In the

ing may do much to bring about the best kind of condemnation-self-condemnation. present day there is little occasion to warn profligate offenders against profaning the Lord's Supper. So far as the Holy Communion is concerned, the irreligious are in the habit of excommunicating themselves. But there is always need to insist on the inward penitence and devotion which alone befit partakers of the Body and Blood of Christ, and to show that communicant purity is the law and ideal of the whole Christian society. In every age the Christian minister, serving at the altar of Christ's sacrifice, is called to protest against the easy compromises by which the world seeks to reconcile itself with Christianity. It is his difficult task to bear a steady witness on behalf of true Christian brotherhood, and against all the tempers and practices which violate it. He must reprove, rebuke, exhort, without ceasing; for to endeavours of this kind no limit is set, until the perfection of the body of Christ be attained.

244

ON PAUPERISM AS PRODUCED BY WEALTH.1

'Il y avait à Jérusalem des riches et par conséquent des pauvres.'-Renan, St. Paul, p. 421.

IT is a patent fact that we have in this country, by the side of great and increasing wealth, a very distressing amount of pauperism. This fact is often commented upon as if the coexistence of these two opposites were something strange and abnormal. It was recently brought forward, for example, by Mr. Harcourt, in a speech at Oxford, as imperatively calling for a great reduction in the national expenditure. It seems, therefore, to have not been sufficiently observed by those who have given some attention to economic and social questions that the existence of a wealthy class and of rising prosperity in a country has a direct tendency to generate a certain amount of pauperism. A judicious reduction in the national expenditure might stimulate the increase of wealth, but it

1 Good Words, April, 1872.

might possibly, on that very account, be accom panied by an increase rather than a decrease of pauperism. Accumulated wealth certainly tends for the most part to improve the condition of the poorer class; but it also exerts some influences which have the directly opposite tendency.

Pauperism, or the destitution which makes people seek relief from the rates or from charity, may be referred to the following proximate causes. Inability to work, or to do any work worth paying for, makes a large number of persons incapable of earning a living. This class includes the sickly, the aged, the very young, and widows with children dependent upon them. There is a second class of those who are out of work, because at a given time and place there is demand for the kind of labour which they have to offer. We may put together in a third class those who are thoroughly idle and will not work, and those who are perpetually losing their employment through drunkenness and other moral faults. Physical weakness, want of employment, and depravity, are the three immediate causes of pauperism.

The accumulation of new capital, and the consequent impulse given to production, have an obvious tendency to increase the demand

for labour, and so to diminish the number of destitute persons of the second class. The same causes tend also in some degree to diminish the number of the first class, which is immensely the largest. They may have some slight effect, by making work more various and more remunerative, and therefore more tempting, in reducing the pauperism of the third class. But we cannot expect that the highest degree of general prosperity should ensure to every one employment at all times and at all places; or that it should abolish sickness, or old age, or orphanage, or widowhood; or that it should make all the poor virtuous. Pauperism will be reduced to a minimum when there is the steadiest regularity of employment or an equivalent flexibility in turning from one kind of work to another; when idleness, and drunkenness, and dishonesty become rare; when the poor are prudent enough to look forward to the day of failing strength, and therefore to put by savings and practise insurance and delay marriage, and when they hold themselves bound to support their aged and their sick.

Now the abundance and increase of wealth are not entirely favourable to constancy of employment, or to the promotion of a sense of

responsibility amongst the poorer people. Without attempting anything like an exhaustive statement, I may specify some of the influences by which wealth unsettles both employment and character amongst the working classes.

1. The existing conditions of our prosperity make the transfer of industries from one place to another an easier thing than it used to be. Capital is now mobilised to an unprecedented degree; and new discoveries or improved means of locomotion may cause the rapid displacement of a manufacture or a trade. An increase of production will be the total result of such changes, but they may be at the same time attended with some local distress. Families cannot suddenly remove themselves to distant quarters; and if they remain in places from which their work has departed, they may be reduced to positive destitution. Changes of fashion, again—the indispensable amusement of a wealthy class-cause fluctuations of employment, and, in the metropolis and other places frequented by them, the migrations of the rich occasion considerable disturbance of the industry of the poor. The wages that are to be had during the season' attract some workers, who forget to look forward to the time when