JUDGE GILLIES ON GOVERNMENT CHARITIES.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1266, 9 April 1878, Page 3

JUDGE GILLIES ON GOVERNMENT CHARITIES.

At the twenty-first annual meeting of the Auckland Ladies' Benevolent Society the chair was occupied by Judge Gillies, who took occasion to reply to some strictures on the efficiency of the* society which had appeared in one of the papers, f n doing so he made the following remarks on Government administration of charity in general:—" I believe, also, it can be shown that assistance afforded by such societies as this is more acceptable to the objects of it, and more efficacious, than any money which Government might give to be administered under Government supervision. For it ceases to be charity, or to have any of the characteristic influences of charity, when money is voted by Government or dispensed by Government officers. The money so given is looked upon in the light of a tax, and the hand of charity is closed in the presence of such enforced contributions. Government money is often wastefully administered, and the enforcement of its payment does not fall equally on all according to their means, often pressing heaviest on those who were least able to bear it. Such funds are more likely to be mismanaged in such hands, so that I will take the liberty of saying that in Government institutions for the dispensation of charity there is, as a rule, much more mismanagement than in institutions purely voluntary. In societies like this the supervision is sympathetic as well as effectual. . . . The public know that money entrusted to these ladies will be carefully expended for the purpose the donors had in view—the relief of distress. Where there is Government money expended for these objects charity is exeluded, thrust out as it were, and the least deserving sets up the same churn as the truly deserving and necessitous. 1 hope that will never be the case here."