Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a LadyChapone, Mrs. (Hester)
Religion
Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Lady
Chapone, Mrs. (Hester)
Women -- Education; Young women -- Conduct of life
The prudent distribution of your charitable gifts may not improperly be
considered as a branch of Economy, since the great duty of almsgiving
cannot be truly fulfilled without a diligent attention so to manage the
sums you can spare as to produce the most real good to your
fellow-creatures. Many are willing to give money, who will not bestow
their time and consideration, and who therefore often hurt the
community, when they mean to do good to individuals. The larger are your
funds, the stronger is the call upon you to exert your industry and care
in disposing of them properly. It seems impossible to give rules for
this, as every case is attended with a variety of circumstances, which
must all be considered. In general, charity is most useful, when it is
appropriated to animate the industry of the young, to procure some ease
and comforts to old age, and to support in sickness those, whose daily
labour is their only maintenance in health. They, who are fallen into
indigence, from circumstances of ease and plenty, and in whom education
and habit have added a thousand wants to those of nature, must be
considered with the tenderest sympathy by every feeling heart. It is
needless to say, that to such the bare support of existence is scarcely
a benefit, and that the delicacy and liberality of the manner, in which
relief is here offered, can alone make it a real act of kindness. In
great families, the waste of provisions, sufficient for the support of
many poor ones, is a shocking abuse of the gifts of Providence: nor
should any lady think it beneath her to study the best means of
preventing it, and of employing the refuse of luxury in the relief of
the poor. Even the smallest families may give some assistance in this
way, if care is taken that nothing be wasted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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