VOLUME V SLICE VIII Chariot to Chatelaine (continued 3)

Many elements produced the social and economic catastrophe of the 16th century, for the condition into which the country fell can hardly be considered less than a catastrophe. With the growing independence of the people there was The decadence. created after the 13th century an unsettled “masterless” class, a residue of failure resulting from social changes, which was large and important enough to call for legislation. In the 15th century, “the golden age of the English labourer,” the towns increased and flourished. Both town and country did well. At the end of the century came the decadence. The measure of the strain, when perhaps it had reached its lowest level, is indicated by the following comparison: “The cost of a peasant’s family of four in the early part of the 14th century was £3:4:9; after 1540 it was £8” (Rogers, Hist, of Agric. and Prices, iv. 756).

The cause of this has now been fairly investigated. The value of land in the 13th century generally depended chiefly on “the head of labour” retained upon it. Its fertility depended on mainoeuvre (manure). To keep labour upon it was therefore the aim of the lord or owner. The enclosing of lands for sheep began early, and in the time of Edward III., in the great days of the woolstaple, must have been extensive. So long as the demand for the exportation of wool, and then for its consumption at home in the cloth trade, continued, the towns prospered, and the enclosures did not become a grievance. Even before the reign of Henry VII., with the decay of trade, the towns decayed, and their population in some cases diminished extraordinarily. This reacted on the country, where the great families had already become impoverished, and were hardly able to support their retainers. In Henry VIII.’s time the lands of the religious houses were confiscated. Worked on old lines, the custom of tillage remained in force on them. Accordingly, when these estates fell into private hands they were transferred subject to the condition that they should be tilled as heretofore. The condition was evaded by the new owners, and the disbandment of farm labourers went on apace. In England and Wales these changes, it is said, affected a third of the country, more than 12,000,000 acres, if the estimates be correct, or rather a third of the best land in the kingdom. With towns decaying, the effect of this must have been terrible. What were really “latifundia” were created, “great landes,” “enclosures of a mile or two or thereabouts ... destroying thereby not only the farms and cottages within the same circuits, but also the towns and villages adjoining.” A herdsman and his wife took the place of eighteen to twenty-four farm hands. The people thus set wandering could only join the wanderers from the decaying towns. At the same time the economic difficulty was aggravated by a new patrician or commercial greed; and once more the land question—the absorption of property into a few hands instead of its free exchange—led to lasting social demoralization. A few years after the alienation of the monasteries the coinage (1543) was debased. By this means prices were arbitrarily raised, and wages were increased nominally; but nevertheless the price of necessaries was “so enhanced” that neither “the poor labourers can live with their wages that is limited by your grace’s laws, nor the artificers can make, much less sell, their wares at any reasonable price” (Lamond, The Commonweal of this Realm of England, p. xlvii). No social reformation, such as the charitable instincts of Wycliffe, More, Hales, Latimer and other men suggested, was attempted, or at least persistently carried out. In towns the organization of labour had become restrictive, exclusive and inadaptable, or, judged from the moral standpoint, uncharitable. There had been a time of plenty and extravagance, of which in high quarters the famous “field of the cloth of gold” was typical; and probably, in accordance with the frequently observed law of social economics, as the advance in wages and their purchasing power in the earlier part of the 15th century had not been accompanied by a simultaneous advance in self-discipline and intelligent expenditure, it resulted in part in lessened competence and industrial ability on the part of the workmen, and thus in the end produced pauperism.

The poverty of the country was very great in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. Adversity then taught the people new manners, and households became more simple and thrifty. In the reign of James I., with enforced economy and thrift, a “slow but substantial improvement in agriculture” took place, and a new growth of commercial enterprise. The vigour of the municipalities had abated, so that in Henry VIII.’s time they had become the very humble servants of the government; and the government, on the other hand, had become strongly centralized—in itself a sign of the general withdrawal of self-sustaining activity in all administration, in the administration of charitable relief no less than in other departments. A system of endowed charities had been built up, supported chiefly by rents from landed property. These now had disappeared, and thus the means of relief, which Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth might have utilized at a time of general distress, had been dissipated by the acts of their predecessors. The civil independence of the monasteries and religious houses might have been justified, possibly, when they were engaged in missionary work and were instilling into the people the precepts of a higher moral law than that which was in force around them. But afterwards, as the ability and intelligence of the community increased, their privileges became more and more antagonistic to charity, and tended to create a non-social and even anti-social ecclesiastical democracy actuated by aims and interests in which the general good of the people had little or no place. There was a growing alienation between religious tradition and secular opinion, as Lollardism slowly permeated the thought of the people and led the way to the Reformation. While this alienation existed no national system of charity, civic and yet religious, could be created. But worse than all, the ideal of charity had been degraded. A self-regarding system of relief had superseded charity, and it was productive of nothing but alms, large or small, isolated and unmethodic, given with a wrong bias, and thus almost inevitably with evil results. Out of this could spring no vigorous co-operative charity. Charity—not relief—indeed seemed to have left the world. The larger issues were overlooked. Then the property of the hospitals and the gilds was wantonly confiscated, though the poor had already lost that share in the revenues of the church to which at one time they were admitted to have a just claim. A new beginning had to be made. The obligations of charity had to be revived. A new organization of charitable relief had to be created, and that with an empty exchequer and after a vast waste of charitable resources. There were signs of a new congregational and parochial energy, yet the task could not be entrusted to the religious bodies, divided and disunited as they were. In their stead it could be imposed only on some authority which represented the general community, such as municipalities; and in spite of the centralization of the government there seemed some hope of creating a system of relief in connexion with them. They were tried, and, very naturally, failed. In the poverty of the time it seemed that the poor could be relieved only by a compulsory rate, and the administration of statutory relief naturally devolved on the central government—the only vigorous administrative body left in the country. The government might indeed have adopted the alternative of letting the industrial difficulties of the country work themselves out, but they had inherited a policy of minute legislative control, and they continued it. Revising previous statutes, they enacted the Poor Law, which still remains on the statute book. It could be no remedy for social offences against charity and the community. But in part at least it was successful. It helped to conceal the failure to find a remedy.

Part VI.—After the Reformation

During the Reformation, which extended, it should be understood, from the middle of the 14th century to the reign of James I., the groundwork of the theory of charity was being recast. The old system and the narrow theory on which The Reformation theory of charity. it had come to depend were discredited. The recoil is startling. To a very large extent charitable administration had been in the hands of men and women who, as an indispensable condition to their participation in it, took the vows of obedience, chastity and “wilful” poverty. Now this was all entirely set aside. It was felt (see Homilies on Faith and Good Works, &c., A.D. 1547) that socially and morally the method had been a failure. The vow of obedience, it was argued, led to a general disregard of the duties of civic and family life. Those who bound themselves by it were outside the state and did not serve it. In regard to chastity the Homily states the common opinion: “How the profession of chastity was kept, it is more honesty to pass over in silence and let the world judge of what is well known.” As to wilful poverty, the regulars, it is urged, were not poor, but rich, for they were in possession of much wealth. Their property, it is true, was held in communi, and not personally, but nevertheless it was practically theirs, and they used it for their personal enjoyment; and “for all their riches they might never help father nor mother, nor others that were indeed very needy and poor, without the license of their father abbot” or other head. This was the negative position. The positive was found in the doctrine of justification—the central point in the discussions of the time, a plant from the garden of St Augustine. Justification was the personal conviction of a lively (or living) faith, and was defined as “a true trust and confidence of the mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and a stedfast hope of all good things to be received at His hands.” Without this justification there could be no good works. They were the signs of a lively faith and grew out of it. Apart from it, what seemed to be “good works” were of the nature of sin, phantom acts productive of nothing, “birds that were lost, unreal.” So were the works of pagans and heretics. The relation of almsgiving to religion was thus entirely altered. The personal reward here or hereafter to the actor was eliminated. The deed was good only in the same sense in which the doer was good; it had in itself no merit. This was a great gain, quite apart from any question as to the sufficiency or insufficiency of the Protestant scheme of salvation. The deed, it was realized, was only the outcome of the doer, the expression of himself, what he was as a whole, neither better nor worse. Logically this led to the discipline of the intelligence and the emotions, and undoubtedly “justification” to very many was only consistent with such discipline and implied it. Thus under a new guise the old position of charity reasserted itself. But there were other differences.

The relation of charity to prayer, fasting, almsgiving and penance was altsred. The prayerful contemplation of the Christ was preserved in the mysticism of Protestantism; but it was dissociated from the “historic Christ,” from the fervent idealization of whom St Francis drew his inspiration and his active charitable impulse. The tradition did not die out, however. It remained with many, notably with George Herbert, of whom it made, not unlike St Francis, a poet as well as a practical parish priest; but the absence of it indicated in much post-Reformation endeavour a want, if not of devotion, yet of intensity of feeling which may in part account for the fact that sectarianism in relief has since proved itself stronger than charity, instead of yielding to charity as its superior and its organizer. Fasting was parted from prayer and almsgiving. It was “a thing not of its own proper nature good as the love of father or mother or neighbour, but according to its end.” Almsgiving also as a “work” disappeared and with it a whole series of inducements that from the standpoint of the pecuniary and material supply of relief had long been active. It was no wonder that the preachers advocated it in vain, and reproached their hearers with their diminished bounty to the poor; the old personal incentive had gone, and could only gradually be superseded by the spontaneous activity of personal religion very slowly wedding itself to true views of social duty and purpose. Penance, once so closely related to almsgiving, passed out of sight. Charity, the love of God and our neighbour, had two offices, it was said, “to cherish good and harmless men” and “to correct and punish vice without regard to persons.” Correction as a means of discipline takes the place of penance, and it becomes judicial, regulating and controlling church membership by the authority of the church, a congregation, minister or elder; or dealing with laziness or ill-doing through the municipality or state, in connexion with what now first appear, not prisons, but houses of correction.

