_The Central Government._--The central government must, first of all, undertake those duties which, for financial reasons, the municipal authorities, district councils, _ad hoc_ authorities, &c. cannot attempt. It must also satisfy certain general needs--that is, those needs whose mode of satisfaction is unaffected by varying local conditions. As in other departments of administrative activity, so also in the sphere of child-protection, a certain uniformity is requisite; and this uniformity can be attained in no other way than by the intervention of the central government. The satisfaction of very pressing needs, the overcoming of extraordinary difficulties, is possible only to the central government. Even in those countries in which local self-government is in a very advanced state of development, it is better that such legislative activity as is requisite in the domain of child-protection should be left to the central government. The central government more readily takes over the duties of child-protection from the hands of the community at large than from the local authorities. As time goes on, ecclesiastical and voluntary benevolent activities become ever less important and less extensive as compared with those of the State. Whereas in ancient times private benevolence, and in the Middle Ages ecclesiastical benevolence, played the principal parts, in our own times these are more and more superseded by organised communal effort operating through the central government. At first the State takes over only the negative side of destitution--police regulation of mendicancy and the like. To-day there does not remain a single civilised State without at least the first beginnings of a national relief of destitution. The tendency to extend ever more widely the province of national responsibility for the relief of destitution is quite unmistakable. Those who oppose this tendency are already in a minority, and their number continues to diminish. State systems of poor-relief are by no means faultless, but the errors are not ineradicable; many of the defects are remediable, and are, in fact, being remedied as time goes on. In this respect the tendency of evolution in England, the classical land of national poor-relief, is extremely satisfactory.