credit. Every ex parte statement against a Board of Guardians is greedily swallowed by newspapers and by that section of the public which thinks that it has sufficiently disposed of Guardians when it calls them Bumbles. Then in a year or two, just when a Guardian is beginning to learn his work, and it takes him all that time to do so, the Legislature says again that he must take his chance of being turned out. And so we have a constant fluctuation of policy which is mischievous and unjust to the poor, because they never know what to expect.
A word of protest may be added against those who go about amongst the poor preaching the doctrines of helplessness: that they are not responsible for their own characters, but are the victims of their "environment": that they cannot save, or that if they can, they ought not to do so. Of course we all like to think that we are the victims of circumstances; that faults in our character are hereditary, or the result of our education and surroundings, and not of our own making. Whatever scintilla of truth there may be in it, it is a miserable doctrine to preach to poor people. The doctrine that a man cannot save without injury to his family is sure to be welcome to the man who spends possibly one-eighth of his income in a public house. On the other hand, the man who is saving something, and there are not a few such, can only be discouraged by such doctrines. If any one has ever inquired into the question of children attending Board Schools insufficiently fed, what will he find? Will he find they are the children of those who have sufficient sense of responsibility to put something on one side for the future, or will he find that they are the children of those who spend their money upon themselves in the public house and elsewhere? It
