The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-31 00:00:00

one of the first mercantile towns in the kingdom,
the chief seat of the cloth trade, on the commercial
treaty with France. But how was it the corpora-
tion itself did not notice it among the achievements
of the present Cabinet ? Aro the Leeds people not
satisfied with it ? It ought to be a boon to them.

Nearly forty years ago an admirable plan was
hit upon, and acted upon, at Berlin, with a view
to the extinction of Pauperism. The Prussian
capital, it should be remembered, contained within
it at that time a population of about
,300,000 souls

—not as with us, at this moment, 3,000,000 !
Berlin is now estimated to comprise 452,000
inhabitants—it contained at the period we are al-
luding to, namely 1821, as nearly as the fact
might be accurately expressed in round numbers,
three hundred thousand. Among those 300,000
Berliners—hid away in dark places, according to
the custom observable among all great cities, se-
creted in the back slums and the low rookeries of
what is yet to this day one of the most beautiful
among the gay and wealthy capitals of the Euro-
pean Continent—there lay festering a fearful throng
of the most necessitous and impoverished. The
Government Commissioners of Prussia in the year
but just now mentioned (that is in 1821), decided
as it chanced most wisely, upon delivering over
the care of the poor in all the large towns of the
kingdom to the respective municipali ties. The
municipalities thereupon nominated a body of ad-
ministrators called Poor Directors. These Poor
Directors were of one of two classes—they were
either nominated as permanent or they acted ex
officio, and were therefore changeable : the latter
being in fact the town deputies and the
members of the magistracy. As to the
working of the new system thus adven-
turously organised in Prussia for the suppres-
sion, or at any rate the direct and immediate al-
leviation of Pauperism throughout the kingdom—a
system which has now been in active operation
for 39 years since the date of its original establish-
ment—we may best illustrate that in a few words,
by restricting our regard for a while to the chief
city of all those in which the benignant scheme
was organised—to Berlin itself, with its 300,000
inhabitants. There, at the outset of the enterprise,
the projectors of this novel undertaking tested the
feasibility of their plan upon one solitary police
district alone, by way of wholesome experiment.
Encouraged by their success in this they speedily
mapped out the whole metropolis, subdividing it
into fifty-six districts altogether, each district
having its own cluoter of Commissioners. These
Commissioners varied in number in the different
districts, in proportion to the extent of the
squalor and wretchedness in the area set apart for
each division respectively. Nine formed the
maxinzunz, five the minimum in the fifty-six groups
of Commissioners. Each of these fifty-six districts

had its physician, its surgeon, its oculist, its
apothecary. Every month these four officials

were remunerated for the services they had
rendered. The Commissioners themselves—being
volunteer philanthropists, doing duty purely and
solely out of motives of benevolence—did their
duty, happily, we can say—have done their duty,
one after another, now for thirty-nine years—
thank Gon, for the sake of humanity, it can
still be added, are yet doing their duty, from
first to last gratuitously. They are chosen—these
Commissioners—from all classes and grades of
society indiscriminately, saving and excepting alone
from the legal and clerical professions. They are
selected, moreover, periodically by the Poor Direc-
tors—whom we have already mentioned as having
been nominated by the Municipalities. It is, in
other words, at the instance, at the personal request
of the Poor Directors that this gratuitous office for
stipulated periods is accepted by the Poor Commis-
sioners. At the close of every month the Commis-
sioners of each district meet—make out their report
—wind up (for that month last past) the whole
business of their arrangements. During the in-
tervals between those monthly meetings they act—
they hunt out the most urgent cases of pauperism
—they personally visit the lowliest of the back
slums, the foulest and wretchedest of these misera-
ble rookeries. The Commissioners in all very urgent
cases are empowered to afford instant relief upon
their own individual responsibility. Otherwise
they bring any case they may have ferreted
out under the consideration of their col-
leagues at the next monthly meeting of
the District Commissioners. In every in-
stance they probe the case of each applicant for
relief to the very bottom by a systematic course of
examination—with a view simply to avoid as much
as possible the encouragement of mere men-
dicity. Their inquiries are addressed to the
landlord of the house, to the neighbours,
to the last person who has given the necessitous
employment. Supposing any case to have been
thus brought before the monthly district meeting,
and there deemed worthy of being taken
into further consideration, the president or
chairman of the commissioners thereupon him-
self visits the case so approved of, and, taking his
examination-book with him, there enters the appli-
cant's replies to five-and-twenty inquiries—the
answers to which recount, among other facts, his
age, his health, his capacity for labour, his avoca-
tion, his recent misfortunes, the extent of his family,
and the capability or incapability of his relations
to afford him assistance. These investigations are
revised, so to speak, by means of a yet further

scrutiny of the case by the two Commissioners in
each applicant's instance, especially appointed to
search into the validity of his claims for help.
Medical aid is at all times, of course, afforded with
far greater facilitlr—the Commissioner of the particu
lar section in -which the ailing applicant resides
supplying him at once with a note which has merely
to be countersigned by the President of the District
Commissioners—whereupon that signed and coun-
tersigned note becomes at once a summary authorisa-
tion, addressed respectively or collectively, as the
case may be, to the physician, the surgeon,
or the apothecary. Clothing, fuel, food, medi-
cines--are thus distributed providently among
the most necessitous. Another subsidiary but very
important advantage being secured by the opera-
tion of this beneficent system of relief to the most
unfortunate—the school attendance of the children
of the very poor being personally seen to by these
gratuitous and volunteer District Commissioners.
We have been thus intentionally specific—it may
be even, we fear, in the estimation of some,unneces
sarily prolix—in describing minutely in detail the
machinery of this beautiful and benignant organi-
sation in Prussia, but especially at Berlin, because
we cannot but think that much good may possibly
accrue from its careful examination in the develop-
ment of a very noble project of a kindred character
now, our heart leaps with joy to think, in active
preparation for the relief of the very poor—of the
very poorest of the poor—in our own vast metro-
polis—in this city which is at once the wealthiest,
the largest, and the most populous among all the
cities of the earth-Lthis great London of ours with
its 3,000,000 inhabitants.
it is a frightful truth that in London, in the
might of all its riches, in the midst of all
its splendid charitable institutions, men, and
Women, and children are perishing unknown