Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/166

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154
EFFECTUAL CHARITY.

relation to those above them in class. Can there be energy, independence, vigour, healthy activity among them? Can there be between them and the donors any of that happy manly interchange of thought, by which the possessors of education, refinement, leisure, might help, or be helped by, the active, self-reliant working-man, with his large capacity for fresh vigorous joy, and his store of power accumulated during a long period of endurance and patient effort? If different classes, like different people, have separate characters which are meant to act and react one, on the other, are we not, by allowing the help to be one of a dole of money, destroying the possibility of the better help that might have been?

And is our money doing any good? Did you ever see the district—the family—the individual that was richer for this repeated alms-giving? Has it ever been powerful, even for outside good, to be recipients? Is the bed better covered in the long run for the lent