Charity.
Justice has so much to learn from mercy, that, next to a knowledge of the law, women have most need of large illumination on the subject of charity and reform. Our generosity is now so thoughtless and unsystematic, our sympathy so shallow, sentimental, and even silly, that it is to be feared much of it is no better than thrown away. But co-operative housekeeping could change all this by organizing in every society a charitable department, and giving it in charge to that woman of the association (and there is always one such in every circle) who takes more interest in the poor, and knows more about them, than any other person. Then, instead of each housekeeper's giving foolishly away at the door, or to her servants, subscribing at haphazard to this wise or that wasted charity, she could send all she had to bestow of food or clothing or money to the general Almoner. Women of like sympathies with herself would naturally cluster about her (if our churches were rightly organized, they would be the deaconesses of every parish), until in every community there would be a compact working body, ready to suggest and carry out the best methods for the relief and reform of all the poor and degraded of the neighbourhood. If they found their means and powers inadequate for their designs, they could lay the case before the town-meeting, when, perhaps, it would occur to the tax-payers that, after all, the cheapest and most efficient overseers of the poor might be found among Christian ladies! Is it not likely that the sexes together could devise a better plan for the relief of lowly misery than the almshouse system,—so cold, so hard, so distasteful to the poor as it is, and therefore so inadequate to the work it undertakes!
Health.
After what I have already said about the responsibilities of women in regard to the study and practice of medicine,