The religious life was to be democratic—not in religious bodies, but in the whole people; and in a new sense—in relation to family and social life—it was to be moral. That was the significance of the Reformation for charity.

Consistently with this movement of religious activity towards a complete fulfilment of the duties of civic life, the older classical social theory, fostered by the Renaissance, assumed a new influence—the great conception of the state as a The organization of municipal relief. community bound together by charity and friendship, “We be not born to ourselves,” it was said, “but partly to the use of our country, of our parents, of our kinsfolk, and partly of our friends and neighbours; and therefore all good virtues are grafted on us naturally, whose effects be to do good to others, when it showeth forth the image of God in man, whose property is ever to do good to others” (Lamond, p. 14). Economic theory also changed. Instead of the medieval opinion of the “theologian or social preacher,” that “trade could only be defended on the ground that honestly conducted it made no profit” (Green, ii. 71), we have a recognition of the advantages resulting from exchange, and individual interests, it is argued, are not necessarily inconsistent with those of the state, but are, on the contrary, a source of solid good to the whole community.

Municipal laws for the suppression of the mendicity of the able-bodied and the organization of relief on behalf of the infirm were common in England and on the continent (Colmar, 1362; Nuremberg, 1478; Strassburg, 1523; London, 1514). Vives (Ehrle, Beitrage zur Geschichte und Reform der Armenpflege, p. 26), a Spaniard, who had been at the court of Henry VIII., in a book translated into several languages and widely read, seems to have summed up the thought of the time in regard to the management of the poor. He divided them into three classes: those in hospitals and poor-houses, the public homeless beggars and the poor at home. He would have a census taken of the number of each class in the town, and information obtained as to the causes of their distress. Then he would establish a central organization of relief under the magistrates. Work was to be supplied for all, while begging was strictly forbidden. Non-settled poor who were able-bodied were to be sent to their homes. Able-bodied settled poor who knew no craft were to be put on some public work—the undeserving being set to hard labour. For others work was to be found, or they were to be assisted to become self-supporting. The hospitals provided with medical advice and necessaries were to be classified to meet the needs of the sick, the blind and lunatics. The poor living at home were to work with a view to their self-support. What they earned, if insufficient, might be supplemented. If a citizen found a case of distress he was not to help it, but to send it for inquiry to the magistrate. Children were to be taught. Private relief was to be obtained from the rich. The funds of endowed charities were to be the chief source of income; if more was wanted, bequests and church collections would suffice. The scheme was put in force in Yprès in 1524. The Sorbonne approved it, and similar plans were adopted in Paris and elsewhere. It is in outline the scheme of London municipal charity promoted by Edward VI., by which the poor were classified, St Bartholomew’s and St Thomas’s hospitals appropriated for the sick, Christ’s hospital for the children of the poor, and Bridewell for the correction of the able-bodied. Less the institutional arrangements and plus the compulsory rate, the methods are those of the Poor Relief Act of Queen Elizabeth of 1601. At first the attempt had been made to introduce state relief in reliance on voluntary alms (1 Mary 13, 5 Eliz. 3, 1562-1563), subject to the right of assessment if alms were refused. But the position was anomalous. Charity is voluntary, and spontaneously meets the demands of distress. Such demands have always a tendency to increase with the supply. Hence the very limitations of charitable finance are in the nature of a safeguard. At most economic trouble can only be assuaged by relief, and it can only be met or prevented by economic and social reforms. If a compulsory rate be not enforced, as in Scotland and formerly in some parishes in England, a voluntary rate may be made in supplementation of the local charities. In Scotland, where the compulsory clauses of the Poor Relief Act of James I. were not put in force, the country weathered the storm without them, and the compulsory rate, which was extended throughout the country by the Poor Act of 1844, came in very slowly in the 18th and 19th centuries. In France (1566) a similar act was passed and set aside. If a compulsory rate be enforced, it is inevitable that the resources of charity, unless kept apart from the poor-law and administered on different lines from it, will diminish, and at the same time, as has happened often in the case of endowed charities, the interest in charitable administration will lapse, while the charges for poor-law relief, drawn without much scruple from the taxation of the community, will mount to millions either to meet increasing demands or to provide more elaborate institutional accommodation. The principle once adopted, it was enacted (1572-1573) that the aged and infirm should be cared for by the overseers of the poor, a new authority; and in 1601 the duplicate acts were passed, that for the relief of the poor (43 Eliz. 2), and that for the furtherance and protection of endowed charities. Thus the poor were brought into the dependence of a legally recognized class, endowed with a claim for relief, on the fulfilment of which, after a time, they could without difficulty insist if they were so minded. The civic authority had indeed taken over the alms of the parish, and an eleemosyna civica had taken the place of the annona civica. It was a similar system under a different name.

A phrase of Robert Cecil’s (1st earl of Salisbury) indicates the minute domestic character of the Elizabethan legislation (D’Ewes, 674). The question (1601) was the repeal of a statute of tillage. Cecil says: “If in Edward I.’s time a Poor Relief Acts and statutory serfdom. law was made for the maintenance of the fry of fish, and in Henry VII.’s for the preservation of the eggs of wild fowl, shall we now throw away a law of more consequence and import? If we debar tillage, we give scope to the depopulating. And then, if the poor being thrust out of their houses go to dwell with others, straight we catch them with the statute of inmates; if they wander abroad, they are within the danger of the statute of the poor to be whipt. So by this undo this statute, and you endanger many thousands.” A strong central government, a local authority appointed directly by the government, and a network of legislation controlled the whole movement of economic life. On this reliance was placed to meet economic difficulties. The local authorities were the justices of the peace; and they had to carry out the statutes for this purpose, to assess the wages of artisans and labourers, and to enforce the payment of the wages they had fixed; to ensure that suitable provision was made for the relief of the poor at the expense of rates which they also fixed; and to suppress vagabondage. Since 23 Edw. III. there had been labour statutes, and in 1563 a new statute was passed, an “Act containing divers orders for Artificers, Labourers, Servants of Husbandry and Apprentices” (5 Eliz. c. 4). It recognized and upheld a social classification. On the one hand there was the gentleman or owner of property to which the act was not to apply; and on the other the artisan and labouring class. This class in turn was subdivided, and the justices were to assess their wages annually according to “the plenty and scarcity of the time and other circumstances.” Persons between the ages of twelve and sixty, who were not apprentices or engaged in certain specified employments, were compelled to serve in husbandry by the year “with any person that keepeth husbandry.” The length of the day’s work and the conditions of apprenticeship were fixed. The assessed rate of wages was enforceable by fine and imprisonment, and refusal to be apprenticed by imprisonment. Thus there was created a life control over labour with an industrial settlement and a wage fixed by the justices annually. There are differences of opinion in regard to the extent to which this act was enforced; and the evidence on the point is comparatively scanty. It was enforced throughout the century in which it was passed, and it probably continued in force generally until the Restoration, while subsequently it was put in operation to meet special emergencies, such as times of distress when some settlement of wages seemed desirable (cf. Rogers, v. 611; Hewins, English Trade and Finance, p. 82; Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce: Modern Times, i. 168). It was not repealed till 1814.

From 1585 to 1622 there was, it is said, a slight increase in labourers’ wages, which fluctuated from 5s. 3⁄8d. to 5s. 8 ¼d. a week, with a declining standard of comfort and at times great distress. Then there was a marked increase of wage till 1662 and “a very marked improvement; the rate of increase being very nearly double that of the earlier periods,” and reaching 9s., “as the highest weekly rate for the whole period.” Then from 1662 to 1702 there was “a slight improvement” (Hewins, p. 89). It would seem indeed that the stir of the times between 1622 and 1662 may have caused a great demand for labour. But with the Restoration, when the assessment system was falling into desuetude, came the Poor Relief Act of 1662 (13 & 14 Car. II. cap. 62), which brought in the law of settlement, and a settlement for relief of a very strict nature was added to the industrial settlement of the Artificers and Labourers Act. Thus, if the influence of that act, which had so long controlled labour, was waning, its place was now taken by an act which, though it had nothing to do with the assessment of wage, yet so settled the labourer within the bounds of his parish that he had practically to rely, if not upon a wage fixed by the justices, yet upon a customary wage limited and restricted as a result of the law of settlement. And the assessment by the justices, in so far as it may have continued, would therefore be of little or no consequence. Settlement also, like the Artificers and Labourers Act, would prevent the country labourer from passing to the towns, or the townsmen passing to other towns. At least they would do so at the risk of forfeiting their right to relief if they lost their settlement without acquiring a new one. Hence the industrial control, though under another name and other conditions, remained in force to a large extent in practice.

