ABSTRACT
This chapter is peculiarly Victorian in its mix of conservative and liberal responses to the issue of poverty; critical of what he calls Malthus’s simplistic use of the term ‘over-population’, the writer also simplistically blames uneducated parents for the ‘improvidence’ of generations of poor people. Modern civilization is arousing the reader to a sense of duties hitherto inadequately performed. To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the houseless—these are duties which have long been and still are enjoined. The more intelligent among the reader are dissatisfied with the results of mere efforts for relief. They have long perceived that the diminution of destitution has not kept pace with the increase of appliances to relieve it: they begin to suspect that on many occasions the growth of destitution has actually been quickened by the very means applied for its relief.
