Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/406

398 of the Christian church, who were touched with compassion at the fate of the exposed infants in every neighbourhood of celibate houses, and who opened the first Christian foundling hospitals, became very wretched, and sorely perplexed, when they saw more and more infants’ bodies floating down rivers, and infesting every hole and corner into which they could be thrust. Our grandfathers wisely and humanely changed their course early in regard to English foundlings, restricting the charity within the narrowest limits that the foundation of the Hospital admitted. Our fathers did the same in the case of the rural labourers, by reforming the Poor-law, and reducing legal almsgiving to the lowest practicable point, and by pointing out a way to independence and comfort for the labourer which would in time place him above the need of private charity, except in cases of emergency. After all this experience, and more of the same kind in every direction in which almsgiving has been practised, we now see men standing up in the middle of London, announcing the average income of their neighbours, and denouncing those neighbours for not giving away such a proportion of their means as to these professors of “systematic beneficence” seems good!

The truth is, one of the most disheartening facts of our social state is its excessive almsgiving,—called “charity” by these gentlemen. Any citizen who is supposed to be in easy circumstances can tell what his experience is. His hand is never out of his pocket. Every day, and all day long, he hears of want and misery, of one kind or another, which he is summoned to help to alleviate. Some evidences reach me occasionally of the prevalent condition of almsgiving in which society is living. Letters come to me from persons I never heard of, begging money for cases which I cannot possibly know anything about; and the writers seem unaware both of the impertinence towards me, and of the folly of asking any person of common sense to give money at random in that way. It seems as if they must live among people who, like these gentlemen on the platform, have settled that they themselves, and everybody else, ought to give away a tenth part of their income at least. That amount being fixed, the first comers have the best chance of being liberally served, and begging goes on vigorously.

The mention of the platform reminds me that the speakers in St. James’s Hall include spiritual objects in their programme of duty. They want a vast increase of the fund for “religious” objects. One of the speakers declared that the people of London are responsible to God for the use they make of their 150,000,000l. per annum,—immediately proceeding to assume that almsgiving is the highest use to which money can be applied. There is something in this which reminds one of the praise once offered to an eminent man, and the way in which he received it. A great surgeon was congratulated on the skill with which he had performed a severe and critical operation; and his reply was that he could feel no complacency in such an application of his art, for that it was ever present to his mind that such operations (except in cases of accident) are “the opprobrium of the medical profession.” So, in like manner, is the necessity of almsgiving, except in cases of accident, the opprobrium of our civilisation: and those who desire the welfare of society,—spiritual and moral, as well as material,—will refuse to stimulate almsgiving, which aggravates the evils it professes to alleviate, and will apply all the means in their power to supersede the necessity of it. We can see for ourselves that men are most degraded and miserable where the spurious charity of almsgiving most abounds; and we can learn within ourselves that the highest and happiest conceivable state of society would be that in which all the members should be above the reach of want,—independent in their circumstances and their minds,—so that almsgiving would disappear altogether.

Before the people of London will recognise the justice of the rebuke offered them in St. James’s Hall, they will inquire into the results obtained by the sums actually contributed for “spiritual objects;” by, for instance, the million and a half of annual income dispensed by Exeter Hall. Perhaps some who are insulted for not contributing are aware that these “spiritual objects” include the maintenance of a large bureaucracy. Perhaps they know something of the extent of the “interest” thus created;—of the costliness of this paid staff of a rich social department; and they may prefer administering with their own hands what they think proper to give away. If they do this, or if they do better still,—applying the money, not in alms of any kind, but in the employment of industry, or the encouragement of beneficial plans of a self-supporting character, they will come under the condemnation of platform censors who have jumped to the conclusion that an income of so much, in anybody’s hands, ought to yield so much to their particular “objects.” So far from caring for such censure, some of our best and most beneficent citizens are anything but distressed to hear, from one of the speakers, that “there is scarcely one of the religious and charitable societies of London that is not in a condition of anxiety and perplexity, as to openings for further usefulness, for want of funds:” and that one great missionary society has remained nearly stationary in regard to income while the wealth of the country has nearly doubled. As it is undisputed that more money is spent for other than personal objects now than at any former time. the necessary inference is that the citizens prefer other applications of their money than that of pouring it into a treasury where they will never hear more of it, and whence they know that some of it will be drawn for the salaries of secretaries, clerks, collectors, and other officials, constituting a large body, to be supported by public alms at home in the first place, before anything can be done for the heathen,—at such a distance abroad. It is to be hoped that the incomes of all charities approaching to the inscrutable will remain thus stationary, or diminish, till the wisest of the citizens can declare themselves satisfied with the results produced; and that every charity will be in a wholesome “anxiety and perplexity” as long as the suffering it professes to treat grows upon its hands in proportion to the bounty