CHARITABLE AID PECKSNIFFS

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 924, 26 September 1896, Page 6

CHARITABLE AID PECKSNIFFS

No Marriage, No Bread.

It is hard to find more comical cases of Pecksniffian self righteousness than those sometimes revealed at the proceedings of our Charitable Aid Boards. Of course, the Boards often have some ' hard cases ' to deal with, but the others who are not hard cases are lumped in with the whole lot, and are handled severely by the Solons who administer State charity. An incident which is reported from Wellington is an amusing example of the principle which B orne of these good folks seem to go on, that a breach of the code of morals is a bar against the receiving of relief. In other words, he or she that ' sins ' must starve.

The Btory, as our Wellington correspondent writes it, is this :— ' Here is a, good example of practical Christianity. At a meeting of the Charitable Aid Board, iv Wellington, a poor unwedded couple presented themselves as applicants for relief. The keen eyes of the chairman, himself very much a family man, detected certain indications about the woman which unmistakably augured the addition of a unit to the Registrar's return of population. Naturally the virtuous man was indignant at such shocking immorality, and scouted the idea of granting relief. Bat just at this stage the Bey. W. A. Evans improved the occasion by suggesting that it would be a graceful act on the part of the Board to pay the necessary fees for the marriage of the couple. The Board simply held up their hands and elevated their eyes in holy horror at such a wicked suggestion. Then Evans went and interviewed the Eegistrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, but. that worthy man wa3 proof against any senti mental views on the subject of matrimony.

He simply regarded marriage as a epurce of fees. ' Well,' said Evans, ' make out the license and I'll marry the couple.' ' But who's to pay the fee ?' asked the Begistrart in some alarm. ' I will, I'll pay the fee,' said the parson, planking down the money. 'Well, I'm blowed,' said the Registrar, 'I never Baw such a thing dnring the whole course of my experience.' But the couple were decently married, and haviop thuß been invested with the badge of respectability, they became qualified t<x receive charitable aid.' The ' poor couple ' had evidently been living together unsanctiiied by the ' holy bonds of matrimony,' as the society reporters say. Moreover, they had the audacity to attempt to increase the population of the country while in that ' state of sin,' as clergymen and elderly ladies put it. Furthermore, they had the supreme impudence to have no money, which is the chiefest crime of the lot. We cry out about the need for more population for the Colony, and here are a ' poor couple ' doing their best, only to be discouraged by a cold-hearted Charitable Aid Board It is a funny anomaly. That chairman must be a beiiever in Malthusian doctrines, or else be must hold the opinion that those who can't afford it should not bring children into the world. It's a very good idea, too, in theory; only in practice it doesn't work out right, somehow. It is the working man .with his forty or fifty shillings a week that has the family of thirteen, and thus keeps his nose to the grindstone till he drops out of this life ; and it is the.com-fortably<-off citizen or the • prosperous man who contents himself with a conple. But the idea of an unwedded couple having the impertinence to come on the State for relief, and in such a manner — it is too much for any well-regulated Charitable Aid Board.