poor can save the amount if they will try. It
is, as they need not be told, a less sum than
such a club as that above described usually
costs them.

It is the opinion of persons conversant with
the present aspect of provident societies, that
the industrial classes will in process of time
work out their own social and moral regeneration
without help from the legislature. Exception,
however, must be taken to the classes who
look to the poor-rate for relief. Their social
improvement is, indeed, a work to be done by
themselves, and one which cannot be done for
them. Still they may be assisted in it by
removal of those barriers which now stand in the
path of progress. Let it be remembered that
provident institutions furnish a maintenance for
those who will take the trouble to secure it.
That this maintenance can be obtained and
secured without separating man and wife from each
other, or parents from children; that this
maintenance (unless in certain cases) leaves inviolate
the sacred home. And provident institutions, as
experience abundantly shows, unite the
sympathies of rich and poor for each other. They
provide a common ground of meeting—a
common interest. Prejudices are removed, and the
bonds of sympathy and kindness are strengthened,
between all classes, without the least
risk of injury to the self-respect of any. And
such societies also discourage improvidence and
idleness, which are the handmaids of poor-rate
relief, and tend to substitute those habits
which lead to manliness and independence.
However strange a truth it may seem, it is
true in very many cases, that independence
is within reach of our agricultural labourers.
But provident habits are discouraged by the
working of the poor-law. We do not, of
course, for a moment doubt the necessity of a
poor-law administration. Assistance will always
be required for casual poor and for the numerous
classes which no provident society can help.
To these the need by thousands of the special
benefit of medical care are to be added, and
the distresses which no human foresight can
avert.

By the Small Tenements Act, the cottager's
rates are paid by the landlord. Rent is rent to
the labourer, and he knows and cares nothing
about rates and taxes. But if every cottager were
liable to payment of a proportionate share of
the rate whenever one was levied, he would have
the same interest in keeping it within reasonable
limits as his landlord has. And the labourer
would know better than the landlord which of
his neighbours to rouse out of real indolence
and thriftlessness. The public feeling of their
own class would thus act upon the idle. In the
next place, the injustice of compelling the object
of relief to make himself a beggar before he can
justify his claim on the rate, is monstrous. How
numberless are cases of distress in the upper
classes, where the sufferer has some small
income! If the income be inadequate to relieve
the distress, the case is admitted, and the help
of friends obtained. Such a friend we think
the poor-law ought to be and might be to the
poor, though an essential change is requisite to
make it so. Particular times of pressure on the
industrious poor might also be met on a wiser
system than the present, by some well-timed
help out of the rate.

But to make provident societies what they
should be, and what we believe they will one
day become, there is need, probably, of a central
board constituted by parliament. The friendly
society would not then be subjected, as it has
been of late years, to the caprices of legislation:
which according to the influences of the passing
hour has attempted to prevent it from entering
the field with the large assurance societies.
Between oppression on the one hand, and
prejudice and ignorance on the other, these provident
institutions have had to fight against much
more than their fair share of difficulties. But if
their development should be found sensibly to
diminish the burden of the poor-rate, would not
the employers of farm labourers have an
additional reason to accord cheerful help to their
men as fit occasion offered?

A RATHER, REMARKABLE PERSON.

I HAPPENED to be at a well-known coast town
in South Wales last April, at the time when the
census had to be taken, and knowing the Chief
Registrar of the district, I offered to become a
volunteer enumerator. I had been so long idling,
lounging, and making tours without having any
particular object in view, that the chance of any
useful occupation presented itself to me as an
agreeable change. My friend very kindly gave
me a choice of ground to go over, and I selected
a small island—called Swamp Island—lying out
in the Channel, about twenty miles from the
coast, which had figured in the census tables of
1851 as possessing a population of three. As a
wilderness it was only then beaten by Little
Papa, one of the Shetland Islands, which held
only one person—an old woman; and by
Inchcolm, one of the Fife Islands, which sheltered
only one man—a farm labourer. It was a pity,
perhaps, that these two solitudes with their two
inhabitants could not have been joined together
in holy matrimony, forming one decent family on
one tolerable island.

Very early on the morning appointed for my
journey, I started in a large fishing-smack, the
owner of which, for a small consideration, undertook
to land me at my destination, and call for
me again before night. I was full of curiosity
as to what people, and how many, I should find
on Swamp Island, but my boatmen could give
me no information on this head. As there was
no good fishing within several miles of the scrubby
patch of sea-land to which I was bound, they had
never taken the trouble even to inquire whether
it was inhabited.

I landed, with some difficulty, in a not very
shallow creek, and should have been soaked
through above my knees if I had not been
protected by a thick waterproof dress. The weather