ABSTRACT
THE philanthropic labours that will come under our notice in this chapter possess considerable features of resemblance in the object to which they are directed. The prisoners at home and the slaves abroad were manifestly incapable of helping themselves; for the promotion of commerce in one case, or for the security of society in the other, these classes had been deprived of their liberty and held their lives simply at the option of their captors. This similarity of the problem, however, is not sufficient to account for the identity of the means adopted. Prisoners had always been helpless; yet it was not until the period now under review that anything further than casual charity had been exerted on their behalf. Some efforts, indeed, put forth at this time for the help of the debtors are of a kind rendered familiar in preceding chapters. "Have a subscription," was the obvious and ready solution in the eighteenth century. But to a large degree both the movements for prison reform and for the abolition of the slave trade avoided the pitfall of the obvious. In the philanthropic enterprises that we have been considering the procedure was first to become conscious of an evil, then immediately to do something to alleviate it. In the movements which we are now to trace, two intermediate processes will be noticed. From discerning an evil proceed first to investigate its nature in order to discover just what should be done, then, secondly, take up the more arduous task of persuading or compelling the community to discharge the duty. Instead of a benevolence that endeavours to do an undefined something, we find a determination to force the nation to do a carefully specified thing which individuals,
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