By the Artificers and Labourers Act then, in conjunction with other measures, the labouring classes were finally committed to a new bondage, when they had freed themselves from the serfdom of feudalism, and when the control exercised over them by the gild and municipality was relaxed. The statute was so enforced that to earn a year’s livelihood would have taken a labourer not 52 weeks, but sometimes two years, or 58 weeks, or 80 weeks, or 72 weeks; sometimes, however, less—48 or 35. It followed that on such a system the country could only with the utmost good fortune free itself from the economic difficulties of the century, and that the need of a poor-law was felt the more as these difficulties persisted. A voluntary or a municipal system could not suffice, even as a palliative, while such statutes as these were in force to render labour immobile and unprogressive. Also, while wages were fixed by statute or order, whether chiefly in the interest of the employers or not, obviously any shortage on the wages had to be made good by the community. The community, by fixing the wages to be earned in a livelihood, made itself responsible for their sufficiency. And it is suggestive to find that in the year in which the Artificers and Labourers Act (1563) was passed, the act for the enforcement of assessments of poor-rate (5 Eliz. cap. 3) was also enacted. The Law of Settlement, to which we have referred, passed in the reign of Charles II., was due, it is said, to a migration of labourers southward from counties where less favourable statutory wages prevailed; but it was, in fact, only a corollary of the Artificers and Labourers Act of 1563 and the Poor Relief Act of 1601. These laws, it may be said, were the means of making the English labourer, until the poor-law reform of 1834, a settled but landless serf, supported by a fixed wage and a state bounty. By the poor-law it was possible to continue this state of things till, in consequence of an absolute economic breakdown, there was no alternative but reform.

The philanthropic nature of the poor-law is indicated by its antecedents: once enacted, its bounties became a right; its philanthropy disappeared in a quasi-legal claim. Its object was to relieve the poor by home industries, apprentice children, and provide necessary relief to the poor unable to work. The act was commonly interpreted so as to include the whole of that indefinite class, the “poor”; by a better and more rigid interpretation it was, at least in the 19th century, held to apply only to the “destitute,” that is, to those who required “necessary relief”—according to the actual wording of the statute. The economic fallacy of home industries founded on rate-supplied capital early declared itself, and the method could only have continued as long as it did because it formed part of a general system of industrial control. When in the 18th century workhouses were established, the same industrial fallacy, as records show, repeated itself under new conditions. Within the parish it resulted in the farmer paying the labourer as small a wage as possible, and leaving the parish to provide whatever he might require in addition during his working life and in his old age. Thus, indeed, a gigantic experiment in civic employment was made for at least two centuries on a vast scale throughout the country—and failed. As was natural, the lack of economic independence reacted on the morals of the people. With pauperism came want of energy, idleness and a disregard for chastity and the obligations of marriage. The law, it is true, recognized the mutual obligations of parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren; but in the general poverty which it was itself a means of perpetuating such obligations became practically obsolete, while at all times they are difficult to enforce. Still, the fact that they were recognized implies a great advance in charitable thought. The act, passed at first from year to year, was very slowly put in force. Even before it was passed the poor-rate first assessed under the act of 1563 was felt to be “a greater tax than some subsidies,” and in the time of Charles II. it amounted to a third of the revenue of England and Wales (Rogers, v. 81).

The service of villein and cottar was, as we have now seen, in part superseded by what we have called a statutory wage-control, founded on a basis of wage supplemented by relief, provided by a rate-supported poor-law. But it follows that with the decay of this system the poor-law itself should have disappeared, or should have taken some new and very limited form. Unfortunately, as in Roman times, state relief proved to be a popular and vigorous parasite that outlived the tree on which it was rooted: assessments of wage under the Statute of Labourers fell into disuse after the Restoration, it is said, and the statute was finally repealed in 1814, and sixty years later the act against illegal combinations of working men; but the serfdom of the poor-law, the eleemosyna civica, remained, to work the gravest evil to the labouring classes, and even after the reform of 1834 greatly impeded the recovery of their independence. Nevertheless, by a new law of state alms for the aged, or by statutory outdoor relief with, as some would wish, a regulated wage, it is now proposed to bring them once again under a thraldom similar to that from which they have so slowly emancipated themselves.

The policy adopted by Queen Elizabeth for the relief of the poor (1601) included a scheme for the reorganization of voluntary charity as well as plans for the extension of rate-aided relief. During the century, as we have seen, endeavours The endowed charities. had been made to create a system of voluntary charity. This it was proposed to safeguard and promote concurrently with the extension of the poor-rate. Accordingly, in the poor-law it was arranged that the overseers, the new civic authority, and the churchwardens, the old parochial and charitable authority, should act in conjunction, and, subject to magisterial approval, together “raise weekly or otherwise” the necessary means “by taxation of every inhabitant.” The old charitable organization was based on endowment, and the churchwarden was responsible for the administration of many such endowments. What was not available from these and other sources was to be raised “by taxation.” The object of the new act was to encourage charitable gifts.

Towards the end of the 18th century, when the administration of poor relief fell into confusion, many charities were lost, or were in danger of being lost, and many were mismanaged. In 1786 and 1788 a committee of the House of Commons reported on the subject. In 1818, chiefly through the instrumentality of Lord Brougham, a commission of inquiry on educational charities was appointed, and in 1819 another commission to investigate (with some exceptions) all the charities for the poor in England and Wales. These and subsequent commissions continued their inquiries till 1835, when a select committee of the House of Commons made a strong report, advocating the establishment of a permanent and independent board, to inquire, to compel the production of accounts, to secure the safe custody of charity property, to adapt it to new uses on cy-près lines, &c. A commission followed in 1849, and eventually in 1853 the first Charitable Trusts Act was passed, under which “The Charity Commissioners of England and Wales” were appointed.

