The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1899. GETTING KID OF OUR RESPONSIBILITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 160, 8 July 1899, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1899. GETTING KID OF OUR RESPONSIBILITIES.

Tor the cause that lacks assistance, For the wong that needs resistance, For the futuro la the distance, And the _c od that we can do.

Those who. are infinitely acquainted with the working of the various charitable agencies throughout the colony learn to appreciate the danger there is of their becoming sources of demoralisation. Many circumstances here have favoured the adoption of a somewhat indiscriminate philanthropy, and the same influences that on the one hand have made us

rather easy-going in our generosity may have contributed to weaken the independence of those who are quick to take advantage of it. While it is gratifying to reflect that our hands

are quick to do good, it must always be remembered, that: the standard of moral responsibility that should guide a natioji requires something more than the exercise of generous impulses on our part. It is not to be satisfied by ministering to the immediate necessities of the poor and helpless, but demands that these necessities should not be relieved in such an indiscriminating fashion as to foster laziness, extravagance, immorality, or a spirit of weak dependence in the recipients of charity or aid in one form or another. We are afraid that Xew Zealand has rather foug.it shy of the complexities of the charitable problem. The consequence is that a great deal of our charity is misplaced and productive of quite as much evil

as good to the recipients of it and the

community generally

At a meeting of the committee of our Hospital and Charitable Aid Board two matters were brought forward that are typical of much of the business that body is familiar with. The first was.an application from a widower to get his four children into the Catholic Orphanage. It was, of course, open for that institution to take up the case direct, and arrange with the . father to pay for the maintenance of the children. But apparently the authorities preferred to do business through the Board, and get its guarantee for the payment of the money. The Board, in view of the fact thattlfle applicant was in good health and earning £2 a week, failed to see why the ratepayers should stand surety for the father, and recommended him to make his own arrangements with the institution. While we do not pretend to be fully acquainted with the merits of the case, and quite recognise that a father might reasonably wish to have his motherless children bestowed in a home where they would have a care and attention he could not give, still the part the Charitable Aid Board was asked to play in the matter reveals a gross misconception that appears to be pretty general of the business of that body. The orphanage authorities,.we understand, offered to take all the man's family (five in number) and keep them for the small sum of 3s a week each. After making that payment the father would have had £ 1 5s for himself. Surely a man in that position should have been able to give some satisfactory guarantee to the custodians of his children that he woulci pajr for the little ones. That either he or the Orphanage authorities thought that the Charitable Aid Board had any duty, in the matter is significant of a growing sentiment which cannot be

too soon or too strongly corrected in the interests of the great masses of the people who have to shoulder their own responsibilities.

Another matter which came before the committee also indicates the curious misconceptions entertained of the functions of charitable institutions. There is only too good reason to believe that our Maternity Home has removed from the path of vice some of its disabilities, and while intended for those frail unfortunates who have fallen, it is often taken advantage of bj the deliberately vicious. Again, we understand that settlers' wives have found in this institution a care and attention in maternity cases that they could not possibly have obtained on the same cheap terms elsewhere. This is a manifest breach of the principle on which it was originally intended public charity should be dispensed.

Scores of cases that are to be met with in the' records of our public and private charitable institutions show only too clearly a tendency on the part of a ■ considerable section of our population to throw their responsibilities upon the public—a tendency which is fatal to the growth of that spirit of independence and self-help, without which no people can in the long run, hope to achieve anything. Apart altogether from the unjust burden the indiscriminate distribution of charity imposes on the hard-working and thrifty, there has to be considered its demoralising effects on the race generally. That, in fact, is by far the more important consideration of the two, though we are afraid it is not the one that is likely to influence the community most. But by whatever motive we are influenced, the merely selfish or the truly philanthopic one, it is high time that we bestirred ourselves to remdy an evil that becomes more threatening every day.