Not a Sunday, and scarcely a day, passes, but contributions are solicited from the poorer traders of the Jews, to which the most indigent add their pence, with the _true_ feelings of Jewish benevolence, in the hope of mitigating the poignant sufferings of the applicants. "The charity which plenty gives to poverty is human and earthly, but it becomes divine and heavenly when poverty gives to want." The great sums distributed in known or public charities are more than doubled by the continual call upon the purses of the donors; and being so well answered, it is impossible to calculate the amount. The wealthy are daily subjected to these visitations, and in few instances is the immediate pecuniary relief refused. It is scarcely necessary to point out the expensiveness of this mode of relief, it being self-evident; but that is a very small portion of the evil it entails. If it ended here, I would say, Send not a mendicant, no matter what his creed or country, from you unrelieved; as the very necessity that induces the application is sufficient reason for relief, should even the applicant be thought unworthy: but the mischief STOPS not here; it is only the _commencement_--it encourages, instead of checking, mendicity--it produces beggars where it should make artizans--it encourages consumers instead of helping producers--it assists idlers when its object is and should be to support the industrious.[A] All indiscriminate charity must therefore be an evil to the body, an injury to the community: it begets a class of persons that spend the easily obtained funds as improperly as they were procured--it degrades the minds of the recipients, while the wealthy donors look more frequently with disgust than compassion on the receiver; in short, no persons can become more debased in mind and body than habitual beggars, of which a very large number exists among the Jews--uncontrolled, unchecked, and unprovided for--in spite of all the efforts of the "charities" and Synagogue funds, nearly all of which are casual. The sums thus distributed should, and would, suffice to maintain all the paupers of the Jews; but the inefficiency of the administration permits them to devote their entire time in successfully preventing one charitable institution from arriving at the knowledge of what they receive from another, and to extort from private sources as much as possible. These are facts known to us all: but, in the charitableness of our hearts, we fear to come boldly forward and provide at once entirely for all these mendicants, who should be properly taken care of, clothed, fed, and housed; and the expenditures of the present day would be sufficient, if carefully arranged.