ready and generous help of all, every child of misfortune in the midst of them has been saved from the humiliations of public charity. Whatever quadrates with the natural conscience, can practically be carried or made to take effect in any community; and more especially if enforced and exemplified by him who is vested with an official direction over it. It speaks so home to their own sense of right, that each man should work and save for himself rather than be burdensome to others, and that relatives and neighbours should be helpful to each other— as to make it impossible for any management founded on these principles to be either unpopular, or to fail in the accomplishment of its own high and virtuous objects. And there is one advantage which the deacon has over the visitor, when labouring to dispose of any case or application in the way that we recommend. The money thereby saved is not saved to himself—it is only saved to the poor's fund of which he is the guardian and the administrator. His proceedings do not expose him to the suspicion of his own personal avarice. Nay he may at any time repel, even reverse this suspicion, by taking the ostensible lead in any joint enterprise of good either for his district at large, or for some one of its more unfortunate families. is incalculable how few and how light the cheap and simple attentions are, by which any deacon, if but a creditable and companionable man, might carry the fellow-feeling and confidence of all along with him. It 9. But there is still another advantage which the deacon has over the visitor. His walk is dis tinct from that of the clergyman or elder; but still in that walk, he is the office-bearer and so the representative of a church—in which capacity it not only becomes him, but he will speak with all the greater authority, when, called to the work of argument with his people and sometimes of remonstrance or rebuke, he deals forth among them the sacred lessons of the gospel. It is peculiarly his part to yield at all times an incorrupt moral testimony-nor ever to flinch, when the occasion requires that he should act as the fearless reprover of their indolence, or their vicious habits, or their beggarly meanness of spirit; or, if able, but unwilling to interpose in behalf of some helpless relative, to lift his indignant protest against the unfeeling selfishness that is shut to the distress or degradation even of one's own kindred, of those who are flesh of his own flesh and bone of his own bone. It is not to be endured that we should have to succumb to the clamours or even to the claims of alleged want, when they can be clearly made out to be the claims of worthlessness, which should ever be met, not by a different testimony alone but a different treatment, from that bestowed on those deserving poor whom it is both the duty and delight of all who feel as they ought to sympathize with and succour to the uttermost. Let these be cherished and cared for with all liberality and tenderness, while the others are kept at bay-and so as to make it manifest that the regimen of our parochial charity is at the same time a regimen of virtue. They utterly mistake the common people who apprehend of this style of administration that it must be un popular. In the long run it will be quite the reverse. It will find an echo in their own consciences. They will know how to discriminate between on the one hand an injurious harshness, and on the other the firm and consistent procedure of him, who, armed with intrepidity and force of principle, acquits himself in the midst of them as the declared enemy of imposture and worthlessness. Such a man will be sure to elevate the tone of his families, and to enlist them upon his side; and though his should be one of the poorest districts in town, even he himself will be astonished at the number of months perhaps of years which may elapse ere the necessity lies upon him, of making a single draught on the parish fund for the relief of any of his people. 10. For prior to this, and even after he has found the stimulated industry and economy of the applicant, and the stimulated duty of his relatives, and the stimulated sympathy of his neighbours, to be all inadequate for the necessities of the casethere still remains another expedient, which we mention the last because really the least in the order of importance; and of which we should never wish to avail ourselves, save on the tried and found insufficiency of all the previous expedients, each of which we hold preferable to the one that we are now to propose, though it again be preferable to the final and conclusive step in the series—we mean the entry of a new and another name or person on the lists of the public and parochial charity. As the last, if it should be the only remaining effort to save him from this, And in we recommend that his circumstances should be made known to one or more wealthy friends, though not of the parish, who, whether by a small and regular pension, or by a single gratuity, might interpose for the rescue of some struggling family from the fall of their visible descent on a platform humbler than any which they have yet occupiedwe mean that of a recorded pauperism. the great bulk of instances, this, we affirm can be done with a facility that is quite marvellous—often by a timely guinea or half guinea given but once, say to help out a deficient rent or meet some other occasion of embarrassment, through which if the applicant be carried and so as to weather it for the coming week or fortnight, you may never hear afterwards or at least for years of the necessities or hardships of his condition-thereby warding off a permanent burden from the poor's fund; and what is of far more importance, warding off a permanent deterioration of habit and principle from the man himself, who starts anew on the walk of industry and honest independence. We should indeed wonder if in any well-managed parish, after the full introduction and establishment of our system-half-a-dozen such examples of a resort to gentlemen for some slight pecuniary aid were required or called for in the course of a twelvemonth. And when we compare the small number of such cases, with the great number of such gentlemen in every large town, all most liberally disposed for the public good, if they but knew how to go about it-we, in the name of public virtue and of the people's best interests, would put the question-whether it is not better that our domestic and parochial treatment of the poor should not first be tried and have full experimental justice done to it, ere Scotland shall be precipitated into that economy of general and legalized pauperism, which cannot fulfil its own promises without beggaring the whole population; and cannot regulate or restrain its allowances, without mocking the expectations which itself had awakened; and so by placing the two great divisions of society, the payers and receivers in hostile array against each other, spreading dissatisfaction, even to the danger of tumults and popular outbreaks, all over the land. 11. And it were further well, if what we have recommended as the last step in favour of the applicant, before his case is submitted to the parochial court, should, in every fit instance, be their first step; and so as to precede, nay if possible to prevent, the introduction of his name into their record, as forming one of the regular paupers on the roll. When any application must be deferred to, it is good policy to consider-whether it may not be treated as a casualty to be provided for by a single donation, and recorded under the general head of casualties, without the name of the person who is relieved by it. The spirit that shrinks from such an exposure ought to be upheld as long as possible; and we again repeat with all confidence, that the deacon who acts on such a system will be astonished to find at the end of the year, with what perfect facility and cheapness he can dispose of all his cases, even the most seemingly formidable amongst them. That bugbear, |