understand the people we are educating. We have not yet taken to heart and applied abroad what we have known for the last half-century at home, that there can be no true education where the ideas we aim at imparting stand in no organic connection with the ideas already there. We have Child Study Associations, based upon this conception of education, and a whole literature of child psychology in England. What is wanted is a Child Study Association on a large scale, of which every civil servant and teacher in India and Africa shall be members, for the sympathetic study of the Children of our Empire. For of all the prophecies to which we can commit ourselves this surely is the least uncertain, that we shall make no headway, nor accomplish anything of any value to our subjects, to ourselves, or to the world without it.

It is here that our main problem lies, for it is just here, as already suggested, that the natural advantages we have hitherto possessed are likely to fail us. So long as it is a question of order, discipline, administration, the Anglo-Saxon combination of patience and pluck, energy and adaptability to circumstances, give us probably an advantage over any other nation. It is when we come to more delicate tasks, such as education and social reconstruction, requiring higher refinements of insight, tact, and sympathy, that our national genius is apt to forsake us. This is, of course, no reason why we should despair of them. It is a reason, however, why we should bring all our intelligence to bear upon the problem of discovering the best that is known as to the right method of proceeding about them, and the most fitting instruments for their accomplishment.

Is all this (end and means alike as so conceived) a

wicked and vain-glorious dream? Ten or twenty years ago it might well have seemed so. We had then no solid accomplishment to which to point. But this can no longer be said. There is one corner of the world in which results have been achieved, the significance of which can hardly be over-estimated. The case of Egypt has shown what British administration can achieve when it takes its stand on the principle that in foreign as in home policy the good of the subject is the first object of government, when it has the courage to grasp and undertake all that the situation requires for this object, when it is prepared to bring the best intelligence of the nation to bear on the task it has undertaken, and when, without flinching from the policy the circumstances dictate, it uses every opportunity to conciliate the better elements of European opinion. The details of this masterly piece of work are to be found, as everyone knows, in Sir Alfred Milner's England in Egypt, a book which illustrates from every department of administration what Imperialism can be at its best, and what it must be if it would be anything at all. It has, perhaps, least to tell us on what I have ventured to indicate as the central problem of the future, the reconciliation of Western science and culture with Eastern modes of thought. Yet here, also, there is much that is instructive and much that is hopeful in the methods adopted in Egypt. Even in respect to that most difficult of all problems, the reconciliation of science and religion, the narrative is not without a hint as to one, at least, of the directions in which a solution may be sought. A story is told of an English engineer who, in a particularly dry year, saved the crops of thousands of the people of Upper Egypt by his prompt energy and unremitting labour. Their joy was unbounded, and

nothing would content them, at the subsequent Thanksgiving Celebration that was held in the chief Mosque of the district, but that the Englishman should be present. This was an unheard-of thing, but such was the gratitude of the people that the most deep-rooted superstition was overcome, and the stranger not only was permitted, but compelled, to share in their worship. Religion and science were for once reconciled. And after all, one may ask, why not? For is not the essence both of science and religion, whether in the East or West, the same? The aim and essence of science, both moral and material, is to secure that justice shall be done, and that the forces of nature from the enemy shall become the friend of man. What else than this is the essence also of religion? If we are to believe the Eastern prophet, this too is "to do justice and love mercy."

H

VI.

THE SCIENCE OF POOR-LAW RELIEF.1

HE present age is frequently spoken of as the age

THE

of science. In so describing it we usually have in mind the great inventions that have given us our present command over physical nature, and added to the material resources of civilisation the steam engine, the printing press, the electric telegraph. But the application of the scientific method has been not less remarkable in all that concerns social life than in what concerns our material surroundings. One by one the great arts that have to do with the improvement of the conditions of social life and happiness-law, education, government-have been brought under its influence. To this group belongs the important branch of administration represented by this Association. In the century which has just closed-almost within our own memory -the administration of poor relief has been brought within the domain of science, and short as has been its career under the new régime, it can already show results as definitely marked and as important for the happiness of the community as those attained in any other department of human effort. Diminished numbers and cost are not necessarily, of course, a test of improved administration. But, taken along with other

1 Paper read at the meeting of the Poor-Law Officers' Provident Association, held at Birmingham on February 23rd, 1901.

circumstances, such as improved position of the classes most liable previously to fall into poverty and improved efficiency of the relief agencies, they are a solid and tangible result by which we can measure our progress. Between the years 1750 and 1832 the cost of poor relief rose in England and Wales from 2s. 2d. to 9s. 9d. per head of population (reaching in 1818 13s. 4d.). Between 1832 (the date, we might say, of the great discoveries in our science) and 1899, notwithstanding the incomparable superiority of the present workhouse, infirmary, and school accommodation, it fell to 7s. 24d. In numbers the results are even more striking. Going back about as far as the imperfect state of the statistics permit, we find that in 1848-9 the mean number relieved was 1,000,000; in 1899-1900 it was about 800,000. If the number had increased with the population, we should have had not 800,000, but over 2,000,000 of a pauper population. These figures are probably familiar to you. Let me take an illustration from the growth of public opinion in these matters, which may not be so familiar. take it not from the ideas formerly current among uncultivated people, but from the views held by the two most enlightened men of the time. In 1796 William Pitt brought forward a Bill among the chief provisions of which we find that the rates should be used to supplement wages, that the possession of property should not disqualify for receiving relief, and that loans might be made from the rates to the poor for the purchase of a cow! At the same time, the great reformer Jeremy Bentham was excogitating a scheme for a species of prison, on the principle of a private company, to which the State was to farm out its criminals and paupers to the profit of all concerned. No wonder

I