of approval,and one of the most arduous duties
of modern times seems to be satisfactorily
performed. Suddenly the wind changes, and finding
employment for starving men is denounced
as the profligate job of a dishonest government
Statistics and facts carefully cooked to
prove this foregone conclusion force themselves
mysteriously into publicity. The midge has
been at work. Sensitive as dwellers in glass
houses must always be, that insect sees in
the usefulness of others a reproach and
possible injury to itself. " Society " jargon is called
into play, the vulgarity and selfishness of the
wealthy inhabitants of the suffering district are
sneered at, and the impropriety of a government
department performing useful and humane
functions is angrily censured. The midge, it
must be again remembered, is so far irresponsible,
that his gibes are still launched from
behind the cover of his own obscurity. His
official position suffices to give his words and
actions an influence for harm, while it protects
him from public argument and censure.

For years past England, the midge's paymistress,
has laboured under the reproach of permitting
the helpless to die in her streets and thorough-
fares. Boasting her superiority over bureau-
ridden lands, she had allowed her capital—- the
wealthiest, busiest, and most charitable city in
the world—- to kill off its annual per-centage of
outcasts with terrible regularity. The philanthropist,
or the man about town, could, at the
most inclement seasons, point to droves of
shivering wretches sleeping on the same
pavements. Men, women, and children, hungry and
half naked, could be looked for at the same
door-steps, throughout the winter nights, with
as much certainty as the sentry at Buckingham
Palace, or the lion on Northumberland House.
Workhouses admitted a few applicants, and sent
the rest away desolate; or did not admit at all,
as the local authorities were brutal, or, in a
parochial sense, humane. "These casual wards
are full," was the permanent inscription on the
walls of the workhouse of the richest parish in
London. Laws had been enacted and regulations
passed to provide for all destitute wayfarers
whose necessity was urgent; in the face
of which sick women, tottering old men and
starving children, were, night after night,
refused bare shelter, and practically told to steal
or die. Private benevolence erected refuges,
which private charity endowed; but the evil
was practically unabated despite the outspoken
strictures in parliament and by the press. Official
midges sharpened their stings. We had
long official papers, possibly prompted by the
midge, in which the criminality of being homeless,
destitute, and hungry, was judicially urged;
and the wickedness of aiding the wounded by
the wayside until after close examination into
their credentials, was severely reprobated. We
had midge schemes for maltreating those
relieved and for making relief penal; but the
plain duty of the community, that come what
would no one should die of hunger at our doors,
was something more than ignored. After long
years the practice of allowing paupers to perish
every winter had been denounced time out of
mind by the plain people who could not recognise
starving your neighbour as the whole duty of
man; after the country rung with indignant
complaints of the system which made these
horrors possible, it was determined to make an effort
to grapple with the difficulty. " The department"
was to have practical usefulness thrust upon it.
Its canons were to include the right of enforcing
the bestowal of relief, shelter, a crust, and
little more, to destitute wanderers. The shameful
sight of human beings dying untended at
our very doors was to be made possible no
longer; and our streets were to be relieved
of their constantly abiding eyesore. The
metropolitan workhouses were to be placed on the
same footing, and a task of labour to be rigidly
exacted from every temporary sojourner within
their walls. In short, the laws previously
in existence, but which had fallen into
abeyance through the selfishness of parochial boards
and the existence of official midges, were to
be supplemented by a measure which not
only appealed to that selfishness by making the
cost of relieving casual paupers chargeable
on a common fund, but made it clear to the
outside public that the " urgent necessity" just
quoted was in itself a title to relief. The parishes
were extremely angry. Indignation meetings
were held, at which the grand principle of local
self-government was substantially defined to
be starving paupers with impunity; and, as a
matter of course, the midges, if our theory be
correct, shouted their little official shout with
the crowd they thought the largest. Society was
informed that London would become a mere
nest of vagabondage, a central haunt for
vagrancy; and the sharpness of the midge's
punctures were, it is natural to imagine, inflicted
on those able and willing to argue against the
bill. A judicious circular to officials amenable
to midge influence, a few hints cunningly thrown
out, a repetition of the heartless midge maxims
previously urged, and a formidable mass of
adverse official theories, were readily strung
together in support of the guardian view. Carry
out this pernicious doctrine of assisting the
helpless; be weak enough to prevent deaths in
the streets, and the decadence of the nation
will follow, for " the board" will be abolished,
and we, dear friends, be displaced. It is also
possible that, in some instances, the repulsion
between the responsible chief in parliament
and the chief who was Society's nominee, was
complete; and that the energies and official
opportunities of the one were consistently devoted
to thwarting the humane legislation of the other.
In any case, human life has been sacrificed, and
human misery has been heartlessly and scandalously
left to shift for itself. The public inquiries
hitherto made in this connexion, have—-
if our theory be right—- failed to reach the root
of the evil, because they have failed to look as
low as the microscopic but mischievous creatures
who can poison a large system of legislation
by an infliction of small stings. Let the