The mode of relief grew, with circumstances, to change. The time came when, to ‘the Hagars and Ishmaels of mankind,’ rules for gleaning and for ‘fallen grapes’ would, perforce, be meaningless, and new means for the carrying out of _tzedakah_ had to be devised. In Alms of the Chest, קופה (_kupah_), and Alms of the Basket, תמחוי (_tamchui_), another exhaustive system of relief was formulated. The _kupah_ would seem to have been a poor-rate, levied on all ‘residents in towns of over thirty days’ standing,’ and ‘Never,’ says Maimonides, ‘have we seen or heard of any congregation of Israelites in which there has not been the Chest for Alms, though, with regard to the Basket, it is the custom in some places to have it, and not in others.’ These chests were placed in the Silent Court of the Sanctuary, to the end that a class of givers who went by the name of Fearers of Sin,[26] might deposit their alms in silence and be relieved of responsibility. The contents of the Chest were collected weekly and used for all ordinary objects of relief, the overplus being devoted to special cases and special purposes. It is somewhat strange to our modern notions to find that one among such purposes was that of providing poor folks with the wherewith to marry. For not only is it commanded concerning the ‘brother waxen poor,’ ‘_If he standeth in need of garments, let him be clothed; or if of household things, let him be supplied with them,’ but ‘if of a wife, let a wife be betrothed unto him, and in case of a woman, let a husband be betrothed unto her._’ Does this quaint provision recall Voltaire’s taunt that ‘Les juifs ont toujours regardé comme leurs deux grands devoirs des enfants et de l’argent’? Perhaps, and yet, Voltaire and even Malthus notwithstanding, it is just possible that the last word has not been said on this subject, and that in ‘improvident’ marriages and large families the new creed of survival of the fittest may, after all, be best fulfilled. Philosophers, we know, are not always consistent with themselves, and if there be truth in another saying of Voltaire’s--‘Voyez les registres affreux de vos greffes crimines, vous y trouvez cent garçons de pendus ou de roués contre un père de famille’--then is there something certainly to be said in favour of the Jewish system. But this by the way, since statistics, it must be owned, are the most sensitive and susceptible of the sciences. This ancient betrothing, moreover, was no empty form, no bare affiancing of two paupers; but a serious and substantial practice of raising a marriage portion for a couple unable to marry without it. By Talmudic code, ‘marriages were not legitimately complete till a settlement of some sort was made on the wife,’ who, it may be here parenthetically remarked, was so far in advance of comparatively modern legislation as to be entitled to have and to hold in as complete and comprehensive a sense as her husband.