It was not then a fashionable habit, and he never spoke of it or made
capital out of his experience; but he went to have an acquaintance
that should be _teres et rotundus_ with all phases of life. He never
attempted to relieve misery by indiscriminate charity; his principles
were strongly against it.

"I don't profess to understand the economical condemnation of
indiscriminate charity. I don't see why one set of people should not
spend in necessaries what another set would only spend in luxuries.

"But I do understand this: that it does infinite harm, by accustoming
the poor to think that all the help they will get from the upper
classes till they rise up themselves and lay hands upon it, will be
indiscriminate half-sovereigns. The clergy are beginning to disabuse
them of this idea. It is a fact which does appeal to them when they
see a man that they recognize belongs by right to the 'high life' and
could drive in his carriage, or at any rate in somebody else's, and
have meat four times a day—when they see such a man coming and
staying among them, certainly not for pleasure or money, or even,
for a long time, at least, love, it impresses them far more than the
Non-conformists or Revivalists who attempt the same kind of thing.

"And that's the sort of help I want them to look for—intelligent
sympathy and interest in them. To most of them no amount of relief or
education could do any good now; it would only produce a rank foliage
of vice, which is slightly restrained by hard labour and hard food.
Sensualism is a taint in their blood now.

"They want elevating and refining in some way, and you can only do it
with brutes through their affections."