A great
lady spends thousands in founding a market; a man with much money
presents a free library to his native town; collections are made for
hospitals; everything is for the bettering of the people. We have not
yet advanced to the stage of bettering he rich people; but that will
come very shortly. In fact, the condition of the rich is already
exciting the gravest apprehensions among their poorer brethren. We can
trace, easily enough, the progress and growth of charity. It begins at
home, with anxiety for one's own soul first, and the souls of one's
children next. Charities give way to doles; doles are succeeded by
almshouses; these again by charity schools. The present generation has
begun to understand that the truest charity consists in throwing open
the doors to honest effort, and in helping those who help themselves.
Else what is the meaning of technical schools? What else mean the
classes at the People's Palace, the Polytechnic, the Evening
Recreation Schools, and the City of London Guilds Institute?
I believe that a conviction of the new truer charity, and of the
futility of the old modes, is destined to sink deeper and deeper into
men's hearts, until our working classes will perhaps fall into the
extreme in unforgiving hardness towards those whom unthrift,
profligacy, idleness, have brought to want.
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