conclusion, the third point essential to wise dealing with the
poor--the decisions of your committee after the facts are gathered
for it by investigating agent and volunteer visitor. Now, to secure
right decision, one must have a distinct object in view. What is to
be the ultimate object of your decisions respecting relief? Let us at
once distinctly clear the way by assuming that it must be the good of
the people themselves. We have nothing to do with saving the money of
the rich. It is possible--nay, probable--that in our first attempts
to put charity on a right footing, we may have to spend more than we
did before, and make larger demands on the purses of the wealthy. A
few substantial gifts, wisely bestowed, may easily make up a larger
sum than a multitude of petty careless doles. A weekly pension, a
grant of a few pounds to help a family to migrate, is more than the
money-equivalent of many a random shilling. But if, on reflection, we
decide to withhold gifts of any kind whatsoever, it is only to be done
for the sake of the people themselves. If doles, or bread-tickets,
or coal-tickets, are proved to help the people, we are bound to give
them to the extent of our power. If they are proved to injure them,
we are bound not to give them, however pleasant it may be, however
easy, however it may seem to pave the way for other influences. Do we
want to make the poor depend on relief, which is ready at a moment's
notice, instead of having the fortitude to save a little to meet a
sudden emergency? If so, we shall be always treating cases as urgent,
and relieving pending investigation, and assuming that discretionary
power of granting instant help must be vested somewhere besides in the
relieving-officer. I know parishes where benevolent people plead that
starvation or great need may arise if they have a weekly committee and
no officer empowered to deal with urgent cases. Suppose we ourselves
had lost the pride of independence which does still exist in the middle
and upper classes, though the tendency to look for extraneous help
is, I sometimes fear, eating gradually upwards; but suppose we had no
hesitation on the score of pride in asking our richer neighbour for
a meal, or new clothes or boots, or additional blankets, or a ton of
coal, would it be better for us to use just the amount of providence
necessary for us to go to him a week beforehand and say, "Please we
shall want our dinner next Sunday," or would it be better for us to be
led to expect that if we called on Saturday to tell him the fact, and
he was out at a garden-party, when he came home he would say: "Dear
me, perhaps they have no dinner, and Sunday too. I dare not wait to
see why they are in want; whether there is any member of the family
who might be helped to a place where he can earn more. I'd better send
some roast meat. I don't like to be enjoying myself at garden-parties
with my wife and daughter and not consider my poorer neighbours"? Do
you think that, be our earnings much or little, that kind of help would
be likely to be helpful? The smaller the earnings the more need of
providence; and there is no man so poor but he might, by effort, at
least have a few shillings in hand for emergency, if he really felt it
important. Literally, that is all that is wanted to do away with this
clamour about urgency. That every man should at some time of his life
put aside five or ten shillings which should be ready for need, and
apply for help directly he saw need to draw upon that, instead of when
he hadn't a crust in the house. I don't know whether you are troubled
with this great bugbear of "urgency" here; it frightens many districts,
but always disappears when approached. Depend upon it, starvation
cases are more likely to arise where we have trained our poor to look
for instantaneous help, than where they rely on their own forethought
at least to the extent I have mentioned; for _if_ they trust to sudden
aid, and any accident prevents their receiving it, then they have no
money, and are in need indeed. Depend on it, the poor-law, which the
poor do not turn to readily, which has, moreover, a strong permanent
machinery in every parish in England, is the only right source of
relief for urgent cases. No respectable family but has friends,
neighbours, or savings to fall back on just while you look well into
their cases. Those who are not respectable want, and, in my estimation,
should have, help; but they cannot be helped easily with grants in
urgent haste; they need thought, and influence, and much power. If,
then, we decide that urgent cases can be left to the poor-law, your
committees will have those only left to deal with whose circumstances
they can thoroughly know and deliberately decide upon. And these, I
believe they will find, class themselves into cases in which temporary
help will raise the applicants into permanently self-supporting
positions, and chronic cases. The first, no doubt, they will try to
help liberally, carefully, and kindly. The second they will probably
help only if they can do so adequately, which I should fancy here you
might easily do, if you all heartily and thoughtfully co-operated, and
knew each what the other was doing, so that no work was done twice
over. Such organisation of alms-giving would be, I should think, the
limit of your aim at present.
Perhaps you will also add to these relieved persons a very large number
of sick, whom I should be glad to see after, say, a year's notice,
forced into some independent form of sick-club.
