was new.

This generation does not know what an improvement the present is on the past, and has not taken pains to trace the causes of the improvement. It sees the poverty of the present; outrelief is the simplest way of meeting poverty, and so it inclines to reintroduce out-relief.

Criticism is good, and it ought to be welcomed by us of the old school, even if we somewhat shrink from again fighting old battles. We shall by criticism improve our methods, and by enforced advocacy make converts instead of followers.

I would, however, enter two cautions out of my own experience to those who engage in this controversy.

The first is that there is no royal road by which the poor can be made rich. The improvement must come by growth from within, and not by accretions from without. The effective help is that which strengthens character. More money is doubtless necessary, but money without thought is like medicine without a doctor, and more apt to do harm than good.

My second caution is against a too hasty contempt of past practices. The philosophy of experience which involves the drudgery of collecting evidence is less attractive than that of theory, but it is that on which progress has been built. The practice of out-relief and the practice of no out-relief have been tried. It is wiser to study each, to find out what has really happened under each administration, than it is to argue from theory, or without thought of any kind to swing from one system to the other. The danger of many of our critics who by contact are alive to the sufferings of poverty is hurry. They feel what their neighbours have endured; they have not been trained to think; they have never learnt history; they have control of the rates; and the simplest course is to give out-relief. Human nature inclines to resent trouble, especially the trouble of study; but they who would act helpfully in this matter must restrain their emotions and conquer their indolence, while they take the trouble to consider experience. Those who criticise the present must study the past.

The respective advantage of out-relief or its abolition is not to be settled by appeals to emotion or to first principles. The matter is one in which the materials for proof are available. I know that the system which has been adopted in Whitechapel is not perfect nor for general application. I know that there are districts in which, for instance, charity could not supply pensions, and where out-relief is at present necessary. I myself, therefore, favour universal pension, which, if drawn from money compulsorily paid, would not be controlled in its administration by any official, and so be grudgingly given in a way to lower the respect of recipients. Every one would receive his pension as of right.

But failing such provision of universal pensions, I believe that, at

any rate in London, energetic good-will could secure pensions as it has availed to secure them in Whitechapel, St. George's, Stepney, Paddington, Oxford, and elsewhere. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if the obligation of keeping the old out of the workhouse were by the action of the Guardians thrown on people of good-will, it would not be impossible out of the wealth of London to collect enough for the purpose. The Jewish community has recognised the dutý, and the Christian community would not be behind.

I know that mistakes are frequently made-that there are cases of poverty which have not been relieved, and that there are deceivers who have got relief; that there are families where growth is checked and health is broken for want of food, and old persons in the workhouse whose example outside might provoke a reverence more valuable to the community than gold and silver. I know that hard cases can be quoted; but hard cases make bad law, and a system generally beneficial ought not to be upset because it fails in some particulars.

It may be that society ought to be reorganised-that is matter for another argument; but while society is on its present basis there is, I find for myself, abundant proof that the poor are better off when Guardians refuse out-relief, and bring to their service the good-will of charity.

If the opposite policy be adopted and out-relief be again given, the out-relief must be adequate-not the insufficient dole of old days, but enough to relieve the applicant both from starvation and the necessity of further begging. It must also be very widely given. If it be refused, except on grounds approved by the common opinion, the refusal will excite general discontent. If it be widely given, habits of self-reliance will be weakened, the thoughts of many will be unsettled, wages will be reduced, and the rates will be raised.

Imagine for a moment how a system of out-relief must work out in practice. The relieving officer administers a fund over which he is bound to watch because he is the almoner of forced contributions, and because he is surrounded with designing and unworthy applicants. The fund is one which belongs to nobody and yet belongs to everybody; it bears none of the marks of a giver's will, and has been formed by general payment for general relief.

A applies and makes out a case which justifies relief, and receives an adequate amount. B applies, and his case, although not so good as that of A, is still near enough to make refusal impossible. C applies, who again is very like to B, and so on through the whole alphabet, till Z can justify his claim although he is so far from A. If the relieving officer at any point attempts to draw a line, there is complaining and unrest which no argument can meet, so like are cases refused to cases accepted. If, on the other hand, the relieving officer gives to every applicant, the burden on the rates becomes intolerable; the fountains of charity are dried up or drawn off to

other objects; the thought and the friendship and the family love which have so much softened and straightened human relations are weakened; the good-will which has raised the demand for better houses, better education, and better wages is paralysed; the self-reliance which has enabled workmen to form unions and take independent action is relaxed, and depths of need are opened which no relief can fill. Hard workers pay the rates, and out-relief, as it decreases the number of hard workers, increases the burden on those who are left, and makes it less possible for them to create the unions and friendly societies which have been their helps in times of trouble. Out-relief is a sort of monster which destroys its own parent, the local rates from which it is drawn.