The following are details of importance:—(1) Definition.—The definition of the act of 1601 (Charitable Uses, 43 Eliz. 4) still holds good. It enumerates as charitable objects all that was once called “alms”: (a) “The relief of aged, impotent and poor people”—the normal poor; “the maintenance of sick and maimed soldiers and mariners”—the poor chiefly by reason of war, sometime a class of privileged mendicants; (b) education, “schools of learning, free schools and scholars in universities”; and then (c) a group of objects which include general civic and religious purposes, and the charities of gilds and corporations; “the repair of bridges, ports, havens, causeways, churches, sea-banks and highways; the education and preferment of orphans; the relief, stock, or maintenance for houses of correction; marriages of poor maids, supportation, aid, and help of young tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and persons decayed”; and there follows (d) “the relief or redemption of prisoners or captives”; and, lastly, (e) “the aid and ease of any poor inhabitants concerning payment of fifteens” (the property-tax of Tudor times), setting out of soldiers, and other taxes. The definition might be illustrated by the charitable bequests of the next 60, or indeed 225, years. It is a fair summary of them. (2) Charitable Gifts.—A public trust and a charitable trust are, as this definition shows, synonymous. It is a trust which relates to public charities, and is not held for the benefit of private persons, e.g. relations, but for the common good, and, subject to the instructions of the founder, by trustees responsible to the community. Gifts for charitable purposes, other than those affected by the law of mortmain, have always been viewed with favour. “Where a charitable bequest is capable of two constructions, one of which would make it void and the other would make it effectual, the latter will be adopted by the court” (Tudor’s Charitable Trusts, ed. 1906, by Bristowe, Hunt and Burdett, p. 167). Gifts to the poor, or widows, or orphans, indefinitely, or in a particular parish, were valid under the act, or for any purpose or institution for the aid of the “poor.” Thus practically the act covered the same field as the poor-law, though afterwards it was decided that, “as a rule, persons receiving parochial relief were not entitled to the benefit of a charity intended for the poor” (Tudor, p. 167). (3) Religious Differences.—In the administration of charities which are for the poor the broadest view is taken of religious differences. (4) Superstitious Uses.—The superstitious use is one that has for its object the propagation of the rights of a religion not tolerated by the law (Tudor, p. 4). Consequently, so far as charities were held or left subject to such rights, they were illegal, or became legal only as toleration was extended. Thus by degrees, since the Toleration Act of 1688, all charities to dissenters have become legal—that is, trusts for schools, places for religious instruction, education and charitable purposes generally. But bequests for masses for the soul of the donor, or for monastic orders, are still void. (5) Administration.—The duty of administering charitable trusts falls upon trustees or corporations, and under the term “eleemosynary corporations” are included endowed hospitals and colleges. Under schemes of the Charity Commissioners, where charities have been remodelled, besides trustees elected by corporations, there are now usually appointed ex-officio trustees who represent some office or institution of importance in connexion with the charity. (6) Jurisdiction by Chancery and Charity Commission.—The Court of Chancery has jurisdiction over charities, under the old principle that “charities are trusts of a public nature, in regard to which no one is entitled by an immediate and peculiar interest to prefer a complaint for compelling the performance by the trustees of their obligations.” The court, accordingly, represents the crown as parens patriae. Now, by the Charitable Trusts Act 1853, and subsequent acts, a charity commission has been formed which is entrusted with large powers, formerly enforced only by the Court of Chancery. (7) Jurisdiction by Visitor.—A further jurisdiction is by the “visitor,” a right inherent in the founder of any eleemosynary corporation, and his heirs, or those whom he appoints, or in their default, the king. The object of the visitor is “to prevent all perverting of the charity, or to compose differences among members of the corporation.” Formerly the bishop’s ordinary was the recognized visitor (2 Henry V. I, 1414) of hospitals, apart from the founder. Subsequently his power was limited (14 Eliz. c. 5, 1572) to hospitals for which the founders had appointed no visitors. Then (1601) by the Charitable Uses Act commissions were issued for inquiry by county juries. Now, apart from the duty of visitors, inquiry is conducted by the charity commissioners and the assistant commissioners. By subsequent acts (see below) ecclesiastical and eleemosynary charities have been still further separated and defined. (8) Advice.—“Trustees, or other persons concerned in the management of a charity, may apply to the charity commissioners for their opinion, advice or direction; and any person acting under such advice is indemnified, unless he has been guilty of misrepresentation in obtaining it.” (9) Limitation of Charity Commissioners’ Powers,—The commissioners cannot, however, make any order with respect to any charity of which the gross annual income amounts to £50 or upwards, except on the application (in writing) of the trustees or a majority of them. Their powers are thus very limited, except when put in motion by the trustees. If a parish is divided they can apportion the charities if the gross income does not exceed £20. (10) General Powers of the Charity Commission.—Subject to the limitation of £50, &c., the charity commissioners have power (Charitable Trusts Act 1860) to make orders for the appointment or removal of trustees, or of any officer, and for the transfer, payment and vesting of any real or personal estate, or “for the establishment of any scheme for the administration” of the charity, (11) Schemes and Remodelling of Charities.—Under this power charities are remodelled, and small and miscellaneous charities put into one fund and applied to new purposes. The cy-près doctrine is applied, by which if a testator leaves directions that are only indefinite, or if the objects for which a charity was founded are obsolete, the charity is applied to some purpose, as far as possible, in accordance with the charitable intention of the founder. This doctrine probably received its widest application in the City of London Parochial Charities Act of 1883. Under other acts doles have been applied to education and to allotments. About 380 schemes are issued in the course of a year. (12) Objects adopted in remodelling Charities.—In the remodelling of charities for the general benefit of the poor some one or more of thirteen objects are usually included in the scheme. These are subscriptions to a medical charity, to a provident club or coal or clothing society, to a friendly society; for nurses, for annuities, for outfit for service, &c.; for emigration; for recreation grounds, clubs, reading-rooms, museums, lectures; for temporary relief to a limited amount in each year; for clothes fuel, tools, medical aid, food, &c., or in money “in cases of unexpected loss or sudden destitution”; for pensions. (13) Parochial Charities.—By the Local Government Act of 1892, local ecclesiastical charities, i.e. endowments for “any spiritual purpose that is a legal purpose” (for spiritual persons, church and other buildings, for spiritual uses, &c.), are separated from parochial charities, “the benefits of which are, or the separate distribution of the benefits of which is, confined to inhabitants of a single parish, or of a single ancient ecclesiastical parish, or not more than five neighbouring parishes.” These charities, since the Local Government Act 1894, are under the supervision of the parish councils, who appoint trustees for their management in lieu of the former overseer or vestry trustees, or, under certain conditions, “additional trustees.” The accounts have to be submitted to the parish meeting, and the names of the beneficiaries of dole charities published. (14) Official Trustees.—There is also “an official trustee of charity lands,” who as “bare trustee” may hold the land or stock of the charity managed by the trustees or administrators. In 1905 the stock transferred to the official trustees amounted to £24,820,945. (15) Audit.—The charity commissioners have no power of audit, but the trustees of every charity have to prepare a statement of accounts annually, and transmit it to the commission. The accounts have to be “certified under the hand of one or more of the trustees and by the auditor of the charity.” (16) Taxation.—In the case of rents and profits of lands, &c., belonging to hospitals or almshouses, or vested in trustees for charitable purposes, allowances are made in diminution of income-tax (56 Vict. 35 § 61). From the inhabited house duty any hospital charity school, or house provided for the reception or relief of poor persons, is exempted (House Tax Act 1808). Also there is an exemption from the land-tax in regard to land rents, &c., in possession of hospitals before 1693. (17) The Digest.—A digest of endowed charities in England and Wales was compiled in the years 1861 to 1876. A new digest of reports and financial particulars has since been completed.

The income of endowed charities in 1876 was returned at £2,198,463. It is now, no doubt, considerably larger than it was in 1876. Partial returns show that at least a million a year is now available in England and Wales for the assistance of the aged poor and for doles. Between the poor-law, which, as it is at present administered, is a permanent endowment provided from the rates for the support of a class of permanent “poor,” and endowed charities, which are funds available for the poor of successive generations, there is no great difference. But in their resources and administration the difference is marked. Local endowed charities were constantly founded after Queen Elizabeth’s time till about 1830, and the poor-rate was at first supplementary of the local charities. When corn and fuel were dear and clothes very expensive, what now seem trivial endowments for food, fuel, coal and clothes were important assets in the thrifty management of a parish. But when the poor were recognized as a class of dependants entitled by law to relief from the community, the rate increased out of all proportion to the charities. A distinction then made itself felt between the “parish” poor and the “second” poor, or the poor who were not relieved from the rates, and relief from the rates altogether overshadowed the charitable aid. Charitable endowments were ignored, ill-administered, and often were lost. After 1834 the poor-law was brought under the control of the central government. Poor relief was placed in the hands of boards of guardians in unions of parishes. The method of co-operation between poor-law and charity suggested by the acts of Queen Elizabeth was set aside, and, as a responsible partner in the public work of relief, charity was disestablished. In the parishes the endowed charities remained in general a disorganized medley of separate trusts, jealously guarded by incompetent administrators. To give unity to this mass of units, so long as the principles of charity are misunderstood or ignored, has proved an almost impossible and certainly an unpopular task. So far as it has been achieved, it has been accomplished by the piecemeal legislation of schemes cautiously elaborated to meet local prejudices. Active reform has been resented, and politicians have often accentuated this resentment. In 1894 a select committee was appointed to inquire whether it was desirable to take measures to bring the action of the Charity Commission more directly under the control of parliament, but no serious grievances were substantiated. The committees’ reports are of interest, however, as an indication of the initial difficulties of all charitable work, the general ignorance that prevails in regard to the elementary conditions that govern it, the common disregard of these principles, and the absence of any accepted theory or constructive policy that should regulate its development and its administration.

After the Poor-Law Act of 1601 the history of the voluntary parochial charities in a town parish is marked by their decreasing amount and utility, as poor-law relief and pauperism increased. The act, it would seem, was not adopted Charity in the parish after 1601. with much alacrity by the local authorities. From 1625 to 1646 there were many years of plague and sickness, but in St Giles’s, London, as late as 1649, the amount raised by the “collectors” (or overseers) was only £176. They disbursed this to “the visited poor” as “pensions.” In 1665 an extra levy of £600 is mentioned. In the accounts of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, where, as in St Giles’s, gifts were received, the change wrought by another half-century (1714) is apparent. The sources of charitable relief are similar to those in all the Protestant churches—English, Scottish or continental: church collections and offertories; correctional fines, such as composition for bastards and conviction money for swearers; and besides these, income from annuities and legacies, the parish estate, the royal bounty, and “petitions to persons of quality.” In all £2041 was collected, but, so far as relief was concerned, the parish relied not on it, but on the poor-rate, which produced £3765. All this was collected and disbursed on their own authority by collectors, to orphans, “pensioners” or the “known or standing” poor, or to casual poor (£1818), including nurse children and bastards. The begging poor were numerous and the infant death-rate enormous, and each year three-fourths of those christened were “inhumanly suffered to die by the barbarity of nurses.” The whole administration was uncharitable, injurious to the community and the family, and inhuman to the child. If one may judge from later accounts of other parishes even up to 1834, usually it remained the same, purposeless and unintelligent; and it can hardly be denied that, generally speaking, only since the middle of the 19th century has any serious attention been paid to the charitable side of parochial work. Parallel to the parochial movement of the poor-law in England, in France (about 1617) were established the bureaux de bienfaisance, at first entirely voluntary institutions, then recognized by the state, and during the Revolution made the central administration for relief in the communes.

In the 17th century in England, as in France, opinion favoured the establishment of large hospitals or maisons Dieu for the reception of the poor of different classes. In France throughout the century there was a continuous struggle Charitable movements after 1601. with mendicancy, and the hospitals were used as places into which offenders were summarily driven. A new humanity was, however, beginning its protest. The pitiful condition of abandoned children attracted sympathy in both countries. St Vincent de Paul established homes for the enfants trouvés, followed in England by the establishment of the Foundling hospital (1739). In both countries the method was applied inconsiderately and pushed to excess, and it affected family life most injuriously. Grants from parliament supported the foundling movement in England, and homes were opened in many parts of the country. The demand soon became overwhelming; the mortality was enormous, and the cost so large that it outstripped all financial expedients. The lesson of the experiment is the same as that of the poor-law catastrophe before 1834; only, instead of the able-bodied poor of another age, infants were made the object of a compassionate but undiscerning philanthropy. With widespread relief there came widespread abandonment of duty and economic bankruptcy. Had the poor-rates instead of charitable relief been used in the same way, the moral injury would have been as great, but the annual draft from the rates would have concealed the moral and postponed the economic disaster. To amend the evil, changes were made by which the relation between child and mother was kept alive, and a personal application on her part was required; the character of the mother and her circumstances were investigated, and assistance was only given when it would be “the means of replacing the mother in the course of virtue and the way of an honest livelihood.” General reforms were also made, especially through the instrumentality of Jonas Hanway, to check infant mortality, and metropolitan parishes were required to provide for their children outside London. A kindred movement led to the establishment of penitentiaries (1758), of lock hospitals and lying-in hospitals (1749-1752).

