only enabled to avoid this step by the extensive works undertaken by the corporation, and by certain neighbouring local boards. In South Shields the want of work caused a considerable agitation against the foreign seamen who frequented the port in large numbers, and there seems reason to believe that many of them left in consequence. It was at Sunderland, however, that the tide of distress rose highest; in March 1886, one-seventh of the whole population was dependent on charitable relief. Work must have been almost at a standstill, as fifty or sixty steamships were "laid. up in the River Wear, and the ship-building, engineering, and other works were almost all closed, or working short time." In this serious crisis the Poor Law authorities received valuable assistance from the Corporation of Sunderland-which seized this opportunity to carry out certain long-contemplated improvements upon the foreshore, employing about 360 men for three days each. a week-from the charity organizations, which expended more than £5,000, and from some of the large trade societies.

In Birmingham, the winter of 1886 was marked by very severe distress, due to the scarcity of work; a relief fund of £3,075 was raised in March, and most ably administered. By a rule that no person should be eligible for relief who had not resided in the borough for six months, that influx of improvident persons which was caused by the Mansion House fund was prevented, and regulations were also adopted to avoid the overlapping of charitable and Poor Law relief. Every application was carefully investigated by some member of the sub-committee for the district in which it was made, and so the fund was distributed to deserving persons, and the least possible amount of imposition existed.

It only remains to briefly notice Mr. Hedley's report on the metropolis, and summarize some of the general results arrived at by the inspectors.

Mr. Hedley gives five reasons for the undoubted increase of pauperism in the metropolitan area during 1886 :-

1. The constant increase of population, estimated at from 60,000 to 70,000 a year.

2. The fact that trade was depressed, and employment difficult to obtain.

3. The increased longevity of the poor, due to the efficiency of the infirmaries, and the excellent treatment of the aged poor in workhouses.

4. The distinction which a great number of the working classes draw between the infirmary and the workhouse, freely entering the former when they would decline to go to the latter.

5. The demoralizing effect of the hasty collection and distribution of the Mansion House fund.

Three of the above causes are regular and permanent, population will certainly not increase more slowly than heretofore; it is to be hoped that the efficiency of the infirmaries will not diminish; and it is difficult to believe that there will be greater unwillingness in future years to resort to this help in case of sickness. Two are exceptional: whatever its cause, the depression of trade which has so long prevailed cannot, we trust, last for ever; and it is satisfactory to learn that in case of a renewal of commercial activity, "the demand for labour will be in excess of rather than below the supply"; it is to be hoped that the mistakes which were unquestionably made in the administration of the Mansion House fund will never be repeated.

The thirty unions comprised in the metropolitan area are divided into 140 districts, in each of which there is a resident relieving officer. Mr. Hedley believes that these officers do their work satisfactorily, and that "no such organization for the relief of the poor and for the avoidance of starvation exists in any other country."

It will be remembered that the immediate cause of the collection of the Mansion House fund was a riot, consequent upon a meeting held in Trafalgar Square in February 1886. The conduct of the rioters in itself afforded ample evidence that they did not come from the ranks of the starving poor; and there is no reason to suppose that a similar disturbance could not be produced by inflammatory harangues, even in the most prosperous years. The attention which was attracted by the riot above mentioned led to inquiries which revealed no very exceptional distress among the labouring classes, ordinarily so called, but a very severe pressure upon clerks and small tradesmen, who found it difficult to obtain employment, and hard to make a living out of their business. In only two unions, however, Holborn, and Wandsworth and Clapham, was it found necessary to resort to exceptional relief measures. In London, as in most other towns, the building trade was unusually slack; and the dock labourers, who are very numerous in Bermondsey, Deptford, and some of the East end parishes undoubtedly found an exceptionally small demand for their services; a severe winter will also always press hardly upon those who are usually employed in the market gardens which surround the metropolis. Further, it is to be feared that in many trades. unrestricted foreign immigration makes it difficult for the native. population to obtain employment. But, taking all this into consideration, Mr. Hedley seems justified in his conclusion that any distress so exceptional as was, by many, supposed to exist, would have increased the number of paupers far more than was actually the case in 1886. There is in the metropolis, as in every large

town, a residuum which is never far removed from pauperism, and severe weather alone is enough to drive many of these people to seek relief, and to produce a very appreciable increase in the Poor Law statistics. We have seen, then, that, as yet, there has arisen no such exceptional destitution as to overstrain the resources of the Poor Law authorities. There has been no crisis in the everpresent fever of pauperism, but the symptoms have been sufficiently severe to teach us some lessons as to the most efficient method of coping with the disease.

In every case in which the guardians considered it necessary to resort to extraordinary relief measures, a stone-yard was opened, and out-door relief given to able-bodied men under a labour test. This method is open to some serious objections; the work done in a stone-yard is not as arduous as that required by an ordinary employer, and the provision thus made is taken advantage of by many whose idle habits and bad character disentitle them to such assistance, and by others who, although out of work, are not in extreme destitution. It is also difficult to make the test a real one; the relief easily loses its character in the eyes of those relieved, and thus the distinction between the rate-supported and the self-reliant is rendered less marked; a strong motive to selfreliance is removed, and the poor are generally demoralized. To obviate this it is particularly important that any payment made by the guardians to the paupers should be measured by the wants of the applicant, and not by the quantity of work done, a principle which, in many cases, was not kept sufficiently in view. The men relieved are, perhaps, injuriously affected by this system in more ways than one: being employed upon work which is in itself comparatively useless, under lax supervision, and with no incentive to exertion, they acquire idle and desultory habits, which appreciably diminish their value as workmen; and finding that they receive less than for the same number of hours' work for a private employer, they are, almost invariably, discontented, and incensed with the guardians who, as they imagine, are making an unfair profit out of them.

