A compromise between kindliness and cruelty often stands--according to Mr. Galsworthy--for social reform. The Poor Law is an example of such compromise. In kindliness it offers doles of out-relief to the destitute and builds institutions at extravagant cost. In cruelty it disregards human feelings, breaks up family life, suspects poverty as a crime, and degrades labour into punishment. The Poor Law, however, receives almost universal condemnation. Its cost is enormous, amounting to over fourteen millions a year. The incidence is so unfair that its call on the rich districts is comparatively light, and in poor districts inordinately heavy. Its administration is both confused and loose. Its relief follows no principle--out-relief is given in one district and refused in others;--its institutions sometimes attract and sometimes deter applications, and its expenditure is often at the mercy of self-seeking Guardians, whose minds are set on securing cheap labour or even on secret commissions. The poor, whom at such vast cost and with such parade of machinery it relieves, are often demoralized. There is neither worth nor joy to be got out of the pauper, who has learned to measure success in life by skill in evading inquiry. And, what is most striking of all, the Poor Law has allowed a mass of poverty to accumulate which has led to the erection of charity upon charity, and is still, by its squalor, its misery and hopelessness, a disgrace and a danger to the nation. The public, recognizing the failure of the Poor Law, has become indifferent to its existence, and now only a small percentage of the electors record their votes at an election of the guardians of the poor. The case for reform is clear. What that reform should be is a question not to be answered in the compass of a short article. The best I can do is to offer for the consideration of my readers some principles which I believe to underlie reform. Those principles once accepted, it will be for every one to consider with what modifications or extensions they may be applied to the different circumstances of town and country, young and old, weak and strong.