pensed. The object of real benevolence is to cure the evil; and while the evil increases, instead of disappearing, there is the best possible reason for “anxiety and perplexity,” on other grounds than “want of funds.”
As for the duties and methods of beneficence which deserves that name, as being a real “doing of good,”—the large and long experience that we have had as a settled community should preclude, generally speaking, both anxiety and perplexity. Nothing can be plainer than the distinction drawn before our eyes, between charity and almsgiving; and, again, between poverty and destitution in the classes whom we must help. Charity means effectual help to whomsoever needs it, and in whatever way it is needed. While almsgiving creates immeasurably more evil than it relieves, the best sort of charity works towards the extinction of almsgiving. Again, the duty we owe towards the poor is widely different from that which we owe to the destitute. The poor are those whose labour, or other means, provides only the necessaries of their life, from day to day. They may be as independent as their wealthiest neighbour, in ordinary times: but any accident may render our assistance necessary to save them from destitution. As for the destitute, they must be maintained by the charity of the community, unless they can be raised from destitution into the rank of the merely poor. These simple and clear distinctions make our duty plain enough in a general way.
After discharging our duty in our own households, and among our own friends, the claims of true charity will be sure to present themselves. We must do what we can to save the poor from sinking, and to enable the destitute to rise: and the way to do either is not usually almsgiving. In order to save the morality of those whom we help, there ought to be no ultimate sacrifice of money on our part, though there may be gain on theirs. In other words, our modes of assistance should be self-supporting, as far as possible. This does not mean that almsgiving can be entirely discontinued, under the present circumstances of society,—nor in any age or country as long as famines, or a succession of bad seasons occur, or epidemics break out, or death casts young orphans on the care of society, or a retribution of economical sins, like the cotton famine, falls upon a multitude of innocent persons. The aged poor who are childless; the children who are fatherless; many of the sick, and of those subject to accidents; the helpless, from infirmity of body or mind,—all these are the naturally destitute, who must be supported by society; and we have to see to it, each one for himself, that we do our share.
More thought and pains are required in dealing with the higher class of the poor, whose independence is their one inestimable treasure. They may be effectually helped,—rendered comfortable and happy,—without ever “seeing the colour of our money,” or of any money, but their own earnings; and the more certainly, the more thoroughly they understand that we lose nothing by them. For instance, one excellent method of charity—properly so called—is rendering the dwellings of labourers fit for them to live in, on a paying plan. Model lodging-houses are good things in their way; and the better when they pay a good dividend to shareholders, because then the freedom between the occupiers and the owners is complete. Greater good still may be done by each of us who may have the means, or by groups of us, in the humbler way which has answered admirably wherever the plan has been carried out in a sensible way;—by improving existing dwellings. Where rows of cottages, or courts full of small dwellings, have been properly drained, ventilated, repaired, cleaned, arranged, and fitted up, with an enlightened regard to the health, comfort, convenience, moral habits, and independent feelings of the tenant, the plan has always proved a self-supporting, if not a profitable one. The case is the same with the eating-houses which are now spreading from Glasgow into various parts of the kingdom. My readers can enlarge for themselves the list of good charities which have no taint of almsgiving in them; and it will strike them what an impertinence it is, in such a case, to reckon up the income of a citizen, or of a neighbourhood, and to pass a censure for irreligion or inhumanity because the amount of almsgiving is apparently below the lowest mark,—of ten per cent.
“I always gave away in religion and charity ten per cent.,” said one of the speakers in St. James’s Hall, “though thirty-five years ago my income was only £75 a-year.”
Any one of the censured neighbours of these supervisors of morals may have given away more or less than ten per cent. of his income;—if more, without any possibility of their knowing it; if less, with an excellent chance of having done almost as much real good as their most reckless subscribers have done harm;—which is saying a great deal.
I need say nothing here of schools; both because education never is, and never can be, regarded as on a level with charities which feed and clothe; and because it is generally admitted that schools in which the children pay are better, and answer better, than “charity-schools,” commonly so-called. But there is one sort of institution on which a new light seems to be suddenly thrown which has struck me very much. Just at the time when the gentlemen in St. James’s Hall were applying their united forces to obtain the utmost possible amount of alms from the public, for the benefit of charity in general, and as a good thing per se, a humble rural society was issuing a brief report, the effect of which is to show what great good may be done in every village in the kingdom, without any call for alms at all.
The most rigid purists in political economy have always, I believe, admitted hospitals and dispensaries to be proper objects of the charity of the community. While urging the duty of private charity, in the form of upholding the respectability of the independent labourer, in opposition to the public almsgiving by which funds are confided to irresponsible administrators, to the great damage of the spirit of society, the economists have always admitted that medical advice and surgical treatment should be provided by the public for the benefit of labourers disabled by accidents, or