; the management expenses Were L909 5s. 6d.; the chapel cost
L211 17s. 11d., sundries amounted to L141 6s. 10-3/4 d.; and the
useful portion of the expenditure was represented by the sum of L554
9s. 7-1/2 d. Absolute uselessness--for the chapel was by no means
wanted--is represented by L6,904, and usefulness by L554--a proportion
of very nearly 12-1/2:1.
Yet another opportunity occurred of dealing rationally with this large
property.
In the year 1871 a Royal Commission was appointed to examine 'into
several matters relative to the Royal Hospital of St. Katherine near
the Tower.' The question might again have been raised how best to
apply the large revenues for the general good. The Commissioners had
before them quite clearly the way in which the seven thousand and odd
pounds a year was being spent; they could arrive as easily as
ourselves at the proportion above set forth, viz.:
Waste : usefulness :: 12-1/2 : 1.
They threw away this opportunity; they could not tear away the
ecclesiastical rags with which the new foundation of 1827--the mock
St. Katherine's--has been wrapped in imitation of the old. In an age
when the universities have been secularized, when the Fellows of
colleges are no longer required to be in Orders, when every useless
old charity is being reformed, and every endowment reconsidered with a
view to making it useful to the living as, under former conditions, it
was to the dead, they actually proposed to increase the uselessness
and the waste by adding a fourth Brother (which has not been done),
and raising the stipends of Brothers and Sisters.
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