the fiction of the thirties and the forties, re-read Bulwer, and remember the public enthusiasm for his novels; we must call to mind all the charade-acting there was in art and in literature, and then we shall be better able to gauge the power of the pen that gave us Vanity Fair.'

'Since' (it wrote elsewhere) 'the author of "Tom Jones" was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power & MAN. We must drape him and give him a certain conventional simper. . . . You will not hear-it is best to know it-what moves in the real world. . . .

It is this that he told us in his incomparable way; he set the pendulum going to a new-perhaps we should say a renewedmeasure, and, however wide the temporary oscillations, it will remain true to it. The classical is out of favour for the moment, but Thackeray remains a classic, read by the lovers of literature in all ages. What, after all, is a classic? The question has been answered for us by one of the people best qualified to do so-Sainte-Beuve-and his words on the subject seem to make a fit ending to any discussion of Thackeray :

'A true classic, as I should like to hear the word defined, is an author who has enriched the spirit of man, who has really increased its treasure, who has made him take a step forward, who has discovered some unequivocal moral truth, or re-discovered some eternal passion in that heart every corner of which seemed to be known and explored; who has embodied his own thought, observation, or invention in some form, no matter what, so long as it is broad and great, delicate and reasonable, healthy and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in a style that belongs to himself and happens also to be that of everybody else, a style which is new without "neologism -new and old—without an effort the contemporary of all times.'

Sainte-Beuve would have been satisfied with Thackeray as an illustration of his meaning. Broad and great, delicate and reasonable, healthy and beautiful '-these seem epithets made for the man, as Mrs. Ritchie has painted him. He explored the human heart to good purpose, and believed in it while he explored it. The truth that he has preached is unequivocal; and with the help of his hand we have made a step forward, a step towards true feeling and the knowledge of realities divested of conventional trappings. If Truth were again a goddess,' said Charlotte Brontë, I would make Thackeray her High Priest.'

ART. VIII.-1. History of the English Poor Law. Vol. III: From 1834 to the Present Time. By T. Mackay. London: King and Son, 1899.

2. Report of the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, 1895. (C. 7684.)

3. Report of the Select Committee on Distress from Want of Employment, 1896. (321: 1896.)

4. Report of the Departmental Committee on Poor Law Schools, 1896. (C. 8027.)

5. Report of the Committee on Old Age Pensions, 1898. (C. 8911.)

6. Twenty-eighth Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1898-9. (C. 9444.)

7. Report from the Select Committee on the Cottage Homes Bill, 1899. (271: 1899.)

8. Report from the Select Committee on Aged Deserving Poor, 1899. (296: 1899.)

IN

N accordance with time-honoured custom we have placed at the head of this article some of the more important works of reference which have recently been published on pauperism and cognate subjects. With one exception these are official publications, but that one exception needs more than the passing tribute which a citation here and there in the following pages would give to its merits. Mr. Mackay has produced a remarkable book, written in a popular style, which will appeal to a wider circle of readers than either official publications or purely scientific works can hope for. We have no hesitation in saying that it is one which nobody interested in the Poor Law can afford to pass by; and that it will amply repay careful study on the part of those who are familiar, not only with Blue-book literature, but with the purely scientific treatises written by English and German authors on the English Poor Law. It is, as the title-page tells us, a supplementary volume to the great work on the history of the English Poor Law by Sir George Nicholls, and continues that history from 1834 to the present day. There are, no doubt, many who will disagree with Mr. Mackay's conclusions, but the keenest critic will admit that there are not many weak places in the defence which he makes of the great reform of 1834. It is the work of an author who has himself lived and laboured among the poor, and to whom their independence is as priceless as his own.

We wish we could pay a similar compliment to the last of the Blue-books which we have placed upon our list. The

Committee which is responsible for it was described by Mr. John Morley, a little unkindly, as the weakest which had been appointed since the days of Simon de Montfort. It will, we think, be a sufficient criticism of its proceedings if we say that, after an enquiry of a few weeks, it has undertaken to reverse the verdict of all previous official enquiries, on the strength of a few small schemes devised by the Charity Commissioners and of the alleged success of the Danish system-a success which, we may observe, has been warmly disputed both in and out of that country. Even if this success were an established fact, a system applicable to a small State, with only one considerable town and a stationary population of prosperous peasant proprietors, would not necessarily be good for this country, with its great cities and its vast migratory population of artisans. If we add that the Committee was appointed to devise a scheme for better provision for the aged poor, and that they reported in favour of an old age pension scheme without attempting to ascertain the number of beneficiaries and the consequent cost, it will be seen that this Report is one that will not add to the reputation, hitherto a high one, which Select Committees of the House of Commons have enjoyed, for the thoroughness of their investigations, among English and foreign statesmen and students.