The evidence of experience, so far as it has been followed in Whitechapel, goes to support the advocates of abolition, and shows that under this system the poor have more abundant and more friendly help than in the days of out-relief. My belief is that if Guardians will be content to study facts, comparing the present condition not with some ideal future but with some actual past, they will see that the road to further advance is that which has so far led to better things. They will give up the practice of out-relief, letting it be known that such is their rule, to which charitable persons may securely adapt their actions, and they will also take pains-infinite pains-to secure for the help of the poor that personal charity which is already abundant and might be increased. Their action will then be an object lesson in the humanity which considers as well as helps others. Good-will may have its spells of weariness, but it lives and grows. They who believe in its power will not be disappointed if they rely on it rather than on out-relief for the making of social

peace.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

'THE REMITTANCE MAN'

I KNOW him well. I have met with him all over the world, and I have known little good of him anywhere. I have made his acquaintance when very drunk and insolent, and when very sober and penitent, and it is hard to say in which mood he was the more objectionable.

He is usually a member of that Lost Legion whose pains and pleasures have been sung by Rudyard Kipling. Travelling first class and drinking champagne on the outward journey, he is down in the steerage with a tale of better days, and with a keen eye for eleemosynary drinks, coming home. He loafs in the low bars of Sydney and Melbourne with the refuse of civilisation; he knocks down his cheque in Queensland; he throws up his job as a farm hand in the Western States or as a lumberer in Canada for a spell of hard dissipation in the nearest town; he tramps the roads between Johannesburg and the Cape, sleeping on the open veldt at night or on the beach when he nears the sea; he dies wherever there is a hospital or where there is none. And in whatever quarter of the globe he is to be found, he is always expecting a remittance.

The writer of this article has held responsible positions as a clergyman both in Australia and in South Africa, and has followed very carefully the experiment of sending abroad and protecting with periodical allowance young men of unsatisfactory life at home. Strong as the language is, he does not hesitate to affirm that if his guardians wish a youth of reckless habits to go headlong to the devil, they cannot do better than despatch him to the colonies, and send him remittances monthly.

To begin with, he is removed from the wholesome restraints of the decent society amid which he has lived, and of the people who knew him and whose good opinion he would not willingly forfeit. He speedily finds himself in places where he is unknown, and where at times even the conventionalities of good behaviour are no longer demanded of him. He may yield himself up unreservedly to excess, and no voice will be raised to warn or reprove him. On the contrary, so far from standing alone in shameful isolation, so far from becoming a social pariah upon whom the degradation of his behaviour is

enforced by his neighbours' demeanour, he will find himself welcomed by many far worse than himself, who will pursue and contaminate him the more that he is not without resources.

Such places as Melbourne and Johannesburg abound in men of apparently irreclaimable morals, whose education and attractive manners make them the most dangerous companions imaginable. Yet these are the associates of the weak and wayward member of a refined English household who has been sent out on his travels in search of an honest career;[and these are the men who will force themselves upon him so long as he has a shilling to render tribute to their necessities.

To send out a steady supply of money is also to deprive him of the stimulus which the rigours of his position would bring. It relieves him of the need of finding employment, and of keeping it by his sobriety and good conduct when found.

When the prodigal son is among the husks as well as the swine, and has no prospect of relief, you can deal with him. His misery, his remorse, the hopelessness of his position, can then be turned to good account, and these may combine to urge him in the direction of amendment and steadiness. The principle of self-preservation alone will stir him to endeavours after a more profitable existence. It is true that some men seem to be destitute of the higher instincts, and sink apparently without effort into the ranks of the loafer and the sundowner. But, as a rule, none but a hopeless dipsomaniac will abandon himself without a struggle to the squalor and discomforts of a tramping life, with its untimely ending by a wayside or in the ward of an infirmary.

One of the most successful squatters in South Australia and a former member of the Upper House was one of the most notorious of ne'er-do-wells of twenty years ago; but when the initial capital with which the kindness of his friends had furnished him had gone, he was forced by the compulsion of want to adopt a different mode of life. Speaking to me one evening, as we looked out upon the immense flocks of sheep feeding near at hand or stretching far away into the distance, he said between the puffs of his pipe:

'I had to do something then, or go under. I knew my people well enough to understand that I should not get another penny from them. My father's firmness was my salvation.'

But the remittance man finds that people will tolerate in him the indolence and the weaknesses which they will not suffer in a man without means. The period of his poverty between pay days is made comparatively easy for him, and he seldom finds himself thrust into a Slough of Despond so deep that the avoidance of it becomes henceforth the serious aim of his life.

If in times of pressure or of good resolves he does avail himself of chances of work, he is easily discouraged, still more easily dis