nd was the most effective of
protests against that severance of class from class in which so many of
its evils take their rise. When speaking of the overcrowding and the
official ill-treatment of the poor, he says truly: "These are the sort
of evils which, where there are no resident gentry, grow to a height
almost incredible, and on which the remedial influence of the mere
presence of a gentleman known to be on the alert is inestimable." But
nothing, as I often had occasion to remark, could be more judicious than
his interference on behalf of the poor, or more unlike the fussy
impertinence of the philanthropists who think themselves born "to
expose" Boards of Guardians. His aim throughout was to co-operate with
the Guardians in giving, not less, but greater effect to the Poor Laws,
and in resisting the sensational writing and reckless abuse which aim at
undoing their work. "The gigantic subscription lists which are regarded
as signs of our benevolence," he says truly, "are monuments of our
indifference."

The one hope for the poor, he believed, lay not in charity, but in
themselves. "Build school-houses, pay teachers, give prizes, frame
workmen's clubs, help them to help themselves, lend them your brains;
but give them no money, except what you sink in such undertakings as
above." This is not the place to describe or discuss the more detailed
suggestions with which he faced the great question of poverty and
pauperism in the East-end; they are briefly summarized in a remarkable
letter which he addressed in 1869 to an East-end newspaper:--"First we
must so discipline and regulate our charities as to cut off the
resources of the habitual mendicant. Secondly, all who by begging
proclaim themselves destitute, must be taken at their word. They must be
taken up and kept at penal work--not for one morning, as now, but for a
month or two; a proportion of their earnings being handed over to them
on dismissal, as capital on which to begin a life of honest industry.
Thirdly, we must promote the circulation of labour, and obviate morbid
congestions of the great industrial centres. Fourthly, we must improve
the condition of the agricultural poor." Stern as such suggestions may
seem, there are few who have really thought as well as worked for the
poor without feeling that sternness of this sort is, in the highest
sense, mercy. Ten years in the East of London had brought me to the same
conclusions; and my Utopia, like Edward Denison's