don't some one make 'em act honest?" said an old lady outside a certain Board Room not long ago after she had been refused outdoor relief. So far as the administrators are concerned, what real personal feeling can there be between a Board of Guardians and a host of recipients of relief most of whom are personally unknown to them? In country districts applicants for relief are not even seen by the Guardians as a body. All that they know of them as a rule is that they are "recommended" by a local Guardian or the relieving officer, coupled with a sort of tacit log-rolling which says, "Vote for my man to-day and I will vote for yours to-morrow."
The abstract love of the poor which is so much in the air nowadays, cannot be held to be a substitute for this personal feeling. Abstract love of the poor is sometimes quite reconcilable with concrete indifference for a poor person. The gun scatters so widely that it hits nothing.
How, again, can we reconcile Christian charity with the idea of a tax levied by the arm of the law, with the voting by A of B's money to the use of C, with the usual penalties if B fails to pay? The feelings of the man who finds his demand notes rising year after year are very far from Christian. He who does not pay his rates finds bailiffs in his house, and perhaps eventually retires to Holloway to ponder in seclusion upon the mysteries of the civic conscience and civic benevolence.
Again, we have heard much of late of the difficulty of housing the poor and of the prohibitive rents in great towns. It was calculated the other day that in a certain part of London, upon a house rented at 8s. a week, 7d. of that 8s. represented the amount levied for the relief of the poor. Undoubtedly some part of the housing difficulty in London is due to the ever-increasing