In Queen Anne’s reign there was a new educational movement, “the charity school”—“to teach poor children the alphabet and the principles of religion,” followed by the Sunday-school movement (1780), and about the same time (1788) by “the school of industry”—to employ children and teach them to be industrious. In 1844 the Ragged School Union was established, and until the Education Act of 1870 continued its voluntary educational work. As an outcome of these movements, through the efforts of Miss Mary Carpenter and many others, in 1854-1855 industrial and reformatory schools were established, to prevent crime and reform child criminals. The orphanage movement, beginning in 1758, when the Orphan Working Home was established, has been continued to the present day on a vastly extended scale. In 1772 a society for the discharge of persons imprisoned for small debts was established, and in 1773 Howard began his prison reforms. This raised the standard of work in institutional charities generally. After the civil wars the old hospital foundations of St Bartholomew and St Thomas, municipalized by Edward VI., became endowed charities partly supported by voluntary contributions. The same fate befell Christ’s Hospital, in connexion with which the voting system, the admission of candidates by the vote of the whole body of subscribers—that peculiarly English invention—first makes its appearance.

A new interest in hospitals sprang up at the end of the 17th century. St Thomas’s was rebuilt (1693) and St Bartholomew’s (1739); Guy’s was founded in 1724, and on the system of free “letters” obtainable in exchange for donations, voluntary hospitals and infirmaries were established in London (1733 and later) and in most of the large towns. Towards the end of the 18th century the dispensary movement was developed—a system of local dispensaries with fairly definite districts and home visiting, a substitute for attendance at a hospital, where “hospital fever” was dreaded, and an alternative to what was then a very ill-administered system of poor-law medical relief. After 1840 the provident dispensary was introduced, in order that the patients by small contributions in the time of health might provide for illness without having to meet large doctors’ bills, and the doctor might receive some sufficient remuneration for his attendance on poor patients. This movement was largely extended after 1860. Three hospital funds for collecting contributions for hospitals and making them grants, a movement that originated in Birmingham in 1859, were established in London in 1873 and 1897.

Since 1868 the poor-law medical system of Great Britain has been immensely improved and extended, while at the same time the number of persons in receipt of free medical relief in most of the large towns has greatly increased. The following figures refer to London: at hospitals, 97 in number, in-patients (1904) during the year, 118,536; out-patients and casualty cases, 1,858,800; patients at free, part-pay, or provident dispensaries, about 280,000; orders issued for attendance at poor-law dispensaries and at home, 114,158. The number of beds in poor-law infirmaries (1904) was 16,976. There are in London 12 general hospitals with, 18 without, medical schools, and 67 special hospitals. Thus the population in receipt of public and voluntary medical relief is very large, indeed altogether excessive.

Each religious movement has brought with it its several charities. The Society of Friends, the Wesleyans, the Baptists have large charities. With the extension of the High Church movement there have been established many sisterhoods which support penitentiaries, convalescent homes and hospitals, schools, missions, &c.

The magnitude of this accumulating provision of charitable relief is evident, though it cannot be summed up in any single total.

At the beginning of the 19th century anti-mendicity societies were established; and later, about 1869, in England and Scotland a movement began for the organization of charitable relief, in connexion with which there are now societies and committees in most of the larger towns in Great Britain, in the colonies, and in the United States of America. More recently the movement for the establishment of settlements in poor districts, initiated by Canon Barnett at Toynbee Hall—“to educate citizens in the knowledge of one another, and to provide them with teaching and recreation”—has spread to many towns in England and America.

These notes of charitable movements suggest an altogether new development of thought. On behalf of the charity school of Queen Anne’s time were preached very formal sermons, which showed but little sympathy with child Progress of thought in 18th and 19th centuries. life. After the first half of the century a new humanism with which we connect the name of Rousseau, slowly superseded this formal beneficence. Rousseau made the world open its eyes and see nature in the child, the family and the community. He analysed social life, intent on explaining it and discovering on what its well-being depended; and he stimulated that desire to meet definite social needs which is apparent in the charities of the century. Little as it may appear to be so at first sight, it was a period of charitable reformation. Law revised the religious conception of charity, though he was himself so strangely devoid of social instinct that, like some of his successors, he linked the utmost earnestness in belief to that form of almsgiving which most effectually fosters beggardom. Howard introduced the era of inspection, the ardent apostle of a new social sagacity; and Bentham, no less sagacious, propounded opinions, plans and suggestions which, perhaps it may be said, in due course moulded the principles and methods of the poor-law of 1834. In the broader sense the turn of thought is religious, for while usually stress is laid on the religious scepticism of the century, the deeper, fervent, conscientious and evangelical charity in which Nonconformists, and especially “the Friends,” took so large a part, is often forgotten. Sometimes, indeed, as often happens now, the feeling of charity passed into the merest sentimentality. This is evident, for instance, from so ill-considered a measure as Pitt’s Bill for the relief of the poor. On the other hand, during the 18th century the poor-law was the object of constant criticism, though so long as the labour statutes and the old law of settlement were in force, and the relief of the labouring population as state “poor” prevailed, it was impossible to reform it. Indeed, the criticism itself was generally vitiated by a tacit acceptance of “the poor” as a class, a permanent and irrevocable charge on the funds of the community; and at the end of the 18th century, when the labour statutes were abrogated, but the conditions under which poor relief was administered remained the same, serfdom in its later stage, the serfdom of the poor-law, asserted itself in its extremest form in times of dearth and difficulty during the Napoleonic War. In 1802-1803 it was calculated (Marshall’s Digest) that 28% of the population were in receipt of permanent or occasional relief. Those in receipt of the former numbered 734,817, including children—so real had this serfdom of the poor become.

In 1832 the expenditure on pauperism in England and Wales was £7,036,968. In the early years of the 19th century the mendicity societies, established in some of the larger towns, were a sign of the general discontent with existing methods of administration. The Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor—representing a group of men such as Patrick Colquhoun, Sir I. Bernard, Dr Lettsom, Dr Haygarth, James Neald, Count Rumford and others—took a more positive line and issued many useful publications (1796). After 1833 the very atmosphere of thought seems changed. There was a general desire to be quit of the serfdom of pauperism. The Poor-law Amendment Act was passed in 1834, and since then male able-bodied pauperism has dwindled to a minimum. The bad years of 1860-1870 revived the problem in England and Scotland, and the old spirit of reform for a time prevailed. Improved administration working with economic progress effected still further reductions of pauperism, till on the 1st of January 1905 (exclusive of lunatics in county asylums and casual paupers) the mean number of paupers stood at 764,589, or 22.6 per thousand of the population, instead of 41.8 per thousand as in 1859 (see Poor-law).

Charity organization societies were formed after 1869, with the object of “improving the condition of the poor,” or, in other words, to promote independence by an ordered and co-operative charity; and the Association for Befriending Young Servants, and workhouse aid committees, in order to prevent relapse into pauperism on the part of those who as children or young women received relief from the poor-law. The Local Government Board adopted a restricted out-door relief policy, and a new interest was felt in all the chief problems of local administration. The movement was general. The results of the Elberfeld system of municipal relief administered by unpaid almoners, each dealing with but one or two cases, influenced thought both in England and America. The experience gained by Mr Joseph Tuckerman of Boston of the utility of registering applications for relief, and the teaching of Miss Octavia Hill, led to the foundation of the system of friendly visiting and associated charity at Boston (1880) and elsewhere. Since that time the influence of Arnold Toynbee and the investigations of Charles Booth have led to a better appreciation of the conditions of labour; and to some extent, in London and elsewhere, the spirit of charity has assumed the form of a new devotion to the duties of citizenship. But perhaps, in regard to charity in Great Britain, the most important change has been the revival of the teaching of Dr Chalmers (1780-1847), who (1819) introduced a system of parochial charity at St John’s, Glasgow, on independent lines, consistent with the best traditions of the Scottish church. In the development of the theory of charitable relief on the economic side this has been a main factor. His view, which he tested by experience, may be summed up as follows: Society is a growing, self-supporting organism. It has within it, as between family and family, neighbour and neighbour, master and employee, endless links of sympathy and self-support. Poverty is not an absolute, but a relative term. Naturally the members of one class help one another; the poor help the poor. There is thus a large invisible fund available and constantly used by those who, by their proximity to one another, know best how to help. The philanthropist is an alien to this life around him. Moved by a sense of contrast between his own lot, as he understands it, and the lot of those about him, whom he but little understands, he concludes that he should relieve them. But his gift, unless it be given in such a way as to promote this self-support, instead of weakening it, is really injurious. In the first place, by his interference he puts a check on the charitable resources of another class and lessens their social energy. What he gives they do not give, though they might do so. But next, he does more harm than this. He stimulates expectation, so that by a false arithmetic his gift of a few shillings seems to those who receive it and to those who hear of it a possible source of help in any difficulty. To them it represents a large command of means; and where one has received what, though it be little, is yet, relative to wage, a large sum to be acquired without labour, many will seek more, and with that object will waste their time and be put off their work, or even be tempted to lie and cheat. So social energy is diverted from its proper use. Alms thus given weakens social ties, diminishes the natural relief funds of mutual help, and beggars a neighbour instead of benefiting him. By this argument a clear and well-defined purpose is placed before charity. Charity becomes a science based on social principles and observation. Not to give alms, but to keep alive the saving health of the family, becomes its problem: relief becomes altogether subordinate to this, and institutions or societies are serviceable or the reverse according as they serve or fail to serve this purpose. Not poverty, but distress is the plea for help; not almsgiving, but charity the means. To charity is given a definite social aim, and a desire to use consistently with this aim every method that increasing knowledge and trained ability can devise.

