & M.M.W.) 
3
 

The apprentice turned master; or, the second part of the two shoemakers: Shewing how James Stock 

from a parish apprentice became a creditable tradesman. (1796). London. 

Bear ye one another’s burthens; or, the valley of tears: a vision. (1796). London. 

The beggarly boy, a parable. (1798). London.  

Betty Brown, the St. Giles’s orange girl: with some account of Mrs. Sponge, the money lender. (1796). 

London. 

Black Giles the poacher. With the history of Widow Brown’s apple tree. (1796). London. 

Black Giles the poacher. With some account of a family who would rather live by their wits than their 

work. (1796). London. 

Cheap Repository for moral and religious publications. (1795). London. Subscription list. 

Cheap Repository shorter tracts. (1798). London. Used as source for The happy waterman. 

Cheap Repository tracts, published during the year 1795. Forming Volume I. (1797). London. Used as 

source for The riot; or, half a loaf is better than no bread.   

The cottage cook; or, Mrs. Jones’s cheap dishes: Shewing the way to do much good with little money. 

(1797). London. 

The deceitfulness of pleasure; or, some account of my Lady Blithe. (1799). London. Spurious tract.  

Divine songs attempted in easy language for the use of children By I. Watts D.D. To which are added, 

prayers for children. (1795). London. 

The gin-shop; or, a peep into a prison. (1795). London. 

The good parish priest; or, the drunken carpenter reclaimed. (1799). London. Spurious tract. 

                                                 
3
   E.C.C.O. = Eighteenth-Century Collections Online  (Gale);  M.M.W. = Making of the Modern World: The 

Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature 1480-1850  (Gale).   



  116 

  

Hints to all ranks of people on the occasion of the present scarcity. (1795). London. 

The history of Fanny Mills.Part I. (1799). London. Spurious tract. 

The history of Hester Wilmot; or, the second part of the Sunday school. (1797). London. 

The history of Jonathan Griffin and William Peterson. Pointing out an asylum to the destitute. (1799). 

London. Spurious tract. 

The History of Mr. Fantom, the New Fashioned Philosopher and His Man William. (1797). London. 

The History of Tom White, the postilion. (1795). London. 

The Hubbub; or, the history of Farmer Russel the hard-hearted overseer. (1797). London. 

A hymn of praise for the abundant harvest of 1796. (1796). London. 

Jack Brown in prison; or, the pitcher never goes so often to the well but it is broke at last. Being the 

fourth part of the history of the two shoemakers. (1796). London. 

The Lancashire Collier girl. A true story. (1795). London. 

Life of William Baker, with his funeral sermon, by the Rev. Mr. Gilpin. (1795). London. 

Madge Blarney, the Gipsey girl. (1798). London. Spurious tract.    

On carrying religion into the common business of life. A dialogue between James Stock and Will Simpson, 

the shoemakers. (1796). London. 

The parish nurse. (1798). London. Spurious tract.  

The plum-cakes; or, the father and his three sons. (1797). London.  

The shepherd of Salisbury Plain. Part I. (1795). London. 

The shopkeeper turned sailor; or, the folly of going out of our element. (1796). London. 

Sorrowful Sam; or, the two blacksmiths. (1795). London. 

The Sunday school. (1797). London. 

Sweep soot o!; or, some account of little Jem, the chimney sweeper and his benefactress. (1799). London. 

Spurious tract.  



  117 

  

’Tis all for the best. (c.1797). London. 

The two cousins; or, spare the rod and spoil the child. (1798). London. Spurious tract.  

Two soldiers. (1795). London. 

The two wealthy farmers, with the sad adventures of Miss Bragwell. Part V. (1796). London. 

The two wealthy farmers; or, the sixth part of the history of Mr. Bragwell and his daughters. (1797). 

London. 

The way to plenty; or, the second part of Tom White. (1795). London.  

 

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Bernard, T. (1797). An account of a cottage and garden, near Tadcaster. With observations upon  

labourers having freehold cottages and gardens, and upon a plan for supplying cottagers with 

cows. Printed at the desire of the society for bettering the condition and improving the comforts of 

the poor. London. E.C.C.O. 

Bernard. T. (1798). The reports of the society for bettering the condition and increasing the comforts of 

the poor. Vol I. London. E.C.C.O. 

Bernard, T. (1802). The reports of the society for bettering the condition and increasing the comforts of 

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Contact Information 

Megan Clare Webber can be reached at mcwebber@uvic.ca. 

 

 
Acknowledgements 

 
First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Simon Devereaux from the Department of History for 
supervising for my honours thesis (of which this essay is a portion), for correcting drafts of this work, 
and for supporting my research as an Undergraduate Research Scholar. Thank you also to Dr. Andrea 
McKenzie and Dr. Sara Beam for serving on my honours thesis panel. And, finally, thank you to the 
University of Victoria’s Undergraduate Research Scholarship Program for providing me with funding and 
the research opportunity to undertake this project.  
 

   

 

mailto:mcwebber@uvic.ca