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LIFE IN INDIA.-CHAPTER VII. THE RULERS, THE PUBLIC, AND THE PRESS... 704

DR. PUSEY AND DR. TEMPLE

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JABEZ OLIPHANT; OR, THE MODERN PRINCE.-Book IV. CHAPTERS
IV. AND V...............

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THE ROSSE TELESCOPE SET TO NEW WORK. BY RICHARD A.
PROCTOR, B.A. F.R.A.S.

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PALING ENESIS.-BY THE HON. RODEN NOEL .....

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A POET OF THE LOWER FRENCH EMPIRE

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TO KNOW, OR NOT TO KNOW?-BY FRANCES POWER COBBE

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FRASER'S MAGAZINE FOR NOVEMBER 1869

CONTAINS

THE PRESENT STATE OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY.

A THIRD IRISH TOURIST.

ENDYMION.

LORD BYRON VINDICATED.

JABEZ OLIPHANT; OR, THE MODERN PRINCE.-BOOK IV. CHAPTERS

I. TO III.

THE BATHS OF SANTA CATARINA.

GHOSTS, PRESENT AND PAST.

THE POETRY OF THE YEAR.-AN AUTUMNAL REVIEW.

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Correspondents are desired to observe, that all Communications must be addressed direct to the Editor.

Rejected Contributions cannot be returned.

FRASER'S MAGAZINE.

DECEMBER 1869.

SP

CHARITY.

BY J. G. FITCH.

PARE not,' says Sir Thomas Browne, where thou canst not easily be prodigal, and fear not to be undone by mercy; for since he who hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Almighty Rewarder who observes no ides,' but every day for his payments, charity becomes pious usury, Christian liberality the most thriving industry, and what we adventure in a cock-boat may return in a carrack to us. He who thus casts his bread upon the waters, shall surely find it again, for though it falleth to the bottom, it sinks but like the axe of the prophet, to rise again to him.' 2

There is a naïve admission here of a very significant fact in the history of Christianity to which much of our recent experience is well calculated to recall attention. No one who reads with fresh eyes the memorable description by St. Paul of a charity which thinketh no evil,' which rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth,' can fail to see that the sacred and beautiful word thus used by an Apostle to connote a group of intellectual and social virtues must have strangely altered in its meaning, before it became the synonym for

1

the one virtue of almsgiving,-the easiest, and in some respects the least noble, of all forms of beneficence. Mr. Lecky has in his recent volumes traced with much subtlety and care, the history as well as the rationale of this change. He shows that the substitution of devotion for philanthropy as the motive of benevolence, very early generated a belief in the expiatory or meritorious nature of eleemosynary gifts. A form of what may be called selfish charity arose, which assumed at last gigantic proportions and exerted a most pernicious influence upon Christendom. Men gave money to the poor simply and exclusively for their own spiritual benefit; and the welfare of the sufferer was altogether foreign to their thoughts.' 3 The writer refers here to some extravagant forms of benevolence existing in the early ages of the Church, and to the origin of some medieval institutions and practices which are now extinct. But the application of his remark cannot be fairly restricted to any one phase of the religious history of Christendom. There is scarcely a Catholic church in modern Europe, which has not, at

Fœnerator Alphius .
Omnem redegit Idibus pecuniam :
Quærit Calendis ponere.

2 Christian Morals. VOL. LXXX.-NO. CCCCLXXX.

Horace, Epod. ii. 67.

Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 99.
3 B 2

its door, a foul group of whining and lazy beggars, gathered there and encouraged in their mendicancy not because their own wants need to be supplied, but because they furnish to the faithful a convenient vent and parade-ground for the Christian virtue of almsgiving, a whetstone on which to give an edge to the charitable impulse, or a corpus vile on which experiments in benevolence may easily be tried. The pious worshipper reflects that charity is a virtue, which he is exhorted, under penalties, not to omit. He knows therefore that it is good for him to give. The secondary and subordinate question whether it is also good for the beggar to receive, is as a rule wholly absent from his thoughts. And it would be most unfair to represent this view of the Christian life as peculiar to the Roman Church, or to assert that English Protestants had risen to any higher conception of duty in this respect. To say nothing of Paley's Moral Philoso phy, which though happily waning in influence, is still regarded by many as an orthodox and satisfactory account of the foundation of Christian ethics; the charity sermons to be heard weekly in our churches, even the language of the English offertory service itself, testify to the fact that much of what is called charity scarcely attempts to disguise its real character, as a sort of consecrated selfishness, a safe and pious investment of money, certain to yield a rich return in this world or the next. Who that seeks to catch the spirit of apostolic teaching, would recognise it in the associations which now cluster round the word; or would be able to say of charity thus restricted and vulgarised in its signication, And now abideth faith, hope, charity; these three but the greatest of these is charity'?