For I do not myself believe that we from above can help the people
so thoroughly and well in any other way as by helping them to help
themselves. This I think they are meant to do--this I believe they can
do by association and by forethought. When they do provide necessaries
for their own families, I think it leaves our relation to them far
better, and enables us to help them more fully in better ways. After
all, what are the gifts of these outside things compared to the great
gifts of friendship, of teaching, of companionship, of advice, of
spiritual help? I know some people think the half-crown, or packet of
tea, the best introduction to these. I cannot say I have seen it so. I
do not remember a single example in any age or country in which a class
in receipt of small occasional doles was in a position of honourable
healthy friendship with the givers of such, or fit to receive from
them any intelligent teaching. Of course the receipt of alms produces
curtsies and respectful welcomes, and perhaps attendances at church
or chapel from those who care more for the gifts than for the quiet
dignity of independence which is found in many humble people; more for
the good tea than for any sermon or service. But how do the better ones
feel it? Haven't your gifts absolutely tended to alienate them from
churches and chapels? Do they not scorn them, and desire to be seen to
benefit nothing by them? The application for help is nearly always made
by the wife, and the respectable husband would no more make it than you
or I would, in nine cases out of ten. Only notice what happens whenever
the rule is that the man must come up to ask for help; they hardly ever
come, but simply earn the needed amount. And among the women, too, the
better ones hold aloof from anything that looks like bribery to come
to a place of worship. I would ask any clergyman whether he does not
think that the mixing of temporal gifts with spiritual teaching has
not a direct tendency to lower the value of the teaching in the eyes
of the recipient? Of old, when apostles preached, they treated the
Gospel as good news which the people would care to receive for itself;
they honoured it in treating it as if it were a blessing. Of course
it is difficult to distinguish between the actions which come from
the radiant outpouring of every species of good gift in mere wealth
of joyful human love springing from vivid sense of Divine love, which
we see in earnest preachers of all ages, from the gift which is meant
to be, and felt to be, a bribe. In many cases, probably, the gifts
comprise a mixture of love and a purpose to attract, which it would
be impossible to separate. But religious teaching, I have no manner
of doubt whatever, has suffered of late years incomparably more than
it has gained by this confusion. Let the gift, then, stand or fall
by its own intrinsic value; if it be helpful in itself, cultivating
such right qualities as will make the recipient richer in such outside
things as itself, let it be made. If not, withhold it. And for God's
sake let His truth stand on its own merits. If it be a real need of
His children, trust Him in His own good time to make this plain to
them. Preach it by word, by deed, by patient abiding; but do not use
bribes, or even what look like bribes, to make men take it in. Depend
on it, it cannot be taken so. It has been accepted in this and other
ages by men ready to meet poverty, toil, scorn, death, rather than be
false to it; it has been accepted with acclaim by multitudes who felt
in it the answer to their difficulties, the great good news for their
lives. The lowest natures, when they have received it, have done so
through the noble feelings which are latent in the worst of us. It is
only through appeal to these--their fortitude, their reverence--that
it can come home to them. I cannot believe that God's truth has ever
entered one human heart wrapped up in a bribe. Let it speak quietly for
itself; it is very strong. Shall we doubt it? Our special form of it,
or application of it, may not commend itself to our neighbours. Do
not let this disappoint us; let us with single-minded zeal try to get
those neighbours to be and to do what they see to be right, and then
will be revealed to them, gradually, whatever form of truth they can
comprehend and apply. They will help to form God's Church, which is of
many members; and if
Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be,
we must remember that the words go on:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Read at a meeting held in a suburban district in July, 1876.
[5] Eighteen of these are now to be opened.
[6] Now open to the public, and planted as a garden.
[7] Since sold for building.
V.
A WORD ON GOOD CITIZENSHIP.
I have often, on previous occasions, felt bound to urge, not only the
evils of indiscriminate alms-giving, but the duty of withholding all
such gifts as the rich have been accustomed to give to the poor. At the
same time I have realised so fully how tremendous the responsibility
of abstaining from such gifts is considered by the donors, that I have
not thought they could act on my advice without themselves seeing that
it would be merciful as well as wise to withhold such gifts. I have,
therefore, usually said: "Look for yourself, but look with the sound of
my words ringing in your ears." And those words have been distinctly
to proclaim that I myself have no belief whatever in the poor being one
atom richer or better for the alms that reach them, that they are very
distinctly worse, that I give literally no such alms myself, and should
have no fear for the poor whatever if any number of people resolved to
abstain from such alms. But, on the other hand, I have long felt, and
feel increasingly, that it is most important to dwell on the converse
of the truth.
The old forms in which charity expressed itself are past or passing
away. With these forms are we to let charity itself pass? Are
there no eternal laws binding us to charitable spirit and deed?
