relief, one must be blind, or deaf, or lunatic, or maimed, which no man is wilfully-so that this walk of charity can be overtaken, and without any corrupt influence on those who are sustained by it. To qualify for the second kind of relief, one has only to be poor, which many become wilfully, and always too in numbers which exceed the promise and the power of public charity to uphold them so that this walk can not only never be overtaken, but, by every step of advancement upon it, it stretches forth to a more hopeless distance than before, and is also more crowded with the thriftless, and the beggarly, and the immoral. The former cases are put into our hand by nature in a certain definite amount-and she has farther, established in the human constitution such a recoil from pain, or from the extinction of any of the senses, as to form a sure guarantee against the multiplication of them. The latter cases are put into our hands by man, and his native love of indolence or dissipation becomes a spontaneous and most productive fountain of poverty, in every land where public charity has interposed to disarm it of its terrors. It is thus, that while pauperism has most egregiously failed to provide an asylum, in which to har bour all the indigence of a country, there is no such impossibility in the attempt to harbour derangement, or special impotency and disease. The one enterprise must ever fall short of its design, and, at the same time, carry a moral deterioration in its train. The other may fulfil its design to the uttermost, and without the alloy of a single evil that either patriot or economist can fear.

The doings of our Saviour in the world, after he entered on his career as a minister, had in them much of the eclat of public charity. Had he put his miraculous power of feeding into full operation, it would have thrown the people loose from all regular habits, and spread riot and disorder over the face of the land. But there was no such drawback to his miraculous power of healing. And we think it both marks the profoundness of his wisdom, and might serve to guide the institutions and the schemes of philanthropy, that while we read of but two occasions on which he multiplied loaves for a people who had been overtaken with hunger, and one on which he refused the miracle to a people who crowded about him for the purpose of being fed, he laid no limitation whatever on his supernatural faculties, when they followed him for the purpose of being cured. But it is recorded of him again and again, that when the halt, and the withered, and the blind, and the impotent, and those afflicted with divers diseases, were brought unto him, he looked to them, and he had compassion on them, and he healed them all.

This then is one safe and salutary absorbent for the revenue

of a Kirk-Session. The dumb and the blind, and the insane of a parish, may be freely alimented there with, to the great relief of those few families who have thus been specially afflicted. Such a destination of the fund could excite no beggarly spirit in other families, which, wanting the peculiar claim, would feel that they had no part or interest in the peculiar compassion. There is vast comfort in every walk of philanthropy, where a distinct and definite good is to be accomplished, and whereof, at a certain given expense, we are sure to reach the consummation. Now, this is a comfort attendant on that separate direction of the poor's money which we have now recommended but the main advantage that we should count upon, is its wholesome effect on the general administration and state of pauperism. The more systematically and ostensibly that the parochial managers proceeded on the distinction between special impotency and general indigence, the more, at length, would the applicants on the latter plea, give way to the applicants on the former. The manifest superiority of the first claim to the second, would go at once to the hearts of the people; and mere indigence would be taught, that in the moderation of her demands, there was a high service of humanity rendered to still more abject helplessness than her OWII. The Sabbath offering might gradually come to be regarded as a sort of consecrated treasure, set apart for those whom Providence had set apart from the rest of the species. Nor would indigence suffer from this rejection of her claims by public charity. She would only be thrown back on the better resources that await her in the amenities and kindnesses of private life. And it is thus that a great positive good might be rendered out of the parochial administration, to one class of sufferers, while both the delicacies of the general poor, and the sympathies of that individual benevolence on which all their wants might safely be devolved, would be fully upholden.— Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation.

There are many distresses incidental to humanity, the inflictions of necessity and nature, which cannot be too openly or too liberally provided for. There is all the difference that can be imagined, in point both of principle and effect, between an institution for the relief of want, and an institution for the relief of disease. The one multiplies its objects. Not so the other. The one enlists the human will on its side. The other will ever remain the object of painful reluctance and revolt to all the feelings of our sentient nature. Open a door of ad mission for the indigent, and we shall behold a crowd of appli cants increasing every year, because lured thitherward by the inviting path of indolence or dissipation. Open a door for the admission of the diseased, and we shall only have a definite

number of applicants.

Men will become voluntarily poor, but

they will not become voluntarily blind or deaf or maimed or lunatic. It is thus, that while an asylum for want creates more objects than it can satisfy; an asylum for disease creates none, but may meet all and satisfy all. Public charity has been profuse where it ought not, and it has also been niggardly where it ought not. It is a disgrace to our philanthropic age, if infirmaries, or dispensaries, or asylums, whether for the cure of mental and bodily disease, or for the keeping of that which is incurable, are left to languish from want of support, or compelled to stop short, ere the necessity for which they were instituted has been fully and finally overtaken.-Political Economy.

