timulus than fear, confidence a better mental
environment than insecurity. If desperation will sometimes spur men to
exceptional exertion the effect is fleeting, and, for a permanence, a
more stable condition is better suited to foster that blend of restraint
and energy which makes up the tissue of a life of normal health. There
would be those who would abuse their advantages as there are those who
abuse every form of social institution. But upon the whole it is thought
that individual responsibility can be more clearly fixed and more
rigorously insisted on when its legitimate sphere is properly defined,
that is to say, when the burden on the shoulders of the individual is
not too great for average human nature to bear.

But, it may be urged, any reliance on external assistance is destructive
of independence. It is true that to look for support to private
philanthropy has this effect, because it makes one man dependent on the
good graces of another. But it is submitted that a form of support on
which a man can count as a matter of legal right has not necessarily the
same effect. Charity, again, tends to diminish the value of independent
effort because it flows in the direction of the failures. It is a
compensation for misfortune which easily slides into an encouragement to
carelessness. What is matter of right, on the other hand, is enjoyed
equally by the successful and the unsuccessful. It is not a handicap in
favour of the one, but an equal distance deducted from the race to be
run against fate by both. This brings us to the real question. Are
measures of the kind under discussion to be regarded as measures of
philanthropy or measures of justice, as the expression of collective
benevolence or as the recognition of a general right? The full
discussion of the question involves complex and in some respects novel
conceptions of economics and of social ethics to which I can hardly do
justice within the limits of this chapter. But I will endeavour to
indicate in outline the conception of social and economic justice which
underlies the movement of modern Liberal opinion.

We may approach the subject by observing that, whatever the legal
theory, in practice the existing English Poor Law recognizes the right
of every person to the bare necessaries of life. The destitute man or
woman can come to a public authority, and the public authority is bound
to give him food and shelter. He has to that extent a lien on the public
resour