The subject with which the recent Select Committee has dealt is, however, only a portion of the far larger subject of Poor Law reform, with which, it has been rumoured, the Government intend to deal comprehensively in the coming session. We do not know if the truce which the Transvaal war has brought into politics is likely to be of long duration, but in the interests of the poor above all it would indeed be well if the discussion of the new proposals could be conducted with that absence of party feeling which characterised the debate on the great reform of 1834. We do not fear party spirit so much where the problems connected with the infant, the sick, or the imbecile poor are concerned. Their fate will not probably be made the subject of such appeals to the working man as are likely to win votes at the next General Election. No; it is in connexion with the solution of the questions of the unemployed and of the aged poor that party strife is to be feared; it is with regard to these that the most dangerous proposals are likely to be made in view of the approach of the General Election; and it is therefore to these difficult questions that we shall devote most of our space. Neither party is entitled to any special credit for their treatment of these branches of Poor Law Reform, but perhaps the wildest pro

posals with regard to the unemployed have been made by the Home Rule party, while the most dangerous schemes for old age pensions have been advocated by Unionists.

The very term 'old age pensions,' as Mr. Lecky has pointed out, tends to accredit a fundamental and most dangerous misconception.

'The pensions, largely of the nature of deferred pay, given by the State and private employers for specific services duly rendered to those who have been in their employment or under their control, have no real analogy to the proposed State endowment of all old persons, or at least of all respectable old persons, who at the close of a life of independent industry find themselves insufficiently provided with the means of livelihood. Such an endowment, drawn from the taxation of the country, would be essentially of the same nature as Poor Law relief. There is no real ground for the assertion that because an industrious man has failed to earn a sufficiency, he has a moral right to be rewarded for his industry out of the proceeds of a tax levied upon his neighbours, to whom he has rendered no service, or none which has not been paid for in wages.'

But accepting the term for a moment, and assuming, as we may, that every one desires to find a remedy for old age pauperism, would it not be an advantage to do what the Select Committee has failed to do, namely, to try to ascertain the extent and causes of old age pauperism, so that we may judge whether a simple or complex remedy is required?

Mr. Charles Booth has calculated from Mr. Burt's return that 30 per cent. of the population of England and Wales who reach the age of 65 are in receipt of Poor Law relief; and, subtracting one-third to represent the well-to-do, he arrives at the conclusion that one person in every two and a half of the poorer classes who reach the age of 65 is a pauper. These figures are based on a count made on a single day, which is a doubtful method, from the point of view of accuracy, in Poor Law matters, and are on that ground disputed by Mr. C. S. Loch, who points out that the number of paupers would, on a year's count, be diminished by one-third. We have further to recollect that in these figures there are included persons in receipt of medical relief, which means food and stimulants as well as drugs, and that medical relief is received as implying no stigma of pauperism. Since 1885 the receipt of medical relief no longer disqualifies persons receiving it for certain Local Government offices; and medical relief is given in some parishes to a number exceeding the whole of

Minority Report from the Select Committee, 1899.'

the indoor and outdoor paupers. A large proportion of the recipients of medical relief would be aged persons. It should be further borne in mind that, as Mr. Knollys has pointed out in his evidence before the Select Committee on the Aged Deserving Poor, there has been an enormous decrease in pauperism since 1849. In that year the pauperism of the country amounted to 62.7 per 1,000: it has been reduced to 26.2 per 1,000 in the present year, if lunatics and vagrants are included, or, if we take it without the lunatics and vagrants, to 22.8 per 1,000. This decrease is largely in outdoor pauperism, but there has been a decrease in indoor pauperism also. This is, according to Mr. Knollys, mainly the result of the administration of the reformed Poor Law of 1834; but, no doubt, the prosperity of the country and the growth of thrift, temperance, and education have largely contributed to this improving condition of affairs. Mr. Loch has shown that the not able-bodied poor above the age of 60 numbered, in 1871, 21 per cent., but in 1891 only 13 per cent., of the total number above that age. Evidence given before the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor showed that in the Manchester Union the aged paupers had diminished from 2,130 in 1872 to 941 in 1892; and it further appeared that the number of deserving cases in Manchester was exceedingly small-between 90 and 100. When these figures are borne in mind, and when it is further recollected that, according to Mr. Knollys, deserving cases are generally relieved by the Guardians, if possible, outside the work house, it will be seen that the problem is very different from what it has been represented to be. In fact the aged and deserving poor are relatively few and are decreasing in number. Of their number, some it is not possible to relieve outside the workhouse, owing to sickness and infirmity; others are unwilling to leave the workhouse, as evidence given before the Committee on Cottage Homes showed; but by far the greater number of the aged and deserving poor are already receiving, outside the workhouse, old age pensions in the shape of outdoor relief.

The question next arises, would a State pension cure the evil of old age pauperism as a whole? Would it remedy the causes which were shown in the evidence before the Aged Poor Commission to be moral, economic, and local, but chiefly moral. Witness after witness, and amongst them the most experienced administrators of the Poor Law, testified that want of thrift and want of backbone were the principal causes which brought the poor to the work house in their old age. Mr. Knollys, Mr. Davy, and Mr. Hedley on behalf of the Local