The objections to this form of relief cannot be better summed up than in the words of Mr. Murray Browne. He says:

On the whole, labour-test employment, of whatever kind, constitutes, to my mind, no exception to the general rule, that the only satisfactory and proper method of administering relief under the Poor Law is in the workhouse. So far, also, as stoneyards and other like works established under the out-relief regulation order, constitute an exceptional mode of administering relief, they are open to the same objection which attaches to all exceptional and, so to speak, sensational methods of relieving distress. They are understood by too many as a sort of advertisement for starving people. And it may safely be assumed that, if starving people are advertised for, the supply will always equal the demand. The large towns of England are unhappily full of a class of low, loafing, tipsy people . . . who, being utterly thriftless, and bad workmen, are always

on the brink of pauperism. By them, and not by them alone, any public recognition of the existence of unusual distress is treated as giving a sort of sanction to begging, and sponging upon others, whether through the medium of the Poor Law or otherwise.

This class of persons, as Mr. Browne points out, although very different from the élite of the artizan and labouring classes, shades gradually into them, and it is to be feared that mere contact on an equality in the stone-yard reduces many from the higher to the lower grade. It is also an unquestionable fact that the acceptance of Poor Law relief exercises a terribly demoralizing effect upon the recipients, that the step once taken is easily repeated, and that second applications are very frequent. Hence the second method of relieving distress, which is referred to in these reports, viz. the undertaking of public works by town councils, and urban sanitary authorities possesses this great advantage over the stone-yard, that it does not brand those employed with the stigma of pauperism, and consequently does not so much destroy their selfrespect.

It is not, of course, always possible for such authorities to undertake works of public utility, requiring a large quantity of unskilled labour, just when the general demand for it is lowest; but in almost every considerable place there are constantly such works in contemplation, and if urban sanitary authorities and town councils would make a rule of reserving such work as the laying out of pleasure grounds, and the like, for the winter, they would often, to use a common expression, kill two birds with one stone, relieving the distress produced by want of employment, at the same time that they gave the body of the rate-payers the benefit of an exceptionally low rate of wages. How valuable the co-operation of these authorities was, is testified by Mr. Knollys, in whose district the most exceptional distress experienced in 1886 occurred; and although it is open to several objections, such as that it tends to concentrate unskilled labour, and so render more difficult the return to a normal condition of things, and although, unless the administration is unusually perfect, it may often, like the stone-yards, give undeserving persons an opportunity of obtaining comparatively easy work, there is this advantage about it, that the work done has a value of its own, and is not merely employment for employment's sake, and that, while the corporations and local boards, being elective bodies, can take into consideration the requirements of the persons employed, these latter are not reduced to the condition of paupers, as is the case with those employed in stone-yards opened by the guardians.

But when all is said and done, the fact remains that exceptional distress can only be adequately met by exceptional charity. We have seen to what abuse relaxation of the conditions on which

Poor Law relief is given is inevitably open, and other assistance from the rates is only occasionally available; for public works undertaken by other than Poor Law authorities, merely to provide work, are even more demoralizing than poor-relief; witness the state of things produced in Paris by the operations of Napoleon III. A free gift, the outcome of compassion and sympathy, if given with tact, may exercise an ennobling influence upon the recipient, as well as upon the donor; and it is free from one objection to which all State aid is subject: those relieved cannot regard it as a right. Of course, if it is so given as to produce the impression that it has been wrung from an unwilling public by fear, it is robbed of the advantages mentioned, and acts as a direct incentive to violence and lawlessness; we are not sure that the Mansion House fund of 1886, coming, as it did, immediately after the February riot, was not calculated to convey this impression. It was quite open to the advocates of public plunder, who are always busy among the poorer classes in large cities, to point to it as an instance of ransom paid to the proletariate by a selfish and cowardly plutocracy; and the harm done by such misrepresentations is almost incalculable. We fear, too, that every extraordinary effort of charity will be more or less liable to be so misinterpreted; the efforts of philanthropists should be directed to obtaining such an accurate acquaintance with the condition of the labour market, as will enable them to be beforehand with distress, and by timely benevolence to forestall the mischiefmakers. Such early and accurate knowledge can only be attained by an organization of charities, and the establishment of a regular system in the administration of charitable relief; and the distress of the last few years will not have been without its blessings if it has tended, in any degree, to bring this about. Unless some such organization exists, not only do great crises find us unprepared, but the gifts of the philanthropic are lamentably frittered away. Mr. Bircham testifies to this as follows: "What is much wanted in the large towns in my district is the proper organization of charities. I am glad to be able to remark that a charity organization society has been lately set on foot in Cardiff, which if heartily and generously supported, and working in conjunction with the Poor Law authorities should be productive of much good, by giving a definite aim to, and directing into proper channels, the large resources of the wealthy and charitable which are in existence."

Private exertion has this special advantage in dealing with exceptional distress; it has the Poor Law behind it, and is therefore free to discriminate in the distribution of relief, and to leave those whose destitution is the result of their own idleness and improvi