ABSTRACT
We have been able in the foregoing pages to form some estimate of the extent of the misery which had haunted the mind of the benevolent, or, at least, to learn that the amount of want was far greater than the efforts made to relieve it. This discrepancy had been recognised before the close of the eighteenth century. But we have had to accept the existence of this want as being, from whatever cause, a normal incident of society, because, with scarcely an exception, the philanthropists themselves have regarded it in this light. The origin of this want, of the pervasive and persistent inequalities and distress which characterise the modern state, are to be sought in the industrial system, in an organization under which the total wealth of the nation has increased so rapidly, under which also there has been so huge a concurrent out-throw of poverty, and poverty-born disease. For an explanation of the subject-matter of misery with which philanthropy is concerned it would be necessary to look into the economic structure of society. There was some consciousness of this fact at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and it was again tentatively forcing itself into notice at the close of the eighteenth. The series of philanthropic
studie~, histories, sciences, and various reflections which we have reviewed in the last chapter are an indication of this.
284AHISTORYOFENGLISHPHILANTHROPY.
