wisdom which, like freedom, "broadens down from precedent to precedent." And there is probably no other question which has so much experience behind it, or which has had so much attention bestowed upon it through the ages as this question of the relief of poverty at all times and in all countries.
It is of some interest, in view of the ferment of opinion that is going on with regard to the subject in the Christian Churches of the present day, to notice that the principle of voluntary almsgiving was strongly embraced in the early Christian Church. On the other hand, in the Jewish Church the principle of compulsory tithe was adopted. St Irenaeus, in comparing the two systems, speaks of the one as "the charity of freemen, the other the charity of slaves." In England the Church accepted the responsibility for the relief of the poor upon a voluntary basis up to the end of the fifteenth century, though it is plain that after the Reformation, and as the Church gradually lost its hold upon the laity, the financial difficulty increased. By an Act of Edward VI. collectors were appointed in every parish, whose duty it was "gently to ask and demand of every man and woman what they of their charity would be contented to give weekly for the relief of the poor"; and in the event of "froward refusal" the bishops and clergy were "gently to exhort and persuade" such recusants, and, in the last resort, to apply such disciplinary methods as were possible. The final step from moral suasion to legislative coercion was taken in the Elizabethan Poor Laws, which were codified in the great Act of 1601, and the principle of a compulsory levy, to be enforced by distraint and imprisonment, was for the first time adopted. Under that Act the State assumes the whole responsibility for "the relief of the impotent, and the setting to work of those able to work," and voluntary charity obtains no recognition. Undoubtedly the Act appears to cover the whole ground, and it is probable that its authors believed that they had settled the problem of poverty once and for all. It remained