Under such influences as these, joined with better economic conditions, a great reform has been made. The poor-law, however, remains—the modern eleemosyna civica. It now, indeed, absorbs a proportionately lesser amount of the largely increased national income, but, excluding the maintenance of lunatics, it costs Great Britain more than twelve millions a year; and among the lower classes of the poor, directly or indirectly, it serves as a bounty on dependence and is a permanent obstacle to thrift and self-reliance. The number of those who are within the circle of its more immediate attraction is now perhaps, in different parts of the country or different districts in a town, not more than, say, 20% of the population. Upon that population the statistics of a day census would show a pauperism not of 2.63, the percentage of the mean day pauperism on the population in 1908, but of 13.15%; and the percentage would be much greater—twice as large, perhaps—if the total number of those who in some way received poor relief in the course of a year were taken into account. The English poor-law is thus among the lower classes, those most tempted to dependence—say some six or seven millions of the people—a very potent influence definitely antagonistic to the good development of family life, unless it be limited to very narrow proportions; as, for instance, to restricted indoor or institutional relief for the sick, for the aged and infirm, who in extreme old age require special care and nursing, and for the afflicted, for whom no sufficient charitable provision is procurable. As ample experience shows, only on these conditions can poor-law relief be justified from the point of view of charity and the common good. In marked contrast to this opinion is the English movement for Old Age pensions, which came to its first fruition in 1908—a huge charity started on the credit of the state, the extension of which might ultimately involve a cost comparable with that of the army or the navy. Schemes of the kind have been adopted in the Australasian colonies with limitations and safeguards; and they seem likely to develop into a new type of poor-relief organization for the aged and infirm (Report: Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions, Commonwealth of Australia, 1906). In England, partly to meet the demand for better state provision for the aged, the Local Government Board in 1900 urged the boards of guardians to give more adequate outdoor relief to aged deserving people, and laid no stress on the test of destitution, or, in other words, the limitation of relief to what was actually “necessary,” the neglect of which has led to new difficulties. History has proved that demoralization results from the wholesale relief whether of the mass of the citizens, or of the able-bodied, or of the children, and the proposal to limit the endowment to the aged makes no substantial difference. The social results must be similar; but social forces work slowly, and usually only the unanswerable argument of financial bankruptcy suffices to convert a people habituated to dependence, though the inward decay of vitality and character may long before be manifest. Ultimately the distribution of pensions by way of out-door relief, corrupting a far more independent people, is calculated to work a far greater injury than the annona civica. Such an endowment of old age might indeed be justified as part of a system of regulated labour, which, as in earlier times, could not be enforced without some such extraneous help, but it could not be justified otherwise. It is naturally associated, therefore, with socialistic proposals for the regulation of wage.

In the light of the principles of charity, which we have considered historically, we have now to turn to two questions: charity and economics, and charity and socialism.

The object of charity is to render to our neighbour the services and duties of goodwill, friendship and love. To prevent distress charity has for its further object to preserve and develop the manhood and womanhood of individuals and their self-maintenance The economics of charity. in and through the family; and any form of state intervention is approved or disapproved by the same standard. By self-maintenance is meant self-support throughout life in its ordinary contingencies—sickness, widowhood, old age, &c. Political economy we would define as the science of exchange and exchange value. Here it has to be considered in relation to the purposes of charity. By way of illustration we take, accordingly, three points: distribution and use, supplementation of wage, and the standard of well-being or comfort in relation to wage.

(1) Distribution and Use.—Economy in the Greek sense begins at this point—the administration and the use of means and resources. Political economy generally ignores this part of the problem. Yet from the point of view of charity it is cardinal to the whole issue. The distribution of wage may or may not be largely influenced by trades unions; but the variation of wage, as is generally the case, by the increase or decrease of a few pence is of less importance than its use. Comparing a careful and an unthrifty family, the difference in use may amount to as much as a third on the total wage. Mere abstention from alcohol may make, in a normal family, a difference of 6s. in a wage of 25s. On the other hand, membership of a friendly society is at a time of sickness equivalent to the command of a large sum of money, for the common stock of capital is by that means placed at the disposal of each individual who has a share in it. Further, even a small amount saved may place the holder in a position to get a better market for his labour; he can wait when another man cannot. Rent may be high, but by co-operation that too may be reduced. Other points are obvious and need not be mentioned. It is evident that while the amount of wage is important, still more important is its use. In use it has a large expansive value. (2) Supplementation of Wage.—The exchange between skill and wage must be free if it is to be valid. The less the skill the greater is the temptation to philanthropists to supplement the lesser wage; and the more important is non-supplementation, for the skilled can usually look after their own interests in the market, while the less skilled, because their labour is less marketable, have to make the greater effort to avoid dependence. But the dole of endowed charities, outdoor relief, and any constant giving, tend to reduce wage, and thus to deprive the recipients of some part of the means of independence. The employer is pressed by competition himself, and in return he presses for profit through a reduced wage, if circumstances make it possible for the workman to take it. And thus a few individuals may lower the wages of a large class of poorly skilled or unskilled hands. In these conditions unionism, even if it were likely to be advantageous, is not feasible. Unionism can only create a coherent unit of workers where there is a limited market and a definite saleable skill. Except for the time, insufficient wage will not be remedied in the individual case by supplementation in any form—doles, clothes, or other kinds of relief; and in that case, too, the relief will probably produce lessened energy after a short time, or in other words lessened ability to live. An insufficient wage may be prevented by increasing the skill of the worker, who will then have the advantage of a better series of economic exchanges, but hardly otherwise. If the supplementation be not immediate, but postponed, as in the case of old-age pensions, its effect will be similar. To the extent of the prospective adventitious gain the attraction to the friendly society and to mutual help and saving will grow less. Necessity has been the inventor of these; and where wage is small, a little that would otherwise be saved is quickly spent if the necessity for saving it is removed. Only necessity schools most men, especially the weak, to whom it makes most difference ultimately, whether they are thrifty or whether or not they save for the future in any way. (3) The Standard of Well-being or Comfort in Relation to Wage.—With an increase of income there has to be an increase in the power to use income intelligently. Whatever is not so used reacts on the family to its undoing. Constantly when the wife can earn a few shillings a week, the husband will every week idle for two or three days; so also if the husband finds that in a few days he can earn enough to meet what he considers to be his requirements for the week. In these circumstances the standard of well-being falls below the standard of wage; the wage is in excess of the energy and intelligence necessary to its economic use, and in these cases ultimately pauperism often ensues. The family is demoralized. Thus, with a view to the prevention of distress in good times, when there is the less poverty there is the more need of charity, rightly understood; for charity would strive to promote the right use of wage, as the best means of preventing distress and preserving the economic well-being of the family.

The theory of charity separates it entirely from socialism, as that word is commonly used. Strictly socialism means, in questions affecting the community, a dominant regard for the common or social good in so far as it is contrary to private or Charity and socialism. individual advantage. But even so the antithesis is misleading, for the two need not be inconsistent. On the contrary, the common good is really and ultimately only individual good (not advantage) harmonized to a common end. The issue, indeed, is that of old Greek days, and the conditions of a settlement of it are not substantially different. Using modern terms one may say that charity is “interventionist.” It has sought to transform the world by the transformation of the will and the inward life in the individual and in society. It would intensify the spirit and feeling of membership in society and would aim at improving social conditions, as science makes clear what the lines of reform should be. So it has constantly intervened in all kinds of ways, and, in the 19th century for instance, it has initiated many movements afterwards taken up by public authorities—such as prison reform, industrial schools, child protection, housing, food reform, &c., and it has been a friendly ally in many reforms that affect industry very closely, as, for instance, in the introduction of the factory acts. But it has never aimed at recasting society itself on a new economic plan, as does socialism. Socialism indeed offers the people a new state of social security. It recognizes that the annona civica and the old poor-law may have been bad, but it would meet the objection made against them by insisting on the gradual creation of a new industrial society in which wage would be regulated and all would be supported, some by wage in adult life, some by allowance in old age, and others by maintenance in childhood. Accordingly for it all schemes for the state maintenance of school children, old age pensions, or state provision for the unemployed are, like municipal trading, steps towards a final stage, in which none shall want because all shall be supported by society or be dependent on it industrially. To charity this position seems to exclude the ethical element in life and to treat the people primarily or chiefly as human animals. It seems also to exclude the motives for energy and endeavour that come from self-maintenance. Against it, on the other hand, socialism would urge, that only by close regulation and penalty will the lowest classes be improved, and that only the society that maintains them can control them. Charity from its experience doubts the possibility of such control without a fatal loss of initiative on the part of those controlled, and it believes both that there is constant improvement on the present conditions of society and that there will be constantly more as science grows and its conclusions are put in force. Thus charity and socialism, in the usual meaning of the word, imply ultimately two quite different theories of social life. The one would re-found society industrially, the other would develop it and allow it to develop.