XXIV. SECTION VIII. § 4.-The practice of Malthusianism long anterior to the promulgation of its philosophy.

If we revert to the habit of the last generation in Scotland, which is still fresh in the remembrance of many who are now alive, we shall find an ample verification of all these remarks. At that time, Malthus had not written, and his speculation had little more than an embryo existence in the pages of Wallace; and, certain it is, that, in the minds of our solid and regular and well-doing peasantry, it had no existence at all. It was acted upon, but without being at all counted upon. It was one of the cherished and domestic decencies of a former age, transmitted from every matron to her daughters, not to marry without a costly and creditable provision; and the delay of years, was often incurred, in the mighty work of piling together, the whole materiel of a most bulky and laborious preparation; and the elements of future comfort and future respectability, behoved to be accumulated to a very large extent, ere it was lawful, or at least reputable, to enter upon the condition of matrimony-and thus the moral preventive check of our great economist, was in full and wholesome operation, long before it was offered by him to public notice, in the shape of a distinct and salutary principle. And, if we wish to revive its influence among the people, this will not be done, we apprehend, by cheapening the currency of his doctrine, and bringing it down to the level of the popular understanding. It must be by other tracts than those of political economy, that we shall recover the descending habit of our countrymen. It must be by addresses of a more powerful character, than those which point to the futurities of an earthly existence. It must be, not

by men labouring, however strenuously, after some great political achievement, but by men labouring for the good of imperishable spirits-by men who have their conversation in heaven, and who, with their eye full upon its glories, feel the comparative insignificance of the pilgrimage which leads to it. And not till we recall the Christianity-shall we ever recall the considerate sobriety, the steady equalised comfort, the virtuous independence of a generation, the habit and the memory of which are so fast departing away from us.—Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation.

XXV. SECTION VIII. § 5.—The effect of Christianity in raising the Standard of Enjoyment.

Our political writers, if at all honestly desirous of obtaining a fulfilment for their own speculation, should look towards the men who are fitted to expatiate among the people, in the capacity of their most acceptable and efficient moralists. It is evident that they themselves are not the best adapted for such a practical movement through a community of human beings. It is not by any topic or any demonstration of theirs, that we can at all look for a general welcome and admittance amongst families. Let one of their number, for example, go forth with the argument of Malthus, or any other of the lessons of political economy, and that, for the purpose of enlightening the practice and observation of his neighbourhood. The very first reception that he met with, would, in all likelihood, check the farther progress of this moral and benevolent adventure, and stamp upon it all the folly and all the fruitlessness of Quixotism. People would laugh, or wonder, or be offended; and a sense of the utterly ridiculous would soon attach itself to this expedition, and lead him to abandon it. Now, herein lies the great initial superiority which the merely Christian has over the merely civil philanthropist. He is armed with a topic of ready and pertinent introduction, with which he may go round a population, and come into close and extensive contact with all the families. Let his errand be connected with religion; and, even though a very obscure and wholly unsanctioned individual, may he enter within the precincts of nearly every household, and not meet with one act of rudeness or resistance during the whole of his progress. Should he only, for example, invite their young to his Sabbath-School, he, with this for his professed object, would find himself in possession of a passport, upon which, and more especially among the common ranks of society, he might step into almost every dwelling-place; and

engage the inmates in conversations of piety; and leave, at least, the sensations of cordiality and gratitude behind him; and pave the way for successive applications of the same influence; and secure this acknowledgment in favour of his subject, that it is worthy of being proposed on the one side, and worthy of being entertained and patiently listened to, on the other. It is not of his final success that we are now speaking. It is of his advantageous outset. It is of that wide and effectual door of access to the population, which the Christian philanthropist has, and which the civil philanthropist has not and from which it follows, that if the lessons of the former are at all fitted to induce a habit favourable to the objects of the latter, the economist who underrates the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the zeal of its devoted labourers, is deposing from their rightful estimation, the best auxiliaries of his cause.

And it would save a world of misconception, were it distinctly kept in mind, that, for the purpose of giving effect to the lessons of the economist, it is not necessary for him who labours in the gospel vineyard, either to teach, or even so much as to understand, these lessons. Let him simply confine himself to his own strict and peculiar business—let him labour for immortality alone-let his single aim be to convert and to christianise, and, as the result of prayer and exertion, to succeed in depositing with some the faith of the New Testament, so as that they shall hold forth to the esteem and the imitation of many, the virtues of the New Testament; and he does more for the civil and economical well-being of his neighbourhood, than he ever could do by the influence of all secular demonstration. Let his desire and his devotedness be exclusively towards the life that is to come, and without borrowing one argument from the interest of the life that now is, will be do more to bless and to adorn its condition, than can be done by all the other efforts of patriotism and philosophy put together. It were worse than ridiculous, and it most assuredly is not requisite, for him to become the champion of any economic theory, with the principles of which he should constantly be infusing either his pulpit or his parochial ministrations. His office may be upheld in the entire aspect of its sacredness; and the main desire and prayer of his heart towards God, in behalf of his brethren, may be that they should be saved; and the engrossment of his mind with the one thing needful, may be as complete as was that of the Apostle, who determined to know nothing among his hearers, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified and yet, such is the fulness of the blessing of the gospel with which he is fraught, that while he renders the best possible service to the converts whom, under the Spirit of God, he has gained to its cause; he also, in the person of these conVOL. XXI.