And real fellowship will be possible for the simple reason that “charity” will be superfluous. In modern life, the material destitution of large numbers of people has necessitated the organisation of relief on a large scale, both public and private; and while the charitable impulse is intrinsically admirable, the conditions under which it has come to be exercised have in effect widened the gulf between the rich and the poor. On the one hand the rich have contracted the habit of condescending patronage; and the poor have fallen into a habit of cunning obsequiousness. In self-defence the rich have built up a machinery of investigation and distribution which has had three disastrous results: _first_, it has set up the monstrous and unfair test of deservingness,—“the deserving poor” is a phrase in which the well-to-do have forever crystallised their pharisaism; _second_, it has set a premium upon the petty tactics of evasion and deceit among the poor, and upon a corresponding cunning and astuteness in those entrusted with the business of investigation; and _third_, it has eliminated from charity the one element which could make it tolerable and preserve the grace which should properly go with it—namely, friendly contact. For the most part, the relief of destitution through charitable organisations, has—because it eliminates the direct personal touch between need and supply—produced and aggravated a deep and deplorable social schism. Nor is the case any better with the public organisation of poor relief. The English poor-law has been so completely discredited and is so near dissolution that it is hardly necessary to discuss it here. It is more impersonal in its operations than a charity organisation society; but its most evil consequence is that it has so worked as to attach a stigma to honest poverty—for the person who has received poor-relief is denied the rights of citizenship. Old age has fortunately been provided for in Great Britain in the only worthy way, by a grant of state-pensions, though the actual amount of the pension is pitifully inadequate. Yet the fact of the provision indicates a distinct advance in the sense of public justice. But we shall not make much more progress until we realise that the pauper like the plutocrat is a social product; and that such destitution as prevails to-day is due less to personal perversity than to a vicious social order. No one is so foolishly hopeful as to suppose that even the most radical social change will eliminate the prodigal and the spendthrift and the sensualist. Nevertheless, it is no longer open to question that a revolution in economic conditions would do much to remove the auxiliary causes of pauperising excess.