The springs of charity lie in sympathy and religion, and, one would now add, in science. To organize it is to give to it the “ordered nature” of an organic whole, to give it a definite social purpose, and to associate the members The organization of charity. of the community for the fulfilment of that purpose. This in turn depends on the recognition of common principles, the adoption of a common method, self-discipline and training, and co-operation. In a mass of people there may be a large variation in motives coincident with much unity in action. Thus there may be acceptance of a common social purpose in charity, while in one the impulse is similar to that which moved St Francis or George Herbert, in another to that which moved Howard or Dr Chalmers, or a modern poor-law reformer like Sir G. Nicholls or E. Denison. Accepting, then, the principles of charity, we pass to the method in relation to assistance and relief. Details may vary, but on the following points there is general agreement among students and workers:—

(1) The Committee or Conference.—There are usually two kinds of local relief: the public or poor-law relief, and relief connected with religious agencies. Besides, there is the relief of endowments, societies and charitable persons. Therefore, as a condition precedent to all organization, there must be some local centre of association for information and common help. A town should be divided for this purpose into manageable areas coincident with parishes or poor-law divisions, or other districts. Subject to an acceptance of general principles, those engaged in charity should be members of a local conference or committee, or allied to it. The committee would thus be the rallying-point of a large and somewhat loosely knit association of friends and workers. (2) Inquiry, Aid and Registration.—The object of inquiry is to ascertain the actual causes of distress or dependence, and to carry on the work there must usually be a staff of several honorary and one or two paid workers. Two methods may be adopted: to inquire in regard to applications for help with a view to forming some plan of material help or friendly aid, or both, which will lead to the ultimate self-support of the family and its members, and, under certain conditions, in the case of the aged or sick, to their continuous or their sufficient help; or to ascertain the facts partly at once, partly by degrees, and then to form and carry out some plan of help, or continue to befriend the family in need of help, in the hope of bringing them to conditions of self-support, leaving the work of relief entirely to other agencies. The committee in neither case should be a relief committee—itself a direct source of relief. On the former method it has usually no relief fund, but it raises from relations, employers, charities and charitable persons the relief required, according to the plan of help agreed upon, unless, indeed, it is better not to relieve the case, or to leave it to the poor-law. The committee thus makes itself responsible for endeavouring to the best of its ability to raise the necessary relief, and acts as trustee for those who co-operate without it, in such a way as to keep intact and to give play to all the natural obligations that lie within the inner circles of a self-supporting community. On the latter method the work of relief is left to general charity, or to private persons, or to the poor-law; and the effort is made to help the family to self-support by a friendly visitor. This procedure is that adopted by the associated charities in Boston, Mass., and other similar societies in America and elsewhere. It is akin also to that adopted in the municipal system of relief in Elberfeld—which has become with many variations in detail the standard method of poor relief in Germany. The method of associated help, combined with personal work, represents the usual practice of charity organization societies. Mutatis mutandis, the plan can be adopted on the simplest scale in parochial or other relief committees, subject to the safeguards of sufficient training and settled method. The inquiry should cover the following points: names and address, and ages of family, previous addresses, past employment and wages, present income, rent and liabilities, membership of friendly or other society, and savings, relations, relief (if any) from any source. These points should be verified, and reference should be made to the clergy, the poor-law authorities, and others, to ascertain if they know the applicant. The result should be to show how the applicant has been living, and what are the sources of possible help, and also what is his character. The problem, however, is not whether the person is “deserving” or “undeserving,” but whether, granted the facts, the distress can be stayed and self-support attained. If the help can be given privately from within the circle of the family, so much the better. Often it may be best to advise, but not to interfere. In some cases but little help may be necessary; in others again the friendly relation between applicant and friend may last for months and even years. Usually in charitable work the question of the kind of relief available—money, tickets, clothes, &c.—governs the decision how the case should be assisted. But this is quite wrong: the opposite is the true rule. The wants of the case, rightly understood, should govern the decision as to what charity should do and what it should provide. Cases are overwhelming in number, as at the out-patient and casualty departments of a hospital, where the admissions are made without inquiry, and subject practically to no restrictions; but when there is inquiry, and each case is seriously considered and aided with a view to self-support, the numbers will seldom be overwhelming. On this plan appeal is made to the strength of the applicant, and requires an effort on his part. Indiscriminate relief, on the other hand, attracts the applicant by an appeal to his weakness, and it requires of him no effort. Hence, apart even from the differentiating effect of inquiry, one method makes applicants, the other limits their number, although on the latter plan much more strenuous endeavours be made to assist the lesser number of claimants. For the routine work of the office an extremely simple system of records with card index, &c., has been devised. In some cities, particularly in the United States of America, there is a central registration of cases, notified by individual charities, poor-relief authorities and private persons. The system of charity organization or associated charity, it will be seen, allows of the utmost variety of treatment, according to the difficulties in each instance and the remedies available, and the utmost scope for personal work. (3) Training.—If charitable work is an art, those who undertake it must needs be trained both in practice and method and in judgment. It requires, too, that self-discipline which blends intelligence with emotion, and so endows emotion with strength and purpose. In times of distress a reserve of trained workers is of the utmost service. At all times they do more and produce, socially, better results; but when there is general distress of any kind they do not lose their heads like new recruits, but prevent at least some of the mischief that comes of the panic which often takes possession of a community, when distress is apprehended, and leads to the wildest distribution of relief. Also trained workers make the most useful poor-law guardians, trustees of charities, secretaries of charitable societies and district visitors. All clergy and ministers and all medical men who have to be engaged in the administration of medical relief should learn the art of charity. Poor-law guardians are usually elected on political or general grounds, and have no special knowledge of good methods of charity; and trustees are seldom appointed on the score of their qualifications on this head. To provide the necessary education in charity there should be competent helpers and teachers at charity organization committees and elsewhere, and an alliance for this purpose should be formed between them and professors and teachers of moral science and economics and the “settlements.” Those who study social problems in connexion with what a doctor would call “cases” or “practice” see the limits and the falsity of schemes that on paper seem logical enough. This puts a check on the influence of scheme-building and that literary sensationalism which makes capital out of social conditions. (4) Co-operation.—Organization in charity depends on extensive co-operation, and ultimately on the acceptance of common views. This comes but slowly. But with much tribulation the goal may be reached, if in case after case the effort is made to provide friendly help through charities and private persons,—unless, as may well be, it should seem best not to interfere, but to leave the applicant to apply to the administrators of public relief. Experience of what is right and wrong in charity is thus gained on both sides. Many sources may have to be utilized for aid of different kinds even in a single case, and for the prevention of distress co-operation with members of friendly societies and with co-operative and thrift agencies is indispensable.

Where there is accord between charity and the poor-law pauperism may be largely reduced. The poor-law in most countries has at its disposal certain institutional relief and out-door allowances, but it has no means of devising plans of The poor law. help which may prevent application to the rates or “take” people “off the rates.” Thus a widow in the first days of widowhood applies and receives an allowance according to the number of her children. Helped at the outset by charity on some definite plan, she may become self-supporting; and if her family be large one or two of her children may be placed in schools by the guardians, while she maintains the remaining children and herself. As far as possible there should be a division of labour between the poor-law and charity. Except where some plan such as that just mentioned is adopted, one or the other should take whole charge of the case relieved. There should be no supplementation of poor-law relief by charity. This will weaken the strength and dissipate the resources of charity without adding to the efficiency of the poor-law. Unless the guardians adopt a restrictive out-door relief policy, there is no scope for any useful division of labour between them and charity; for the many cases which, taken in time, charity might save from pauperism, they will draw into chronic dependence by their allowances a very much larger number. But if there is a restrictive out-door policy, so far as relief is necessary, charity may undertake to meet on its own lines distress which the poor-law would otherwise have met by allowances, and, subject to the assistance of urgent cases, poor-law relief may thus by degrees become institutional only. Then, in the main, natural social forces would come into play, and dependence on any form of annona civica would cease.

