ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that welfare is a compound of material means and immaterial ends; it is located somewhere on the axis which runs between the poles of wealth and happiness. Any legal right there may be in the context of welfare must have an indirect or mediate character, being a right to those benefits which may be expected to produce welfare and which, on the average, will do so. The 'impulses of common humanity', one could say, were considered to be a matter between the people and their conscience, just as the impulses of charity belonged to the moral welfare of the charitable. The 'means test' is transformed into a 'needs test', and the desired result becomes identifiable with 'welfare'. The national wealth is produced and distributed by men exercising these rights within the framework of national institutions, and national wealth is the material source of national welfare.
