those who could not understand or feel them. He told her that she had madly forgotten her duty; and she retorted that she was devoted to a higher duty than he conceived of. He told her that she had betrayed her husband’s honour; and she declared that she despised the low selfishness of common men, who took precious care of their own honour, while trampling under foot the dignity and prerogative of God’s vicegerent. Both believed and said that this hour must dispose of their lot; and both felt that they must part. If so, it must be then and there.
“Once more, Henrietta,” said he, showing himself at the door, after he had disappeared. “I give you one more chance. You shall go home with me if you decide aright. You must choose between the King and me,—between his cause and ours.”
“Then I choose the King and his cause,” Henrietta replied without a moment’s delay: and Harry was gone.
Some bolt or bar must have been unfastened that night; for before the July dawn, Harry was far on his way to London.
By some means Sir Oliver must have known what had happened; for he stole an anxious glance at Henrietta as she met him in the breakfast-room.
“My brave little one!” he exclaimed as he kissed her glowing cheek, and admired the fire in her eyes. “I am proud of my kinswoman. Cheer up, my love! When the traitors find how true spirits rally round their Majesties, we shall see plenty of quailing. We must keep up our hearts now, and our day will come. Meantime, their Majesties shall hear what such humble servants as you and I can do. Now we will have our breakfast together. Those fellows are gone; but I doubt whether fishing is their game. Unless Helen comes, we shall be alone to-day. I ask no better; for I am proud of you, Henrietta; and you know I always was fond of you.”
Henrietta gave him a bright smile. While the passion lasted, she believed herself glad of the parting,—glad to have delivered her soul, and taken the consequences.
LIBERTY OF PRIVATE CHARITY.
Some future explorer of the chronicles of the old nineteenth century will stop to copy a part of a column of some London daily paper of March 5th, 1863, as a curious evidence of the backwardness of our generation in the morality of social management. There is in the newspapers of that date a report of a public meeting held the day before in St. James’s Hall, at which the chairman, and, as far as appears, all the speakers, avowed the most extraordinary views, and uttered the most presumptuous condemnation of their neighbours, in comparison with their own method of behaviour, that could be imagined at this time of day. The puzzling thing to readers of their own time is, whether these gentlemen can possibly be the representatives of the moral opinion amidst which they live, or whether they are a group of eccentric persons, exhibiting themselves in fortuitous concourse, for the misleading of a future generation. For my part, I had rather imagine any explanation than suppose these speakers to be the mouth-pieces of any considerable number of my fellow-citizens; for, if they are, our moral and social condition is less advanced than we have been accustomed to suppose.
The meeting was on behalf of the Systematic Beneficence Society. Of this society I know nothing—never having heard of it before. The chairman declared its aim to be to induce “every person to ask himself, not how much he must give, but how much he ought to keep back.” This is enough about the society, thus condemned out of the mouth of the chairman, who seems to be entirely unaware that the necessity and habit of almsgiving are a disgrace to any community in which it exists, and that the disgrace is heavy in proportion to the amount of that corrupting, depraving, and humiliating mode of spending money.
The other speakers supported the chairman in the most wonderful manner; first, by producing estimates of the income of the inhabitants of London or the kingdom, and speculating on how far the actual amount of almsgiving fell short of its proper proportion to the income; and next by telling, one after another, how much they have themselves given away out of an income of so much, and for so many years!
Can these clergymen and gentlemen really be unaware that the badness of the social condition, moral as well as physical, of any country is known by the amount of almsgiving in it? Have they yet to learn that to feed beggars at convent gates is to create hunger? The same consequence—a great augmentation of the evil—follows from every endeavour to provide a gratuitous remedy for evils which individuals should be enabled to deal with themselves. Have they never heard that when, half a century ago, the rural labourers throughout the country were fed, amidst their real and indisputable destitution, by charity—legal and private—the poverty spread so fearfully from rank to rank that the national fortunes were saved only by the most vigorous social effort on record? Have these gentlemen never heard how the burst of humanity on behalf of foundlings issued in London, in the last century? and how it operates in Paris now? The Empress talks of opening another Foundling Hospital; and, as I have said before, a Middlesex coroner has seriously proposed the same thing lately, with singular perverseness, as a remedy for infanticide: yet everybody, from empresses to relieving-officers, have the means of knowing the invariable result of such experiments. In the London case, the throwing open of the Foundling Hospital caused an increase of foundlings, in three years, of from 117 to nearly 15,000; and of those 15,000 only 4400 lived to be apprenticed. In Paris, 58 per cent. of illegitimate children are abandoned within the range of the Foundling charity; and wherever alms are forthcoming to support infants, baseborn or other, child-murder increases tremendously. The more institutions are opened as a refuge for them, the faster the need grows; and, as the need can never be overtaken, the infants are put out of the way in tenfold proportion. The early philanthropists