Open-handed hospitality always creates mendicants. This is what the hospitals offer in the out-patient and casualty departments, and they have created a class of hospital mendicants. The cases are quickly dealt with, without Hospitals. inquiry and without regard to home conditions. The medical man in the hospital does not co-operate with any fellow-workers outside the hospital. Where his physic or advice ceases to operate his usefulness ceases. He regards no conditions of morality. In a large number of cases drink or vice is the cause of application, and the cure of the patient is dependent on moral conditions; but he returns home, drinks and may beat his wife, and then on another visit to the hospital he will again be physicked and so on. The man is not even referred to the poor-law infirmary for relief. Nor are conditions of home sanitation regarded. One cause of constant sickness is thus entirely overlooked, while drugs, otherwise unnecessary, are constantly given at the hospital. The hospitals are thus large isolated relief stations which are creating a new kind of pauperism. So far as the patients can pay—and many can do so—the general practitioners, to whom they would otherwise go, are deprived of their gains. Still worse is it when the hospital itself charges a fee in its out-patient department. The relief is then claimed even more absolutely as a right, and the general practitioners are still further injured. The doctors, as a medical staff, are not only medical men, but whether they recognize the fact or not, they are also almsgivers or almoners; what they give is relief. Yet few or none of them have ever been trained for that work, and consequently they do not realize how very advantageous, even for the cure of their own patients, would be a thorough treatment of each case both at the hospital and outside it. Nor can they understand how their methods at present protract sickness and promote habitual dependence. Were this side of their work studied by them in any way they would be the first, probably, to press upon the governors of their hospitals the necessity for a change. Unfortunately, at present the governors are themselves untrained, and to finance the hospital and to make it a good institution is their sole object. Hospitals, however, are, after all, only a part of the general administration of charity, though as they are now managed they have seldom any systematic connexion with that administration. Nor is there any co-ordination between the several hospitals and dispensaries. If one rightly refuses further treatment to certain applicants, they have only to wander to some other hospital, there to be admitted with little or no scrutiny. For usually out-patients and casualty patients are not even registered, nor can they be identified if they apply again. Practically they come and go at will. The definite limitation of cases, according to some standard of effectual work, association with general charity, trained almonership and inquiry, and a just regard for the interests of general practitioners, are stepping-stones to reform. In towns where medical charities are numerous a representative board would promote mutual help and organization.

Like the poor-law, endowed charities may be permanent institutions established to meet what should be passing and decreasing needs (cf. the arguments in The State and Charity, by T. Mackay). Administered as they usually Endowed charities. are in isolation—apart from the living voluntary charities of the generation, and consisting often of small trusts difficult to utilize satisfactorily, they tend to create a permanent demand which they meet by fixed quantities of relief. Also, as a rule, they make no systematic inquiries with a view to the verification of the statements of the applicants, for they have no staff for these purposes; nor have they the assistance of almoners or friendly visitors. Nor does the relief which they give form part of any plan of help in conjunction with other aid from without; nor is the administration subject to frequent inspection, as in the case of the poor-law. All these conditions have led to a want of progress in the actual administration of endowed charities, in regard to which it is often very difficult to prevent the exercise of an undue patronage. But there is no reason why these charities should not become a responsible part of the country’s administration, aiding it to reduce outdoor pauperism. It was never intended that the poor-law should extinguish the endowed charities, still less, as statistics now prove, that where endowments abound the rate of pauperism should be considerably above the average of the rest of the country. This shows that these charities often foster pauperism instead of preventing it. As a step to reform, the publication of an annual register of endowed charities in England and Wales is greatly needed. The consolidating schemes of the charity commissioners have done much good; still more may be done in some counties by extending to the county the benefits of the charities of well-endowed towns, as has been accomplished by the extension of the eleemosynary endowments of the city of London to the metropolitan police area. Nor, again, until quite lately, and that as yet only in a few schemes, has the principle been adopted that pensions or other relief should be given only in supplementation of the relief of relations, former employers and friends, and not in substitution of it. This, coupled with good methods of inquiry and supervision, has proved very beneficial. Hitherto, however, to a large extent, endowed charities, it must be admitted, have tended to weaken the family and to pauperize.

In many places funds are raised for the relief of school children by the supply of meals during the winter and spring; and an act has now been passed in England (1906) enabling the cost to be put upon the rates. Usually a very large number of children Relief to children at school. are said to be underfed, but inquiry shows that such statements may be taken as altogether excessive. They are sometimes based on information drawn from the children at school; or sometimes on general deductions; they are seldom founded on any systematic and competent inquiry at the homes. When this has been made, the numbers dwindle to very small proportions. Teachers of experience have noted the effect of the meals in weakening the independence of the family. While they are forthcoming women sometimes give up cooking meals at home, use their money for other things, and tell the child he can get his meal at school. Great temptations are put before a parent to neglect her family, and very much distress is due to this. The meals—just at a time when, owing to the age of her children, the mother’s care is most needed, and just in those families where the temptation is greatest, and where the family instinct should be strengthened—stimulate this neglect. Considered from the point of view of meeting by eleemosynary provision a normal economic demand for food, intervention can only have one result. The demand must continue to outstrip the supply, so long as there are resources available on the one side, and until on the other side the desire of the social class that is chiefly exposed to the temptations of dependence in relation to such relief has been satisfied. If the provision be made from the resources of local or general taxation the largeness of the fund available will allow practically of an unlimited expansion of the supply of food. If the provision be made from voluntary sources, in some measure limited therefore and less certain, this very fact will tend to circumscribe demand and limit the offer of relief. It is indeed the problem of poor-law relief in 1832 over again. The relief provided by local taxation practically unlimited will create a mass of constant claimants, with a kind of assumed right to aid based on the payment of rates; while voluntary relief, whatever its short-comings, will be less injurious because it is less amply endowed. In Paris the municipal subvention for meals rose from 545,900 francs in 1892 to 1,000,000 in 1904. Between 1894 and 1904 there was an increase of 9% in the school population; and an increase of 28% in the municipal grant. In that period the contributions from the local school funds (caisses des écoles) decreased 36%; while the voluntary contributions otherwise received were insignificant; and the payments for meals increased 2%.

The subject has been lately considered from a somewhat different standpoint (cf. the reports of the Scottish Royal Commission on Physical Education, 1903; of the Inter-departmental committees on Physical Deterioration, 1905, and on Medical Inspection and the Feeding of School Children, 1905; also the report of the special committee of the Charity Organization Society on “the assistance of school children,” 1893). After careful investigations medical officers especially have drawn attention to the low physical condition of children in schools in the poorer parts of large English towns, their low stature, their physical defects, the improper food supplied to them at home, their uncleanliness, and their want of decent bringing-up, and sometimes their want of food. Other inquiries have shown that, as women more usually become breadwinners their children receive less attention, and the home and its duties are neglected, while in the lowest sections of the poorer classes social irresponsibility reaches its maximum. Cheap but often quite improper food is provided, and infant mortality, which is largely preventable, remains as high as ever, though adult life is longer. This with a marked decrease in the birth-rate in recent years, has, it may be said, opened out a new field for charitable effort and social work. Science is at each revision of the problem making its task more definite. Actually the mere demand for meals stands for less; the reform of home conditions for more. So it was hoped that instead of making school meals a charge on taxation, as parliament has done, it would be content to leave it a voluntary charge, while the medical inspection of elementary Schools will be made universal; representative relief committees formed for schools or groups of schools; the cases of want or distress among the school children dealt with individually in connexion with their families, and, where necessary, day schools established on the lines of day industrial schools.

At a time of exceptional distress the following suggestions founded on much English experience may be of service (cf. Report of special committee of the Charity Organization Society on the best means of dealing with exceptional Exceptional distress. distress, 1886). Usually at such a time proposals are made to establish special funds, and to provide employment to men and women out of work. But it is best, if possible and as long as possible, to rely on existing agencies, and to strengthen them. Round them there are usually workers more or less trained. A new fund usually draws to it new people, many of whom may not have had any special experience at all. If a new fund is inevitable, it is best that it should make its grants to existing agencies after consultation with them. In any case, a clear policy should be adopted, and people should keep their heads. The exaggeration of feeling at a time of apprehended or actual distress is sometimes extraordinary, and the unwise action which it prompts is often a cause of continuing pauperism afterwards. Where there is public or poor-law relief the following plan may be adopted:—In any large town there are usually different recognized poor-law, charitable or other areas. The local people already at work in these areas should be formed into local committees. In each case a quick inquiry should be made, and the relieving officer communicated with, some central facts verified, and the home visited. Roughly, cases may be divided into three classes: the irresponsible casual labouring class, a middle class of men with decent homes, who have made no provision for the future, and are not members of either friendly society or trades union; and a third class, who have made some provision. These usually are affected last of all; at all hazards they should be kept from receiving public relief, and should be helped, as far as possible, privately and personally. If there are public works, the second class might be referred to them; if there are not, probably some should be left to the poor-law, some assisted in the same way as members of class three. Much would turn upon the family and the home. The first class should be left to the poor-law. If there is no poor-law system at work they should be put on public works. Working men of independent position, not the creatures of any political club, but such as are respected members of a friendly society, or are otherwise well qualified for the task, should be called into consultation. The relief should be settled according to the requirements of each case, but if the pressure is great, at first at least it may be necessary to make grants according to some generally sufficient scale. There should be as constant a revision of cases as time permits. Great care should be taken to stop the relief as soon as possible, and to do nothing to make it the stepping-stone to permanent dependence.