The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-08 00:00:00

have been glad if the meeting could have been held
at the refuge, but he believed it would have been
impossible to accommodate the company he saw
before him comfortably thereat present. He believed
that the Newport Market Refuge had done much
good, and that such institutions had been the means
of directing public attention more than had pre-
viously been the case to the great question of the
treatment of the poor and the general administra-
tion of the poor law. He hoped that henceforward
the refuge would be placed on a secure and stable
basis.

The Right lion. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P., rose to
second the resolution, and was greeted with loud
cheers. He said he had not been aware until that
moment of the precise function he should be called
upon to discharge, but still the one which the
chairman had been pleased to entrust to him was
best adapted to the position he held, which
was that of an uninformed though old friend—a
willing witness rather than an informed instructor.
They had heard the contents of the report, and they
had heard the practical commentary upon it de-
livered by the chairman. Now, he believed it to be
laid down as a general rule in London that, in order
to make good the demands of any institution upon
the liberality and Christian charity of the world, it
was necessary that it should fulfil two conditions—
first, that it should have a bad balance-sheet, or, at
all events, a bad prospective balance-sheet ; and,
second, that it should have a good purpose. They
had heard that the income of the institution was
£3OO a year, while it was contemplated that the
expenditure would be £2,500 a year. Now, on
comparing these two sums together, he should be
inclined to say that in that respect at least there
remained nothing to be desired. (Laughter.) It
might seem, indeed, that that was a strange method
of going about the attainment of a practical object,
but they lived in the midst of a society whose wealth
might almost, without exaggeration, be denomi-
nated boundless. Within a few yards of the room
in which they were assembled he ventured to say if
any one would venture to ascend the stairs of the
highly respected firm who from week to week were
offering the luxuries of art to the London pur-
chasers, the experience they would derive would
amply support the statement he fearlessly made,
that the means which existed amongst them of meet-
ing the wants of their less fortunate fellow-crea-
tures were means as nearly without limit as could be
attained. Therefore, if the purpose of such an
institution were rood, it followed that the amount
of its necessities recommended it to the hearty sup-
port of those who had the power to help it. (Hear.)
There was a passage in the report which
spoke of the hardships which the poorer mem-
bers of the community had to undergo in being ex-
posed to the inclemency of the weather, and that
was a true and just remark in a climate such as this.
But there was another kind of inclemency which
poverty had to encounter, and that was inclemency
of heart. He did not refer in that expression to the
amount of indifference, indolence, selfishness, and
positive hardness, and harshness that was to be
found in the world, but he referred to that temper,
that armour, if he might so denominate it, by which
persons were compelled, in such a vast and promis-
cuous society as theirs, to clothe themselves, and
to muster courage as to where to refuse the de-
mands made for the granting of indiscriminate re-
lief. They had seen 30 years ago the effect pro-
duced by indiscriminate relief given even under

the sanction of the law. That effect had not been
too strongly described by the chairman when he
spoke of it as having brought the country to demo-
ralisation and nearly to ruin—that was, to the ruin
of that moral tone and temper in the people, that
self-reliance and dependence which were essential
to the well-being of the community. - But they also
lived in times when the student of political economy
who had had opportunities of inquiry, as well as all
sensible and humane persons had come to the con-
clusion that indiscriminate alms-giving was an evil.
Indiscriminate alms-giving without inquiry was an
easy mode of escaping from duty and responsibi-
lity ; butif it was an evil, they must not resort to that
mode. Only in determining to abstain from that
practice they were in danger of falling into another
evil, because, if they found that those channels
which were the natural land obvious channels for

ministering to a large portion Of the wants prevail-
ing amongst their fellow-creatures ought to be
closed, it became the more a duty to see that
other channels were opened. The duty had lost
none of its authoritative power, and conse-
quently the cessation of those modes of helping

their fellow-creatures formerly in use im-
posed upon them the highest responsibility to
devise other modes which should be judicious and
effectual. Now, he imagined that the original pur-
pose of institutions such as this was to provide with-
out much discrimination of character for the occa-
sion, and short-lived wants of members of society,
to take up those they found in the streets, to give
them a night's shelter, and to dispose of them with-
out much inquiry into their condition ; and certainly
the past existence of these institutions would be am-
ply justified if they had nothing to plead but the
palpable, manifest, undeniable effect they had had
upon the administration of the poor law ; for it had
been due in a great measure to them that public at-
tention had been attracted to the necessity of en-
deavouring to carry into this department of poor
law administration something like humanity and
decency. (Cheers.) And he would go further and
say that he believed that even respecting the less re-
spectable portion of those who were found wander-
ing iu the streets, even as regards that portion of the
needy, the continued existence of these institutions
side by side with the public institutions of the poor

law was necessary. The official administration of
relief must always be more or less deficient in those
principles which were the life of charity. It was no
reproach at all to the characters of those by whom
that administration was managed to say that. It

was an irksome employment for the paid officers of
the poor-law administration to deal with the classes
of persons such as they received from one night to
another without an opportunity of forming any kindly
connection, and without any previous knowledge of
their circumstances. Perhaps there were features of
repulsiveness in their condition when admitted into
the wards, and conditions generally which could not
be pre-eminently favourable to the existence of hu-
mane and kindly sentiment in those who administered
the law, or calculated to engender feelings of gra-
titude in return by those who received what were
intended to be its benefits. Now, in order to keep
the system of public administration of relief up to
the very best condition it was capable of attaining,
it appeared to him to be an object greatly to be de-
sired that they should have amongst them other in-
stitutions of a character in some degree kindred—
kindred in a very great degree to that in behalf of
which they were assembled, so long as the necessity
existed in which the poorest, the neediest, even the
filthiest of those wanderers in the streets might be
received, and relief administered to their immediate
necessities out of no other motive and no other object
than the fulfilment of the purposes of Christian love
by diminishing the mass of human suffering. But it
was no doubt true also that those who had been en-
gaged in conducting this institution had exercised a
very wise discretion in altering the limits of their
own sphere of action with due regard to the improve-
ments which were taking place and would take place
in the workhouses of this metropolis. As workhouses
became more and more qualified to discharge their
duties with regard to wanderers and persons of that
class, the conductors of that institution would act
wisely in refraining from any attempt to compete
with them or to regulate their action. They would
find ample scope for their exertions in dealing with
a class of persons who were of a somewhat higher
order—with those whom it was difficult to comprise
under any one formula, any one set of words accu-
rately describing them, but whom they mightregard
as comprising those classes of cases in which it was
desirable to do something more than to satisfy the
physical and absolute wants of one or two, or three,
or four nights, as the rule might be. These were
cases in which it was desirable to inquire and to see
whether in the rear of that temporary relief they
might not venture to contemplate nomething in the
nature of a more permanent assistance for in the
condition of society in which we lived no one could
doubt that there was ample scope for such under-
takings AB this. They must expect to see manifold