o consider practical suggestions in regard to such subjects as charity
and economic thought, charity organization, friendly visiting and
almonership, co-operation with the poor-law, charity and thrift,
parochial management, hospitals and medical relief, exceptional distress
and the "unemployed," the utilization of endowments and their
supervision, and their adaptation to new needs and emergencies. (5) We
have also throughout to consider charitable help in relation to classes
of dependants, who appear early in the history of the question--widows
and orphans, the sick and the aged, vagrants and wayfarers.

First in the series come the charities of the family and of hospitality;
then the wider charities of religion, the charities of the community,
and of individual donors and of mutual help. These gradually assumed
importance in communities which consisted originally of self-supporting
classes, within which widows and orphans, for instance, would be rather
provided for, in accordance with recognized class obligations, than
relieved. Then come habitual almsgiving, the charitable endowment, and
the modern charitable institution and association. But throughout the
test of progress or decadence appears to be the condition of the family.
The family is the source, the home and the hearthstone of charity. It
has been created but slowly, and there is naturally a constant tendency
to break away from its obligations and to ignore and depreciate its
utility. Yet the family, as we now have it, is itself the outcome of
infinite thought working through social instinct, and has at each stage
of its development indicated a general advance. To it, therefore,
constant reference must be made.

PART I.--PRIMITIVE CHARITY

The study of early communities has brought to light the history of the
development of the family. "Marriage in its lowest phases is by no means
a matter of affection or companionship"; and only very slowly has the
position of both parents been recognized as implying different but
correlative responsibilities towards their child. Only very slowly,
also, has the morality necessary to the making of the family been won.
Charity at earlier stages is hardly recognized as a virtue, nor
infanticide as an evil. Hospitality--the beginning of a larger social
life--is non-existent. The self-support of the community is secured by
marriage, and when relations fail marriage becomes a provision against
poverty. Then by the tribal system