Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/64

 ; and when any urgent call is made for some contribution either to the bodily or spiritual wants of their brethren, they measure their bounty by the surplus which happens to remain. Or if, with greater forethought, they apportion beforehand a certain sum to meet these calls, yet the proportion is determined on the same principle—it is that which remains when other things have been provided for. It is one of the contingencies which swell their yearly expenditure, rather than an integral and considerable part of the whole.

That this is no unjust account of the standard of duty recognized by the majority of orderly, respectable, and even religious men, is (as has been observed) but too certainly proved by their ordinary conversation; there are however other indications which confirm the judgment. How often, for instance, when some reduction of expenditure appears to be necessary, does that reduction begin in an abridgment of accustomed charities. The saving is in general extremely small, but the principle betrayed is momentous. For in these cases a man's attention is first directed to his least necessary expenses, to those which have hitherto been continued, chiefly because there was no great reason against them, to the mere ornaments and superfluities in which wealth has naturally tempted him to indulge. If then his economy begins with a diminution of his