ONE'S OWN POOR.

LEAVING out the very young, the stupid, the utterly sel- fish, and those who are not the subjects of some extra- ordinary preoccupation. what are people thinking of ? There is Ireland, there are terrible accidents at home and abroad, there are the preparations for Christmas, there is marrying and giving in marriage, and the whole current of social life is quickened in many ways at this season ; but there is not much risk in affirming that most people who think at all have at heart, above all things else, or rather, perhaps, underneath many things else, the sufferings of the Poor. What can we do to lighten them In mass they darken our imaginations, in detail they disturb our lives, from hour to hour. We feel that they are out of all proportion to the general sum of "having, doing, and being ;" and that if we are really to hold ourselves members one of another in any honest sense, we ought not to sleep on easy pillows while so much preventable misery keeps ragged, hungry, fireless vigil at our doors. Even the wise and true things of political economy do not content us, much less do the in- solences of pessimists and cynics, who, while very particular over their wines and gloves, go about talking murder as nearly as they dare. The survival of the fittest, and the obligation of every man to continue his own existence by his own efforts, or else to submit without a cry to be improved off the face of the earth,— all this is beautiful, but not yet very influential, among man- kind at large. It may enter a little into the half-conscious reflections of some of those who have a selfish feeling that it is not worth while to make efforts in a case where so little is possible, and it is undoubtedly an actual poison in the air ; but it does not infect the lives of simple-hearted men and women, who are, for this purpose, the incalculable majority of civilised human beings.

We cannot refer at the moment to the estimate of the number of those who are annually starved to death in London only, and are afraid to quote the appalling figure that occurs to us. But who, that uses his eyes and ears, can escape seeing or hearing of cases of something little less than starvation, con- tinued year after year, on his right hand and his left ? In too many instances, drunkenness is in some way at the bottom of it ; in other instances, there has been crime, or something like it. But even in these cases, it causes an unbearable pang to see the innocent suffering with the guilty ; and it is not always easy to decide between helping the sinner and the blameless or comparatively blameless person. We may repeat to ourselves, with adamantine confidence in its soundness, the doctrine that we must first of all be just, help those who help themselves, and leave transgressors to their own thorny paths ; but when the transgressor looks up at us with eyes of anguish and conscious ill-desert, we stand in need of all our fortitude to turn away from him. "It does not require a combination of all the virtues to give a poor, sick wretch a claim to a dinner," said Hannah More—whom we need not laugh at too much— and besides that, we shall find, upon scrutiny, that in the

majority of cases of extreme suffering from poverty, there has been no fault at all, or only fault of the most venial kind. All civilisation is honeycombed with injustice, and when a poor creature has been caught by the cogs of some huge wheel of social policy which be did not see, and whirled well-nigh to pieces, it is much worse than absurd to refuse him help on principle, by way of making a salutary example of him. But, in fact, we need not troub'e ourselves with such questions, un- less we go very far afield. We have only to open our eyes or quicken our memories in oar own immediate circles, to become aware of cases of poverty from which we dare not turn away.

The most definite and unflinching scheme for making an end of poverty that we ever saw was enshrined in "Fors Clavigera," and was contained iu a letter from a Civil Engineer :-

"1. An International Congress," said this gentleman, "must make a number of steam-engines, or use those now made, and taking all property under its control (I fearlessly state it), must roll off iron and glass for buildings to shelter hundreds of millions of people. 2. Must, by such engines, make steam apparatus to plough immense plains of wheat, where steam has elbow-room Abroad ; must make engines to grind it on an enormous scale, first fetching it in flat- . bottomed ships, made of simple form, larger than the ' Great Eastern,' and of simple form of plates, machine-fastened ; must bake it by machine-ovens commensurate. 3. Machine looms must work, un- attended, night and day, rolling off textile yarns and fabrics; and machines must make clothes just as envelopes are knocked off. 4. Machinery must do laundress work, ironing, and mangling; and, in a word, our labour must give place to machinery, laid down in gigantic factories on common-sense principles by an international leverage. This is the education yon must inculcate. Then man will be at last emancipated. All else is utter bosh, and I will prove it."

This stupendous scheme, like many others, must bide its time. Doctrinaires of all kinds may, for all we care,

"Sit upon thrones in a purple sublimity,

And grind down men's bones to a pale unanimity,"

if they can do it out of Mrs. Browning's Rhapsody." One word of common-sense is all we will venture to offer. We may be putting it too high, but it certainly seems pro- bable that if each Mal), according to his rank and degree, or means, would do his plain duty in attending to the very poor

in his own circle, starvation would be rare, and nearly limited to cases of utter demoralisation through drunkenness. A coroner's inquest was held the other day on the dead body of a poor sempstress, whose sister, also a sempstress, had been keeping herself and her sick sister on five-and-sixpence a week. She said she had in some years succeeded in doing this, because ladies had given her small articles of food now and then; but this year that resource had failed, and she had broken down.

If every householder who knows a struggling charwoman, or worn-ont shopkeeper or artisan, would remember this case—not only at Christmas, but all the year round—he would find certain kindly work cut out for him which would not prove too onerous. It seems a platitude, but the old truth is very true, that if everybody will keep the hunger-wolf from some one door, there will be little atrial privation left in the world. If he distrusts the effect of common charity, let him feed children.

There is much active kindness of the sort we have in our mind among the rich, but those who are far from rich have sources of knowledge which the wealthy have not ; and the addition of a little more watchfulness, thought, and care to their good inten- tions would soften down much misery. We purposely refrain from sketching scenes and reporting cases, and confine ourselves to the general remark that if we all did our duty to those whom, as private persons, we may call our " own " poor (whose whole story we know, or may know, if we please), there could not be many deaths from sheer want of food. Of course there is something unsymmetrical in the treatment of poverty that is forced upon us; but we must remember that absolute "inde- pendence " is a pigment. We were all born of women, and had

to be nursed ; we shall all have to be nursed or otherwise helped before we die, or when we die. That extreme poverty exists at all, is an evil of which we all share the blame ; and

there is not much risk of "demoralising" poor people by just touching the burden of their sufferings with our little finger. Many of the poor are quite " independent " enough, and un-

pleasantly impatient of receiving favours, or what they call

favours, which they find means of returning after their own fashion. It is better in these cases, as in all others, to proceed without any attempt to mask the facts ; but if any device is thought necessary, nothing is easier than to make a feint of taking out in small services such gifts as we are able to make. Indeed, these things are common-places—but so, alas ! are the sufferings of the wretched and the evasions of the hard-hearted.