Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 26 - AUS-CHI.pdf/738

 AND CHARITIES under conditions, “additional trustees. The accounts doctrine probably received its widest application in the City of have tocertain be submitted to the parish meeting, and the names of the London Parochial Charities Act of 1883. Under other Acts doles beneficiaries dole charities published. (14) Official Trustees.— have been applied to education and to allotments. About 380 There is also of“an official trustee of charity lands,” who as “bare schemes are issued in the course of a year. (12) Objects adopted ” may hold the land or stock of the charity managed by in remodelling Charities.—In the remodelling of charities for trustee trustees or administrators. At present the stock tiansferred the general benefit of the poor some one or more of thirteen the the official trustees amounts to £20,173,654. (15) Audit.—The objects are usually included in the scheme. These are subscrip- to tions to a medical charity, to a provident club or coal or clothing charity commissioners have no power of audit, but the trustees every charity have to prepare a statement of accounts society, to a friendly society ; tor nurses, for annuities, for out- of and transmit it to the commission. The accounts fit for service, &c. 5 for emigration for recreation grounds, clubs, annually, reading-rooms, museums, lectures; for temporary relief to a limited have to be “certified under the hand of one or more of the and by the auditor of the charity.” (16) Taxation.—In amount in each year; for clothes, fuel, tools, medical aid, food, &c., trustees case of rents and profits of lands, &c., belonging to hospitals or in money “ in cases of unexpected loss or sudden destitution ; the almshouses, or vested in trustees for charitable purposes, for pensions. (13) Parochial Charities.—By the Local Govern- or are made in diminution of income-tax (56 Viet. 35, ment Act of 1892, local ecclesiastical charities, i.e., endowments allowances § 61). the inhabited house duty any hospital charity for “any spiritual purpose that is a legal purpose” (for spiritual school, orFrom provided for the reception or relief of poor persons, church and other buildings, for spiritual uses, &c.) are persons, is house exempted (48 Geo. III. c. 55). Also there is an separated from parochial charities, “the benefits of which are, exemption from the land-tax in regard to land rents, &c., in or the separate distribution of the benefits of which is, confined possession of hospitals 1693. (17) The Digest.—K digest to inhabitants of a single parish, or of a single ancient ecclesiastical of endowed charities in before and Wales was compiled in the parish, or not more than five neighbouring parishes.” These years 1861 to 1876. AEngland new digest of reports and financial charities are now brought under the supervision of the recently particulars is now in progress. The following table gives the established parish councils, who appoint trustees for their management in lieu of the former overseer or vestry trustees, or, income of endowed charities at that time and its chief uses Distribution Distribution ] General Medical Income from Total former Apprenticing Almshouses in Uses of in and and According to Inquiry, Income. Total. Money. j Poor. Charities. Kind. Personal Pensioners. Real Advancement. 1861-76. 1819-37. Estate. E.-state. £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ 143,587 34,707 19,085 123,298 408,426 61,476 966,573 Counties, includ- 1,148,955 | 394,726 1,543,681 ing Cities of London and Westminster 7,747 2,248 10,801 9,486 1,315 Diocesan charities 2,279 8,990 9 1,100 1,978 27,425 17,185 10,240 Society of Friends’ charities 16,566 27,832 180,055 804 140,346 24,334 232,654 390,795 225,761 616,556 General charities 176,890 64,818 199,140 124,111 552,120 87,865 1,558,250 640,213 2,198,463 1,199,227 charities in a town parish is marked by their decreasing The income of endowed charities is now, no doubt, considerably parochialand utility, as poor-law relief and pauperism Charit in larger than it was in 1876. Partial returns show that at least amount increase. The Act, it would seem, was not adopted parish a million a year is now available in England and Wales for tiie with much alacrity by the local authorities. 