their parental responsibility, badly though they discharge it, than one
may handle the litter of a she-wolf.

These considerations alone would suffice to make us very suspicious of
the philanthropic method of direct assistance, so far as the remedial
aspect goes. But there is another more sweeping and comprehensive
objection to this method. Philanthropic institutions, as a matter of
fact, rarely succeed in doing what they profess and intend to do.

I do not allude here to the countless swindlers and sham institutions
that levy a tremendous tribute upon the heedless good. Quite apart from
that wastage altogether, and speaking only of such _bona fide_
institutions as would satisfy Mr. Labouchere, they do not work. It is
one thing for the influential and opulent inactive person of good
intentions to provide a magnificent building and a lavish endowment for
some specific purpose, and quite another to attain in reality the
ostensible end of the display. It is easy to create a general effect of
providing comfort and tender care for helpless women who are becoming
mothers, and of tending and training and educating their children, but,
in cold fact, it is impossible to get enough capable and devoted people
to do the work. In cold fact, lying-in hospitals have a tendency to
become austere, hard, unsympathetic, wholesale concerns, with a
disposition to confuse and substitute moral for physical well-being. In
cold fact, orphanages do not present any perplexing resemblance to an
earthly paradise. However warm the heart behind the cheque, the human
being at the other end of the chain is apt to find the charity no more
than a rather inhuman machine. Shining devotees there are, but able,
courageous, and vigorous people are rare, and the world urges a
thousand better employments upon them than the care of inferior mothers
and inferior children. Exceptionally good people owe the world the duty