THE Marlborough Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, JULY 13, 1888.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume X, Issue 314, 13 July 1888, Page 2

THE Marlborough Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, JULY 13, 1888.

Tiie Inspector under the Hospitals and Charitable Aid A ct, in his report presented to Parliament a few days ago, advances certain theories regarding outdoor relief which certainly call for comment. Professor Macgregor is known as a man possessed of wide human sympathies. He has made a special study of the system of charitable aid relief, with the result that he condemns in vigorous language the system, as at esent carried out in this Colony. There is not the slightest doubt but that the system of administering charitable aid under the Act at present in operation is an unsatisfactory one, Whatever the exciting causes may be, a very large section of our community are not averse, upon trivial grounds, to casting themselves upon the public charity of the Colony. Amongst the class referred to, there is a want of self reliance andan]eagerness to take advantage of any relief the State may afford that displays a state of mind anything hut flattering to tho status of the rank and file of the Colony. It is a question, however, as to how far recent legislation of the Colony is responsible for such a low standard of self-respect. Indeed, there are good grounds for the assertion that the present Act is mainly responsible for the result. When the State decrees that a poor-rate is necessary, tho fact is interpreted by a certain section of the community as an invitation to ply upon public funds. Those who have had to administer the existing Act are well aware ofthe outrageous applications that from time to time they are called upon to consider, urged, too, not with the air of a suppliant for a favor, but as that of a person demanding a right to which they are legally entitled. The compulsory system has dried up the voluntary springs of charity that before the advent of the present Act flowed sufficiently copiously to meet the requirements of those who by constitutional or accidental infirmity appealed for support. As an exposition of this argument wo cannot do better than quote Professor Macgregor’s report“ I believe the system of outdoor relief as at present conducted to he contrary to first principles, in two ways—it violates the first law of Nature, that he who will not or cannot work, neither shall he oat, which is Nature’s provision for mere being or existence; and it does not obey the second law’, of human society, or on which human society is based, which says, * Love thy neighbor as thyself ’ which is Nature’s provision for well-being or happiness Society attempts to cheat both God and the devil by giving monoy out of the taxes, and soothes its conscience by thinking it is providing for the poor; whereas in sober fact it is merely drugging itself and poisoning them. Once for all, it is not possiblo to leave the care of our poor to State officials distributing caxes. The charity that is divorced from human sympathy and fellow feeling both curses him that gives and him that takes. Our out-door relief system is an attempt to separate cause and effect, and is therefore for over impossible, and must be abolished. Experience also demonstrates what theory indicates regarding out-door relief, Wherever it has been tried it has failed, and produced incalculable evils ( All experience shows that a 1 rge amount officially expended in out-door relief does not indicate a large amount of suffering requiring relief, but a large amount of laxity on tho part of officials, and an amount of willingness indefinitely increasable on the part of able-bodied idlors to be fed at the public cost.’ The maxim of all intermediary agency, Quod facit per aliuni facit per se, however applicable elsewhere, is here fatally misleading. It is absurd to call that charity which is not voluntary and sympathetic. A our existing machinery, therefore, is condemned. It is simply a device by which a general tax is made to relieve us of a duty laid upon us individually, and it is a device foredoomed to failure.”