Are we, who have become convinced that doles of soup, and loans of
blankets, and scrubbing-brushes sold at less than cost-price, have
failed to enrich any class--have helped to eat out their energy
and self-reliance--thereon to tighten our purse-strings, devise
new amusements for ourselves, expend more in luxurious houses and
expensive dinners, cultivate our own intellects, indulge elegant
tastes, and float down the stream of Time in happy satisfaction
that the poor cannot be bettered by our gifts--in fact, must learn
self-help--we meantime going to flower-shows, or picture galleries, or
studying systems of political economy? Are the old words, "Bear ye one
another's burdens," to pass away with the day of coal-tickets? Have the
words, "Ye are members one of another," ceased to be true because our
tract and dole distribution has broken down? Are there no voices still
speaking in our hearts the old commandment, "Love one another?" Is
that love to be limited henceforward to the pleasant acquaintances who
call upon us, and like the same poets, and can talk about Rome and the
last clever book? Or is it, as of old, to go forth and gather in the
feeble, the out-of-the-way, the poor? Is humanity, is nationality, is
citizenship too large for our modern love or charity to embrace, and
shall it in the future be limited to our family, our successful equals,
or our superiors? Are we going to look out and up, but never down? The
love of our Master Christ, the love of St. Francis, the love of Howard,
the love of John Brown, the burning love of all who have desired to
serve others, has been a mighty, all-embracing one, and specially
tender, specially pitiful. All modern forms of alms-giving may pass
and change, but this love must endure while the world lasts. And if
it endure, it must find expression. Charity such as this _does_ find
expression. It finds expression, when healthiest and most vigorous, not
in weak words, but in strong acts. If we would not be mere butterflies
and perish with our empty, fleeting, self-contained lives; if we
would not be fiends of intellectual self-satisfaction living a cold
and desolate life; if we would not leave the hungry, the forlorn, the
feeble, to perish from before us, or to rise and rend us; we must
secure such love as that which lighted and intensified the lives of
heroes and of missionaries, and struggle to see what scope there is for
acts which shall embody that love.
The mistake the old-fashioned donors make is not in their
benevolence--that cannot be too strong--but they forget to watch
whether the influence of their deeds is beneficent. I should not at
all wonder if even thirty years ago doles were more beneficent than
now. If the poor had at that time not learned to trust to them, if
they came straight from the loving hands of those who cared to step
aside from beaten tracks to know and serve the poor they must have
had very different results from any they have now, when people _have_
learned to depend on them, when they are almost the fashion, and often
the relief for the consciences of those who don't feel quite easy, if
they give _no_ time, _no_ heart, _no_ trouble, nor _any_ money to the
poor. I have no manner of doubt, that just now gifts of necessaries are
injurious. What form, then, shall our charity take in the immediate
future?
Take that question home to yourselves, each of you who has not answered
it already; ask it of yourselves, not as if you were asked to take
the position of hero, or martyr, or professed philanthropist, but as
if I had said to you, "What do you, as a man or woman, feel bound to
do beyond the circle of your family for those who are fellow-men,
fellow-citizens, many of them sunk into deep ruts of desolation,
poverty, and sin?" Find some answer, live up to it, so shall your own
life, your own city, your own age be better.
I will tell you what kind of answer I think may come to you. First, as
to money, which is perhaps the most difficult thing to give without
doing harm. Don't sit down under the conviction that therefore you are
to buy or spend it all for yourself. If you like to earn rather less,
to pause in middle life, and give full thought to spending what you
have, or, better still, to give time which might have made money,
I shall certainly not complain of you. But do not think there is no
scope for beneficent gifts of money because soup-kitchens and free
dormitories are not beneficent. There is abundant scope for large
gifts, large enough to please the proudest of you. Are there no great
gifts of open spaces to be made for the rich and poor to share alike in
the time to come--spaces which shall be to the child no more corrupting
than the mountain to the Highlander, or the long sea horizon to the
fisherman's lad? They will come to him as an inheritance he possesses
as a Londoner or an English child; most likely being taken, like light
and air, straight from God, and not in any way tending to remind him
of men's gifts, still less to pauperise him. But if a memory of you
as a donor comes to him as youth ripens into manhood, long after you
are in your grave, the thought is more likely to incite him to make
some great, abidingly useful gift to his town, than in any way to
paralyse his energies or weaken his self-respect. Are there no places
to plant with trees, no buildings to erect, no libraries to found, no
scholarships to endow? Are there, moreover, none of those many works
to achieve, which a nation, a municipality, a vestry, first needs to
see done, to learn the use of by using, though finally such a community
may prize them more by making an effort to establish similar ones?
