JUDGE GILLIES ON GOVERNMENT CHARITIES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 89, 13 April 1878, Page 4

JUDGE GILLIES ON GOVERNMENT CHARITIES.

At the twenty-first annual meeting of the Auckland Ladies Benevolent Society the cbatr was occupied by Judge Gillies, who took occasion to reply to some strictures on the e&ciency of the society which had appeared in one of the papers. Iv doinnso he raade the following remarks on Government administration of charity m geneitf :-« I believe, also, it can be shoP'n that assistance afforded by such societies as this is more acceptable to the objects of it, and more efficacious, that 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 iv 'the light of a tsx, and the hand of charity is closed in the presence of such enforced contributions. Government money is often wasfefully administered and the enforcement of its payment does not fall equally on all according to their means, often pressing heaviest on those who are least able to bear it. Such funds are more likely to bemtamanaged in such hands, so that I will take the liberty of saying (hat in Government institutions for the dispensation of charity there is, as a rule, much more mismanagement than in institutions purely voluntary. In societies like^hie the supervision is sympathetic as well •&b 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 excluded, thrußfc out as it were, and the least deserving SBts ■up the same claim as the truly deserv- . iog and necessitous. I hope that will never be the case here."