1 rom 1625 after assistance of the aged poor and for doles. Between the poor- to 1646 there were many years of plague and sickness, law which, as it is at present administered, is a permanent en- but in St Giles’s, London, as late as 1649, the amount raised by dowment provided from the rates for the support of a class of the “collectors” (or overseers) was only £176. They disbursed permanent “poor,” and endowed charities, which are funds avail- this to “the visited poor ” as “pensions.” In 1665 an extra levy able for the poor of successive generations, there is no £600 is mentioned. In the accounts of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, difference. But in their resources and administration the differ- of as in St Giles’s, gifts were received, the change wrought ence is marked. Local endowed charities were constantly founded where, another half-century (1714) is apparent. The sources of after Queen Elizabeth’s time till about 1830, and the poor- by charitable relief are similar to those in all the Protestant churches rate was at first supplementary of the local charities. When English, Scottish, or Continental: church collections and offercorn and fuel were dear and clothes very expensive, what now tories ; correctional fines, such as composition for bastards and seem trivial endowments for food, fuel, coal, and clothes were money for swearers ; and besides these, income from important assets in the thrifty management of a parish. But conviction and legacies, the parish estate, the royal bounty, and when the poor were recognized as a class of dependants entitled annuities “ petitions to persons of quality. ’ In all £2041 was collected, but, by law to relief from the community, the rate increased out of so as relief was concerned the parish relied not on it, but on all proportion to the charities. A distinction then made itself thefar poor-rate, which produced £3765. All this was collected and felt between the “parish” poor and the “second” poor, or the disbursed on their own authority by collectors, to orphans, “penpoor who were not relieved from the rates, and relief from the or the “known or standing” poor, or to casual poor rates altogether overshadowed the charitable aid. Charitable sioners” including nurse children and bastards. The begging poor endowments were ignored, ill-administered, and often were lost. (£1818), numerous and the infant death-rate enormous, and each year After 1834 the poor-law was brought under the control of the were three-fourths of those christened were “inhumanly suffered to die central Government. Poor relief was placed in the hands of by the barbarity of nurses.” The whole administration was unboards of guardians in unions of parishes. The method of co- charitable, to the community and the family, and operation between poor-law and charity suggested by the Acts of inhuman to injurious the child. If one may judge from later accounts of Queen Elizabeth was set aside, and, as a responsible partner in the other parishes up to 1834, usually it remained the same, public work of charity relief, was disestablished. In the parishes purposeless andeven unintelligent; and it can hardly be denied that, the endowed charities remained in general a disorganized medley generally speaking, in the last fifty years has any serious of separate trusts, jealously guarded by incompetent adminis- attention been paidonly to the charitable side of parochial work. trators To give unity to this mass of units, so long as the Parallel to the parochial of the poor-law in England, principles of charity are misunderstood or ignored, has proved in France (about 1617) movement established the bureaux de Uenan almost impossible and certainly an unpopular task. So far faisance, at first entirely were institutions, then recognized as it has been achieved, it has been accomplished by the piece- by the state, and duringvoluntary Revolution made the central admeal legislation of schemes cautiously elaborated to meet local ministration for relief in thethecommunes. prejudices. Active reform has been resented, and politicians have In the 17th century in England, as in France, opinion often accentuated this resentment. Recently several inquiries have been made by Parliamentary committees into the action of favoured the establishment of large hospitals or maisons the charity commissioners, but no serious grievances were sub- Dieu for the reception of the poor of different charitable stantiated. The committees’ reports are of interest, however as classes. In France throughout the century there move™*fs an indication of the initial difficulties of all charitable work, the afterI ‘ general ignorance that prevails in regard to the elementary con- was a continuous struggle with mendicancy, ditions that govern it, the common disregard of these principles, and the hospitals were used as places into which offenders and the absence of any accepted theory or constructive policy were summarily driven. A new humanity was, however, that should regulate its development and its administration. After the Poor-Law Act of 1601 the history of the voluntary beginning its protest. The pitiful condition of abandoned

682

CHARITY