self-sustaining activity in
all administration, in the administration of charitable relief no less
than in other departments. A system of endowed charities had been built
up, supported chiefly by rents from landed property. These now had
disappeared, and thus the means of relief, which Edward VI. and Queen
Elizabeth might have utilized at a time of general distress, had been
dissipated by the acts of their predecessors. The civil independence of
the monasteries and religious houses might have been justified,
possibly, when they were engaged in missionary work and were instilling
into the people the precepts of a higher moral law than that which was
in force around them. But afterwards, as the ability and intelligence of
the community increased, their privileges became more and more
antagonistic to charity, and tended to create a non-social and even
anti-social ecclesiastical democracy actuated by aims and interests in
which the general good of the people had little or no place. There was a
growing alienation between religious tradition and secular opinion, as
Lollardism slowly permeated the thought of the people and led the way to
the Reformation. While this alienation existed no national system of
charity, civic and yet religious, could be created. But worse than all,
the ideal of charity had been degraded. A self-regarding system of
relief had superseded charity, and it was productive of nothing but
alms, large or small, isolated and unmethodic, given with a wrong bias,
and thus almost inevitably with evil results. Out of this could spring
no vigorous co-operative charity. Charity--not relief--indeed seemed to
have left the world. The larger issues were overlooked. Then the
property of the hospitals and the gilds was wantonly confiscated, though
the poor had already lost that share in the revenues of the church to
which at one time they were admitted to have a just claim. A new
beginning had to be made. The obligations of charity had to be revived.
A new organization of charitable relief had to be created, and that with
an empty exchequer and after a vast waste of charitable resources. There
were signs of a new congregational and parochial energy, yet the task
could not be entrusted to the religious bodies, divided and disunited as
they were. In their stead it could be imposed only on some authority
which represented the general community, such as municipalities; and in
spite of the centralization of the government ther