HOSPITAL SUNDAY IN LONDON.
TAONDON is late in following the example of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and many smaller towns, in instituting a "Hospital Sunday,"—and she ought to gain thus much by her tardiness, that knowing the scale of the generosity with which she has had to compete, she should surpass it, as it becomes the metropolis of the world to surpass the provincial towns even of a rich country. It is by no means certain that this will be so. Rich as London is, it has not usually been possible to incite her population to any collective effort at all proportional in magnitude to the similar efforts of smaller places. In the great ocean of London life there are motionless depths which no wind will stir ; and these depths are far larger in proportion to the whole body of life to be affected than in any provincial town. It may be, there- fore, that in spite of all the preparations that have been made to raise to-morrow, by a simultaneous effort, assisted by almost every pulpit in London,—the pulpit of the Temple Church is, not indeed .so far as its preacher, but so far as its legal authorities are concerned, a notable and discreditable exception,— a fitting annual subsidy for the great hospitals of this metropolis, the result will be comparatively less than it has been in the great cities of the Midland Counties and the North and West. Birmingham, with a population of about 300,000, and with about 150 contributory Churches, has managed to average a gift of £4,000 annually to the hospitals of that great town. Liverpool, with a population of about 450,000, and a number of contributory con- gregations apparently about 300 in number, has in its best year contributed, counting the Hospital Saturday and Sunday together, about £8,000. Manchester and Salford, with more than 200 contributory congregations, and a joint population of about 460,000 people, contributed nearly £7,00J on Hospital Saturday and Sunday ; so that we may consider between £20 and £30 about the sum which, on an average, each congregation of a populous provincial town has hitherto raised under the stimulus of joint action. And while you may say that from about one pound to thirty shillings is contributed for every hundred of the popula- tion of these greater cities, in the smaller places it would seem thatsvhile the individual congregations are much poorer in wealth, i.e., while the total sum collected is collected by a much greater number of poorer contributing congregations, the sum raised is much larger in proportion to the population. Thus Carlisle, with a population of about 30,000, raised on its Hospital Sunday MOM than £600, more than £2 for each hundred of the population. In London there will be to-morrow about 1,000 separate Churches making their appeal. If, then, London could only do as well aa Carlisle,—and though no provincial city has anything like the same proportion of extreme poverty as London, none has anything like the same proportion of men of vast wealth,—we should have near £80,000 raised, instead of the Lancet's very modest calculation of £30,000, by to-morrow's collection ; nor would it cost this rich metropolis any great effort to bring the sum up to £100,000. When we consider how many of the wealthiest men of the country are resident in London during this season of the year, we ought to expect from London a contribution much more than proportioned to her size and the number of contributing congregations. In Liverpool, for instance, it was matter of special note and con- gratulation when a single £100 or £200 note was given ; but in London there ought to be many instances of this in all the wealthier
churches and chapels,—which will be at least some hundred out of the thousand. We should say, then, that London will have failed in her duty as metropolis if she does not raise at least £50,000; and not have vindicated the proper splendour of her position, as the city in all the world which has the richest hospitals and the greatest need for them, if the sum received does not at least approach g100,000. The ground for distrust is the vast number of inhabitants of London not reached by any religious organisation,—a much larger number, doubtless, than in any pro- vincial town. On the other hand, for a purpose like this, which is independent of religious creed, and which appeals to the hearts of even resident strangers, there ought to be no difficulty in getting together special congregations much larger and much more liberal-minded than those of any ordinary Sunday in the year. Remembering, however, that this is a first effort, and that in Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool alike, the second effort has been far more successful than the first, we should be content if the fruits of the first Metropolitan Hospital Sunday should reach .t50,000, which would be a noble contribution towards the expenses of our many bankrupt hospitals, and lead to a magni- ficent development of their usefulness. It is curious to observe how vastly the collective effort has uniformly exceeded the total
of all separately made individual congregational efforts, even in the same city. In both Carlisle and Liverpool,—i.e., in a com-
