their parents; the real question is whether they should support their own parents or some one else's parents. We shall be told that the rich ought to be made to support the poor. But we may ask whether that is a satisfactory ideal, especially for those who are trying to build up a democracy upon a sound foundation. It implies a permanence of the present conditions, whereas we believe the truer ideal to be that the poor should be gradually recovered from their poverty and raised to independence. It will be said again that this "natural" charity cannot be relied upon; that there are many so poor and so friendless that they would be altogether outside of its scope. That may be the case in some instances, but it is not, by any means, generally true. The almost unlimited variety of that charity has already been glanced at, and there are few people who go through life without making some friends. Even if it is partly true we must remember that whatever we do there will be some hard cases, and that we shall always have the poor with us. But if the charity of natural obligation sometimes fails, we have still behind it an immense volume of what has been called the charity of the public, such as the endowed charities, and an almost boundless almsgiving, in reserve. That charity, we believe, is beginning more and more to recognise its responsibilities, but there is still much to be done. If we could only focus it upon those cases of distress which are really friendless, and in which money can be of real service, we should have made a great stride upon the "way out" of "Darkest England."
The fact is that there is no one way out. As the causes of poverty are various, so are the remedies. But those remedies must strike at the root of the disease rather than deal with symptoms. With regard to the payment of labour we can each of us do something in our generation to create a
