almoner. The entries of the material charities show (1) the name and object, (2) the mode of admission, (3) the management, (4) the number of persons benefited, and (5) the income. The second head is the most important to the almoner. Under it he will find details of the exact conditions under which each institution will deal with cases, and the class of case which it takes. The almoner will thus be able to classify cases for himself, ascertaining without correspondence with institutions, and hence without expense and delay, whether they are or are not suitable. No reference has been made to the City Parochial Charities, as these are being re-organised in accordance with an Act of 1883. Such of the charities of the City Companies as were mentioned in the Report of the Royal Commission on Companies, have been referred to, but those which are confined to Freemen are not entered.

The lists of charities for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb, Reformatory and Industrial Schools, Training Ships, Boarding-out Committees and Schools for Children, Training and other Homes for Girls, Institutions for Idiots and Imbeciles, Convalescent Homes, have been made as complete as possible-including institutions which are not metropolitan.

The thanks of the Council of the Charity Organisation Society are due to the very large number of persons who have co-operated in the production of this work, and to whom the Council is indebted both for information and suggestions.

It has been found convenient to use the word almoner throughout this Introduction. Many persons give up time to almsgiving. They are those whom questions of the administration of charity most closely affect, and on whose capacity and intelligence its beneficence largely depends; yet, as almost all have some part in this work, the word should be taken in its widest sense.

III. CHARITIES LISTS GENERALLY.

Before passing to the functions of charity, the poor-law, and other subjects, a word of recognition is due to those who have been forerunners in this work. The late Mr. Samuel Gurney, it would appear from his paper at the London meeting of the Congrès de Bienfaisance in 1862, had commenced a Register of Charities. He says that he had begun a register the object of which was 'to enable the benevolent,' by means of authentic data, to investigate for themselves, either briefly or fully, the workings of the various charities of the metropolis, or to ascertain without trouble the institutions suited to the special circumstances of cases in * Quoted in the Annual Report of the Council of the Charity Organisation Society, 1879, p. 15.

which they are interested.' Dr. Hawksley's now well-known paper on the London Charities (1868) pointed significantly to the necessity of more general knowledge on the whole subject. Mr. G. M. Hicks compiled a most elaborate tabular statement of some of the London charities, which was published in the 'Times' of 1869; his continued interest in the subject, and his subsequent notes upon it, which showed that weighty conclusions might be drawn from a careful analysis of the reports of institutions, have encouraged those who have been entrusted with the compilation of this Register. And the successively published Annual Guide-books of Messrs. Fry, Low, and Howe have all been of service in turning attention to the large number and various kinds of charitable institutions in the metropolis; and the second especially contains, with a plan of classification, much detailed information which is most valuable. 'The Charities Register and Digest' of the Charity Organisation Society has grown out of the wants of the Society. Frequent inquiries were and are made of it in regard to the action and merits of institutions; a manuscript register was commenced for purposes of reference in 1879. It was found that its usefulness would be greatly increased if it were printed. At the same time the want of some book of reference in regard to conditions of admission was widely felt in the District Committees of the Society. The plan of the register was therefore altered to its present form, and its compilation was commenced in 1881. Obviously there is still much scope for useful elaboration on many points in subsequent editions, and for the present the second of Mr. Gurney's suggestions has been acted upon to the partial exclusion of the first.

IV. THE PRINCIPLES OF CHARITY.

Truism as it may appear, it is very necessary to say in the first place, that charity unwisely administered is capable of doing incalculable harm to its recipients. Almsgiving or charity is, properly speaking, the rendering of service to another out of love or pity. The pressure of the 'wholesome urgencies of life' is a condition of moral and physical sanity. The individual should provide against hunger, nakedness, and want of shelter; the father against these things both for himself and his wife and family. The ordinary contingencies of life, which fall within the range of ordinary foresight, should, for the individual's own sake and for society's sake, be met by the efforts of the individual. Charity which, for love or pity's sake, seduces the individual from the wise and natural toilsomeness of life, or which does not induce him to bear the burden, by helping him to overcome his weakness and pushing him forward to selfmaintenance, is, under the cloak, real or assumed, of love and pity, the poor man's greatest foe-greatest because it comes like an

angel of loving-kindness, and yet produces far-reaching woe like a spirit of evil.

Next we would draw attention to Burke's definition, quoted by Mr. Fowle in his book on the Poor-Law, of poor and indigent. The former are those wage earners who are the real wealth-creators of the community. They are well, and should, so far as material charity is concerned, be left alone. Bad charity tends to tempt them into the indigent class: good charity, if they are in distress, prevents their falling into that class. The indigent are those who are habitually in want; good charity with adequate help raises them to self-support; bad charity with intermittent, purposeless help degrades them to ever lower degradation.

Consider the matter economically, commercially, socially, and religiously. Every one in the indigent class represents a deficit. His keep, if the whole period of his life and his recognised individual responsibilities are taken into account, is more than his earnings: the difference in some way or other is made up by his neighbours by charity or a poor's-rate; or if it is not made up, there is, to use a medical term, a decline or consumption. maintained in these ways, he is underfed, underclad, insanitarily housed, and sinks to weakness and inability to work. If he has children, the evils pass to them and subsequent generations. Obviously, therefore, economically the indigent are a 'dead loss' to the community.

