METHOD IN ALMSGIVING.

A HANDBOOK FOR HELPERS.

CHAPTER I.

CHARITY FALSELY SO CALLED.

THE object of this handbook is to assist the charitable. It is not uncommon to find persons who are so sensible of the difficulties of giving without doing more harm than good, that they have nearly abandoned the practice. Give to him that asketh of thee, and he will spend your money in gin. So after being repeatedly deceived, even kindly disposed people harden their hearts and turn their faces away from the poor man. But it may be shown that this extreme is no more necessary than the other of reckless liberality. Charity has become a science. It is no longer possible to gratify the impulse of the moment by unconsidered gifts without doing great mischief. But it does not follow that we ought not to give. The amateur dabbler in chemistry makes many evil smells, and does no particular good; but if he will honestly work at his subject instead of playing with acids and alkalis he may reach profitable results. So with charity.

B

Ignorant and careless charity does little but harm; if we really wish to do good we must be at the pains of learning how to do it. It is proposed here to show how distress may be best relieved; but it is necessary first to describe, very briefly, some of the chief evils caused by that which is often taken for, but is not, charity.

Indiscriminate Relief.-It is not charity to give sixpence or a shilling to a person of whom you know nothing, but who seems to be in distress; and this for two reasons. First because such a sum is usually quite insufficient. To do any real good, if the distress be genuine, a much larger sum is required; perhaps a sovereign, perhaps a good deal more. Your common sense will tell you at once that it would be wrong to give so much when you have no idea what use will be made of it. Yet your small coin has probably effected nothing, except that it has brought a glow of benevolence into your own breast, which is but false fire after all; for your gift has only seemed to be charity, while, in fact, it has led you to shirk your real duty. At best the shilling has purchased a meal, and staved off for a night the application to the relieving officer, which must come on the morrow. If you had taken pains you might have found out how to do real good. As it is, you have felt good and done none worth mention, if you have not done harm. Secondly, such a gift is not charity, because the chances are very great that you have been only encouraging vice. The beggar who received your shilling spent it immediately at the public-house. The woman with the wretched child, keeps the poor little thing in a miserable condi

tion as a bait for such half-crowns as you gave her. That piteous appeal by letter which you answered with a cheque was but one of hundreds which the writer sends out every day, earning a living envied vainly

by many honest folk. Careless charity feeds fat

the publican; it causes cruelty to scores of unhappy children; it is the parent of many vices. It has often happened that a person who has fallen into temporary distress finds out how easy it is to get charitable help; learns to prefer such a living to honest exertion, and becomes a liar and cheat, and perhaps worse for the rest of his days. On this subject, The Confessions of an Old Almsgiver,' and the other works of Mr. Hornsby Wright may be consulted with advantage. Here the great, and seldom realised, responsibility of the careless giver can be only indicated.

Doubled Relief.-Those who try to give, not in order to please themselves, but so as to do real good, often enter households where the destitution appears to be extreme, yet where the total earnings or gettings rather of the family are very considerable. On inquiry, it sometimes appears that this misery is kept up for a set purpose. The heads of the family have discovered that charitable donors do not act in concert, that no one of them knows what the others are doing; so the crafty paupers represent themselves as in extreme want to each, and obtain relief from many different sources. A single family will sometimes receive out-door parish relief, assistance from the clergyman, from the Dissenting Minister, from two or three charitable institutions,

and from a variety of charitable givers. It may be noted that a dirty household should always be regarded with some suspicion. The filthy condition of the place and the children probably witnesses either to the drunkenness of the parents, or to their deliberate design of making a show of misery. Deserving distress is usually very bare of furniture, but clean; and the tidy appearance of a room has often stayed the gift which has gone to far less deserving objects. This by the way. Our present object is to note that careless giving causes the waste of charity from different sources on one object, and encourages deceit and worse vice.

The Waste of Charity.--Very few persons have any 'idea of the extent to which charity is wasted. Everywhere, whether in the great city or in the country parish, there are charitable institutions, endowed charities, charitable individuals; there is, in most places, money enough spent in charity, one would suppose, to relieve or prevent all manner of distress. But if we dip a little below the surface we shall find that all this charity, vast as it is, goes for very little; that distress and vice go on almost as if charity did not exist; often, indeed, it seems as if the greater the amount given in charity, the worse is the condition of the people. If any one appeals for help for a particular case on rather a large scale-say, for example, to pension a worthy old couple or hopeless invalid in danger of the workhouse he is told that so much money cannot be raised. The reason is that it has all gone, wasted in "the pauperising doles of a merely impulsive charity," to use the words of Miss Octavia Hill, in driblets

which have done little if any good, or have positively encouraged the idle and the vicious in their indolence and vice.

Wasted charity is surely not true charity. It may proceed from motives of the purest benevolence. But good intentions do not pave the way to heaven, according to any known adage. We may mean ever so well, but if our gifts and our subscriptions serve mainly to supply drink to drunkards, to encourage impostors, to help those who will not help themselves, and to foster idleness and actual vice, they had better have never been made. Liberality is a virtue, but only if we take care that our gifts are well directed, otherwise it is but a mischievous form of self-indulgence.

Well-applied Charity.-Difficulties are made to be overcome. Mistaken charity has only been here mentioned, and that very briefly and imperfectly, in order to show the necessity for a wise and wellordered system in charity. The first thing needed is co-operation among charitable persons. So long as each acts alone, and without reference to others, scheming beggars will always be able to get relieved many times over by different individuals, and thus the funds at the disposal of charity are wasted, and fraud directly encouraged. Nor is it often possible for the benevolent to ascertain the truth about those whom they wish to relieve, as long as they act alone. Combination and a recognised method of action are necessary before cases can be properly investigated. Of course it is not meant that benevolence should always be restrained unless it can act through a