For instance, no one would dwell more urgently than I on the need of
making healthy houses for the poor remunerative; and now the problem
of doing so has been in a great measure solved. But do we not owe this
to the efforts of a body of men in earlier time who were content to
lose money in experiments and example? Pioneers must risk, if not give,
largely, that we may travel smoothly over the road which they made
with such difficulty. Are we in turn never to be pioneers? Are there
no improved public-houses, no improved theatres, no better machinery
for collecting savings, which we may establish and give our money to?
The same kind of far-sighted policy might be adopted with all smaller
gifts, making them either radically beneficial in themselves, as when
they train an orphan for service-work in life, or give rest to an
invalid whose savings are exhausted; or they may be gifts of things
which no one is bound to provide for himself, but which give joy--as if
you helped to put coloured decoration outside our schools or houses in
dingy streets, or invited a company of poor people whom you know to tea
in your garden during the fair June weather, or even sent some shells
from your home by the sea to small children in one of our few London
playgrounds.
But to leave the question of money and come to the greater gift of
_time_. Here especially I would beg you to consider whether you have
each of you done your utmost. A poor district in London is inhabited
by a number of persons, ill-educated, dirty, quarrelsome, drunken,
improvident, unrefined, possibly dishonest, possibly vicious. I will
assume that we, too, have each of us a good many faults--perhaps we are
selfish, perhaps we are indolent. I am sure all the virtue is not among
the rich; but certain advantages they surely have which the poor have
not--education, power of thinking out the result of certain courses
of action, more extended knowledge of facts or means of acquiring it,
habits of self-control, habits of cleanliness, habits of temperance,
rather more providence usually, much more refinement, nearly always
a higher standard, perhaps a high standard, of honesty. Have we not
a most distinct place among the poor, if this be so? Is not our very
presence a help to them? I have known courts nearly purified from
very gross forms of evil merely by the constant presence of those who
abhorred them. I know, you probably all know, that dirt disappears
gradually in places that cleanly people go in and out of frequently.
Mere intercourse between rich and poor, if we can secure it without
corrupting gifts, would civilise the poor more than anything. See,
then, that you do not put your lives so far from those great companies
of the poor which stretch for acres in the south and east of London,
that you fail to hear each other speak. See that you do not count your
work among them by tangible result, but believe that healthy human
intercourse with them will be helpful to you and them. Seek to visit
and help in parishes in which this is recognised as an end in itself.
Again, we have got our population into a state of semi-pauperism, from
which individuals and societies cannot raise them merely by abstaining
from gifts by guardians or withdrawing out-relief. We have accustomed
them to trust to external help, and only by most patient individual
care shall we raise them. Neither can we persuade donors, unaccustomed
to study the future results of their acts, to abstain from distinctly
unwise charity unless we are among them, unless we are ready, too, to
consider with them about each human soul, which is to them and to us
inexpressibly precious, what is at the moment the wise thing to do.
Have most gentlemen any idea how much this work needs doing in the poor
districts of London? The Charity Organisation Society came forward now
some years ago to try to get the donors of London to meet and consider
this question in detail in every district in London. It undertook to
look carefully into all cases brought to its offices, and to report the
results of its inquiries. It did _not_ undertake to make additional
gifts except where they might secure enduring benefit, but it said to
the donors, "Associate yourselves, relieve after due thought, after
investigation, and in conjunction one with another." That Society has
made great way; it has established offices in every district, and has
provided an investigating machinery of inexpressible value, of which
every Londoner may avail himself. But, I ask, where are the donors?
Where are the representatives of the various relieving agencies? The
clergy? The district visitors? There are of course a certain number
who have co-operated heartily, but, as a rule, I am forced to reply
very mournfully, after all these years they are for the most part going
on with their ill-considered relief very much the same, not using the
machinery, and reproaching the Charity Organisation Society that _it_
is not relieving largely, and that it is not composed of themselves!
Now, till these relieving agencies come in and take their share, and
give their gentler tone to the somewhat dry machinery, are these
offices to be places where mere routine business is done by an agent
who cannot have much individual care for the applicants? Or is there to
be anyone to watch over each applicant with real charity, questioning
him gently, thinking for him sympathetically, seeking for him such help
as will be really helpful? In some offices in the poor districts we
have found honorary secretaries to do this, and splendid work it has
been. Wherever such help has been forthcoming the poor have been well
served, and the old-fashioned donors have been in some measure won to
wiser courses of action. But many more such honorary secretaries are
needed, and that imperatively and immediately. Are there no men of
leisure, with intellect and heart, who will come forward? I have known
no such urgent need as this in the many years I have spent face to face
with the poor since I came to London--the need of advice, of sympathy,
of thoughtful decision for poor man after poor man, as he comes up to
our offices at a crisis in his life.