Not

Next consider the matter commercially. To take one instance, it is well known that a large population in London and other towns are employed frequently only three or four days in the week -e.g. dock and riverside labourers. Though no doubt this casual labour, which is the residuum of the labour fund, and of which there is a surplus in the market, gives Dock and other Companies a reserve to draw upon in time of pressure, and by enabling them to reduce or increase the number of their employés from day to day gives them a larger percentage, yet their gains owing to this cause are, so far as the community is concerned, to be set against the deficit,' to which we have referred, in each individual case. The unemployed do not live on air; they must either live at the cost of others, or borrow, beg, steal, or starve. Naturally they do all these. So far as their services are of any value, the community loses their unexpended labour and their unearned wage. Thus commercially it is the interest of the community, and indirectly that of each business man, that there should be as few indigent persons as possible. Charity in fact is often a voluntary and insufficient and wasteful self-imposed tax on the part of the rich to compensate for these 'deficits,' which the rigour of competition, the undue or injurious diversion of profits to unproductive expenditure, and the unfitness of the labourer for more skilled work, combine to create. It is not

unlike the once-recognised poor-rate in aid of wages, by which the farmer could throw upon the mass of ratepayers part of the wage which otherwise he would have had to pay himself. It should be added, that out of intermittent labour spring our gravest woes. It produces in the labourer intermittent energy; the off-days become habitual; with indolence comes intemperance; with uncertainty of employment comes recklessness about the future; from these result pauperism, and the whole series of mental and physical infirmities which are features of pauperism. If these are the results, viewed economically and commercially, those who know how the good of 'the masses is but, stated in another way, the good of the individual-powerful to influence neighbours by example in all smaller domestic and personal matters, and intelligent in the choice of their 'guardians' and other representatives-will see that indigence is also a social evil.

With regard to it religiously—to pass by many urgent witnesses it has been said, "On all sides, in the most degraded localities, physically and morally, we find ourselves surrounded with religious agencies busying themselves in attending to the higher interests of the masses in the most devoted manner, and at great outlay. Bitter complaints have been made as to the poverty of the results obtained by such multifarious and strenuous endeavours. This need be no wonder, when we reflect on the overwhelming disadvantage against which the missionary and philanthropist have to contend. Our poor are so lodged, that to inhale the atmosphere in their houses is enough to produce a lethargic depression, to escape from which is but to be exposed to the temptations of the High Street and Cowgate. With no comfort at home, the poor labourer is forced to go elsewhere for enjoyment. To his sleeping-place he returns to find himself in a crowded apartment, where is no attempt to maintain the ordinary decencies of life. With so many and varied proclivities to vice in all its forms it is a heartless task to talk to such a one of 'righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.'

On all grounds, therefore, to prevent distress producing habitual indigence, to create safeguards against indigence, and to rescue from indigence, is the interest—to put it at the lowest inducement— of every one in the community, whatever his vocation, business, or personal views about politics or religion. What has been said will, we trust, give a glimpse of the tracts of work which lie alongside of the work of charity, and to which the thoughts of all who would not kill with kindness' must frequently pass.

What, then, are the principles of charity-that charity which will lessen misery, not merely without weakening, but by producing, self-reliance, which will do kind acts and yet not diminish the energy or impair the character and morality of the people? The subse

* Report on the Sanitary Condition of Edinburgh,' by Dr. H. J. Littlejohn, 1866.

quent sections of this introduction are an answer to this question.
But it may be well to state these principles here, omitting for
brevity's sake some modifying conditions and reservations. (1)
As a rule, no work of charity is complete which does not place the
person benefited in self-dependence. Obviously if this principle is
true, the administration of most of our charitable institutions must be
altered; many must be reorganised. All gifts and all forms of
relief should be but parts of a treatment having self-dependence
and recovery from distress as its end. Relief given practically to
all comers, without reference to the whole of the circumstances of
the individual, is given at haphazard, and is injurious. Charity
should abandon such relief and become a partner, as it were, in the
work of thrift. There is now no such partnership. Conveniences
and opportunities and possibilities for thrift and saving exist, but
charity does not use them. There is no organised relation between
the two. (2) All means of pressure, such as the fear of destitu-
tion, a sense of shame, the influence of relatives, must be brought
to bear, or left to act upon the individual. He must, as far as
possible, be thrown on his own resources. (3) In deciding with
regard to relief, the family must be taken as a whole; otherwise
the strongest social bond will be weakened. Family obligations-
care for the aged, responsibility for the young, help in sickness and
trouble-should be cast, so far as possible, on the family. (4)
Further, as material charity is only a part, and a small part, of
efficacious charity, a thorough knowledge is necessary both of the
circumstances of the persons to be benefited and the means of
aiding them; and the personal element of influence and control
must very largely predominate over the monetary and eleemosynary
element. At present this is out of all proportion small. (5) The
relief, to effect a cure-as apart from placing the applicant in a
position of self-help-must be adequate in kind and quantity. The
individual treatment of individual cases on a definite plan, and with
sufficient knowledge, is a sine quâ non in beneficial almsgiving.
Charity also must learn to require just terms of its beneficiaries
must consider them not as recipients of gifts, but men and women
whose standard of life has to be raised. The truest charity
often lies in the righteous fulfilment of duty, whether personal or
public; and next to it must often be placed that charity which is
vigilant to see duty done. Charity that fulfils the natural duties of
others is in the main wrong and deceptive charity. Charity which
helps others to do their duty is the most genuine and salutary, as it
is the most difficult, charity.

V.—ON THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHARITABLE, AND METHODS

It

OF CHARITY.

Cases

We have for convenience' sake considered those in distress either eligible for charity: as the indigent who are habitually in want, or as those who can be cases

ineligible.