Dehortations against inconsiderate and unwise almsgiving have

been among the commonplaces of philosophers from Cicero downwards. Berkeley, Mandeville, Turgot, Malthus and others, have sought to demonstrate, each in his own way, that many charitable institutions increase, if they do not often create, the very evils they are intended to redress, and that what is called 'doing good' is chargeable with not a small proportion of the evil wrought in the world. Yet the theme, though old, is ever acquiring new interest; and there has not often in our history been a period, in which it needed more discussion and more of anxious thought than the present. The fearful increase of pauperism amongst us; the recent revelations respecting the waste of public charities especially of eleemosynary foundations; and the general disorganisation of all our plans for private and sectional relief, all furnish evidence of the need of more careful inquiry into this subject. Voluntary associations for the mitigation of poverty, ignorance, and misery of all kinds were never more munificent than in our day. Yet these evils-at least the preventible evils of poverty and its consequences-are not removed. It is doubtful whether they are even alleviated. On the contrary they certainly increase, in a yet larger proportion than the efforts made to repress them. In these circumstances, it cannot be right to remain content with, our present position. The strongest adherents of the à priori or intuitional school of moralists will not object to the application of the utilitarian test to moral acts. However binding the injunction to give alms, it can never enable us to dispense with the appeal to experience as to the manner in which almsgiving fulfils its purpose. And it may not be uninstructive, to consider in succession a few of the forms which modern charity assumes and to ask how they operate.

To the one form of almsgiving, which has been partly taken out of the sphere of private benevolence into that of recognised public obligation-the relief of pauperism-a very brief reference only can be made here. The Tudor legislation which gave to the aged and the impotent a claim to public aid, and which accepted, in the name of the State, the responsibility of sustaining the life of those of its members who had no other means of support, has been the parent of our modern poor law. Yet the provision made three centuries ago for the relief of unavoidable destitution was carefully guarded by other measures intended to prevent its abuse. One statute of Henry VIII. restrained the liberty of private almsgiving, by the imposition of a fine of ten times the value of the gift on any one who bestowed alms on a beggar. Another permitted the licensing of certain deserving beggars, after due investigation of their claims, with a right to call at the houses in a given parish for broken meats. Another empowered the parish officers to take up all idle children, above the age of five years, and 'appoint them to masters of husbandry or other craft or labour to be taught, and if any child should refuse the service to which he was appointed, or ran away, he might be publicly whipt with rods at the discretion of a justice of the peace.' Besides these measures of prevention, the 18th Elizabeth provided 'that such as are already grown up in idleness and so are rogues at present may not have any just excuse in saying that they cannot get any service or work and that other poor and needy persons being willing to work may be set on work,' and to this end gives the magistrates with the assistance of the overseers power to search out and

make inquiry into individual cases, and while giving relief to the helpless and decayed poor, to provide work according to his ability for every one capable of earning his bread. A series of other Acts of Parliament imposed severe and even cruel punishments on all 'sturdy and valiant beggars.' For them the laws of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had no mercy. The plea ‘Il faut vivre' was not in their case admitted. 'It was the expressed conviction of the English nation that it was better for a man not to live at all, than to live an idle or worthless life.'1

Such was the spirit of legislation in the sixteenth century. Our ancestors foresaw the danger of increasing the evil which the beneficent institution of a poor-law was designed to cure, and they hedged its operation about with many precautions. We of the nineteenth century, witha vaster population, burdened with a weight of pauperism so great that discrimination in dealing with it is well nigh impossible, have somewhat helplessly accepted the one part and rejected the other of the earlier legislation. We have admitted the obligation to provide for the destitute poor. But we have dispensed with the preventive measures of the Elizabethan era. The compulsory training of neglected children, the severe punishment for the idle and undeserving; the provision making work the condition of relief in the case of all who are capable of work, the treatment of heedless almsgiving as a public offence-have all disappeared. And the poor have come7 to regard the poor-law less as the provision of a resource in excep- S. tional misfortune, than as an organised system of permanent almsgiving to which they may habitually look for help. The legislation of 1834 corrected some patent evils; but

1 Froude, History of England, i. 88.

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