It is all very well to say, how can it be helped?
Why, it was not so in our grandfathers' time.
Behind us they were in many ways, but they were not met every winter with the spectacle of starving thousands.

The fact is, we have accepted the marvellous prosperity which has in the last twenty years been granted us, without reflecting on the conditions attached to it, and without nerving ourselves to the exertion and the sacrifices which their fulfilment demands." And yet Mr.Denison clearly saw that if the people were sufficiently educated, and taught to practise the virtue of Thrift, much of this misery might be prevented.

"The people," he elsewhere says, "_create_ their destitution and their disease.

Probably there are hardly any of the most needy who, if they had been only moderately frugal and provident, could not have placed themselves in a position to tide over the occasional months of want of work, or of sickness, which there always must be....

I do not underrate the difficulty of laying by out of weekly earnings, but I say it _can_ be done.