paratively small city and one of our largest towns,—the collections
of the various congregations acting separately, and making their efforts on different Sundays, in the year immediately preceding
the first Hospital Sunday, did not raise one-fifth of the sum raishd by the first collective effort. Indeed, Carlisle raised seven times as much by the collective as by the total of the individual efforts. That means, we take it, that if once you can focus the attention of a whole city on a single great object, the result is far greater than any you can obtain by appeals made under a less pressure of converging social sympathies ; that as two people strongly sympathising will almost always make for any object a far greater sacrifice than twice as much as one of them pursuing the same object alone, so a whole town uniting its interest on a single point for a single day in the year,
can do a vast deal more than the various social atoms which, when taken together, make up that town. Now ought not this to tell in favour of even a great relative success for the metropolis? Should not London feel, and will not London feel, to-morrow that England is looking to her to vindicate her position as a metropolis by setting a great example, as well as by following worthily one already set ? Where the science centres which directs the hospitals, where the want centres which fills them, where the wealth centres which helps to turn them to the best account for the purposes of healing, there surely the pity and the gratitude ought to centre which puts generosity in motion. Lon- don ought to remember that she is the best single representative of England, as well as London. She may well be expected to give doubly, for she receives doubly of the fruits of what she gives, for to Loudon tends all the genius which alone knows how to avail itself adequately of the medical experience extracted from the sufferings of the million, as well as all the wealth which is needed to organise and classify that experience, so as to gather from it the maximum of material for the scientific eye.
And if London really wishes to test what she can achieve in the way of munificence, never surely was there a more perfect occasion, —an occasion more completely free from the evils which divided opinion has introduced into the region of all other charities, even including education. There is no theology known to us that does not preach the relief of physical suffering. Even political economy puts in no protest against the relief of a kind of suffering which is for the most part so far removed from any voluntary cause, that if all the hospitals in London were abolished to-morrow, the number of persons who would in consequence protect them- selves by increased prudence against the causes of disease, would be as nothing compared with the addition to the total number of innocent and irresponsible sufferers which would result directly from the loss of the controlling and insulating influence of the London Hospitals. Even the positivists and secularists will doubtless unite in this effort, as one singularly appropriate to a "religion of humanity ;" and not the severest of the zealots for the sufferings of the next world, have ever questioned the duty of diminishing as far as possible the sufferings of this. Nay, even those politicians who abhor the religion of democracy, and those politicians who regard it as the only true gospel, may agree here ; for while there can be no better application of the doctrine of "liberty, fraternity, equality," than the rendering of aid to institu- tions which attempt to break the chains of disease, to assert the brotherhood between health and sickness, ease and pain, and to diminish the worst of all inequalities,—an inequality before which that of political rank absolutely vanishes away,— the inequality between suffering and the full enjoyment of physical life,—not even the bitterest opponent of that doctrine, not even Mr. Fitzjames Stephen himself, will maintain that the slavery of physical infirmity ought to be perpetuated, that the patients of a fever hospital do not deserve our sympathy, or that it is for the good of the world to leave undiminished that special and fearful inequality of lot between health and sickness to which we have just referred. In fact, there is hardly a theoretic crotchet to be found in all London which would veto on principle any contribution to such as this ; and there is hardly a heart in all London to which such a cause could make appeal without eliciting at least a wish to be able to give it help. Disease makes all men equal, and makes the very name of liberty a mockery to all who are prostrated by it; the very thought of it ought, therefore, to make all men to some extent at heart brothers, eager to sacrifice something infi- nitely leas precious than health in order to restore health to those who have lost it, or to alleviate the sufferings of those who cannot even hope for it. Surely London will not only follow the great example set by the manufacturing towns of the Midland and North- Western Counties, but will assert her right to rank above the cities in whose track she is somewhat tardily following.
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