PREFACE. IN proposing to print even privately some of the letters of the late Edward Denison, although, perhaps, no apology may be necessary as regards his intimate associates, yet for those who knew him less, and whom possibly these papers may reach, some explanation and justification may appear proper. That justification will, it is hoped, be partly found in the subject of the letters selected,—in that cause in which he laboured-the cause of poor humanity. For several years before his death he had devoted himself almost exclusively to the subject of the condition of the poorer classes with an earnest energy that those who knew him can realize, but which the incisive language of his letters may evidence to others. It was not the superficial relief, nor the material welfare only of the working-classes that engaged his attention. With his perceptive habit of mind at once philosophic and practical, he looked far deeper into the root of things; the essential laws of economy; the less tangible, but not less powerful, incentive of religion in its largest and most catholic sense; and, most of all, he sought the substitution of human sympathy for what a great writer has called the "cash-nexus :"-these were the principles he had securely grasped, and which he sought practically to apply. The aspect from which he regarded the condition of the people, their present degradation and possible elevation, may broadly be specified under the two subject-heads of Pauperism and Religion. Pauperism, as representing the ultimate requirement of the rich to aid the poor, and the condition-social, material, and moral-of that poor: Religion, and the development of our highest nature, with the present aspect of Christianity. These questions, not yet formularized by political parties, have, nevertheless, been long perceived by thinking men to be among the chief problems of our time, and the next, if not the present generation, might suddenly demand their solution. It may be twenty, or even fifty years before they become popular questions of the day, but it might be ten, or even two, for we travel fast nowadays; opinion ripens rapidly, principles are quickly disseminated, and accepted or rejected by the touchstone of practical fact:— "For all the past of time reveals A bridal dawn of thunder-peals, Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact." Therefore, apart from the association of the writer, whose short, romantic life, and almost tragical end, add a melancholy interest to these relics, their very subject will, perhaps, afford some justification and argument for their appearance in print. But their chief value and connection (without which, indeed, they would hardly have seen the light) arises from the fact that they were written, not by a closet philanthropist or dilettante doctrinaire, but by a man who had engaged in the most practical solution of these questions by work. When Edward Denison writes about the demoralizing effect of indiscriminate charity, or a badly-administered Poor Law, he is himself wrestling with the evil in its most malignant form in a pauperized and demoralized East End London parish. He is living down there among paupers and parish authorities, philanthropic clergymen, Poor Law Guardians, and others; now striving to move a health officer to put in force his sanitary powers, and cleanse a fever-stricken street; now working strenuously on a committee to prevent wholesale demoralization by private charity. And when he touches on the subject of the Church of the Future, or a lay exposition of the Bible, he is himself tentatively but successfully essaying to prove to a parcel of dock-labourers that Christianity was worthy their acceptance. It is not for a moment contended that the views herein put forth are absolutely novel or perfectly matured; rather they may be found to be an expression of the thoughts of many who have laboured in the same field-an embodiment of aspirations that will find an echo and a response in many an earnest |
