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The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1878.

Charities ; Chari table Aid ; Charitable Institutions. All these expressions will be heard often enough before it is determined how they are to be conducted in New Zealand, and they will need some better definition than has yet been attempted. Endowments for charities in England were private foundations, and for a long time the State only interfered to prevent alienations in mortmain. But, gradually, under certain restrictions, facilities were given for devising lands to corporations for charitable aids, and thus charities of all kinds have grown and flourished, and been abused. Acts have been passed for regulating them, and, of late, all such trusts have undergone searching supervision and sweeping reform. But in England the State has never proposed to endow or subsidise charities, or endeavored in any way to make them State remarkable that from the earliest days the State was rather called on to check or regulate, private benevolence than to encourage it ; and, as wealth increased in the country, the many noble charitable institutions that sprang up bore witness to the recognition by individuals of their duties and responsibilities as citizens. We have necessarily brought out with us to a young country an artificial state of society, and it was necessary for the Government, for a time, to provide what private wealth and private munificence have provided at Horne. There is danger lest in consequence of this necessity being thrust upon us the fountain of private charity should be checked, and the wealthy among us, and those who have been fortunate, should forget what is due from them to the poor and the unfortunate. The States of America were settled while society in England was still far less artificial than it is at present, and the people did not think it necessary to call on the Government to meet all cases, of misfortune which arose from poverty or accident. But in Now Zealand, from the earliest days, or rather as soon as funds were forthcoming, not from taxes, but from land sales, it became the custom to look to tho State to assist every case of misfortune that might occur. _ It may be said that in England there is a poor rate charged on the district, and that hero there is none. Exactly, the charge for tho poor is on the district; and in England this legal charge became necessary owing to the general growth and density of the population. With our scattered and very small population, the charges for charitable aid should certainly bo local, and they should not be so lavish as to discharge or render obsolete, on the part of individuals or societies, the practice of endowing and maintaining charities. There are institutions which have been considered as on the border line, and which are sometimosspokenof as necessarily Slate institutions, and at other times as in the same category with hospitals and benevolent asylums. It has been asked, what are we to do with our lunatic asylums, our industrial schools, our orphanages? The lavish support ac-

corded in some places to all local institutions by the Provincial Gavernments, so long as there were funds available from any quarter, —either from land or from capitation grants voted by the Assembly,— has tended to confuse men’s minds, the more so as different rules and practices obtained in different provinces, according to the abundance or paucity of their resources. Now, it appears to us that there is a very clear line of demarcation in such cases. There is nothing to justify interference or contribution on the part of the State towards tho support of such purely charitable institutions as orphanages, for instance ; but the case of industrial or reformatory schools, and of lunatic asylums, is widely different. All persons committed to such places as these are deprived of their liberty on public grounds, and the State which deprives them of their liberty is alone bound to maintain, regulate, and inspect the institutions in which they are confined. There is no shirking this responsibility. No place of confinement, whether for curative or reformative or punitive purposes, can be looked ou as a charity. It is a State institution in the strict sense of the word, and must under no circumstances be handed over to private management, or to local inspection.

It is not so easy to determine what local institutions or charities should be left to private enterprise and what should be administered by local bodies in the legal sense of the term, such as borough councils and city councils, or two or more of such bodies acting jointly. Much will depend on the circumstances of different localities and on tho extent to which private effort has been stimulated. It would not be well for the Legislature to lay down any binding rule; indeed, the advisability of giving complete freedom for local action is in itself a good reason for avoiding direct subsidies to charitable institutions on the part of the State. Such questions as these must be allowed to work themselves out, and the problems which now vex the souls of our legislators will, in time, solve themselves. Only in this way shall we gain the experience necessary under such new conditions as those which surround us, or secure the hearty co-opera-tion of the whole community. In different parts of the country very different opinions are held as to the management of charitable institutions. In some places the local bodies are prepared to take the whole control; in others private initiative has already taken possession of the field. So long as no confusion is made between the duties which pertain to the State and those which are purely local, the Legislature may leave the rest to the localities themselves. It will probably be found that the large hospitals in the chief centres of population, such as Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch,, and Dunedin, will be best managed by unions of boroughs and counties as may be found most convenient. Smaller hospitals and benevolent institutions of all kinds might either be directly managed by a county or borough council, or might be subsidised by county or borough in such a way as to encourage to the utmost individual interest and individual contributions.

But, to enable the local bodies to do their duty in tills respect, it will be necessary that for the present the whole of the funds they require for all purposes should not be levied by direct rates. The subsidies now distributed by law in proportion to the rates levied are a simple means of giving to the local bodies the advantage of using the State machine for raising some of their funds by way of indirect taxation. In proportion as they rate themselves, so far they claim their share of the taxation levied by Customs and other duties. The Government appears to be exceedingly foggy as to the course which must be pursued. During the last session Sir George Grey asserted that the State must undertake the maintenance and control of charitable institutions. His colleagues have been lately busy endeavoring to get the local bodies to undertake them by promises of double subsidies. The first scheme is, of course, given up. No one expected that the Government would be bound by the wild talk of the Premier. But the offer of more than the local bodies expected, and more than tho State can afford to give, has raised a not unnatural suspicion that existing subsidies are as uncertain as those further ones dangled before the eyes of local councillors. There is to be a conference of County Chairmen, at Wellington, in July. If they intend to gain any practical advantage from the gathering, they should be prepared to discuss the questions to be considered, on broad principles. But with respect to the assistance to be obtained from the State, they had better consider not only what they would like to receive, but also what the State can aftord to give. Wo believe that the present subsidies can and will be continued, but that charitable institutions of all kinds must, in the end mainly, bo a charge upon local revenues. As, in England a great part of the burden of relieving distress has been taken off the shoulders of the rateyayers by means of landed endowments, so, here, wo must hope to see charities liberally endowed, as wealth is accumulated by private individuals. But at the present time it is impossible to forget that tho State is tho great landlord in New Zealand, and that it has lately taken over estates which wore hitherto locally owned and locally administered. It is therefore reasonable to expect that such necessary institutions as the large hospitals and the other most important charities throughout the country should be endowed by means of land selected in the land district to which they belong. No large revenues would immediately accrue from such endowments, but the permanency of the institutions would be secured, and they would be placed in a comparatively safe position. Financial policies change with changing Governments, and with altered circumstances, and subsidies depend, after all, on the vote of the House from year to year. In settling this question of charitable institutions, at a time when the General Government has assumed possession of all the waste lauds of the Crown, it would bo just and wise on the part of the State to set an example to all other landlords, and to endow reasonably the most important charities in the country.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZTIM18780612.2.9

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5369, 12 June 1878, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,588

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1878. New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5369, 12 June 1878, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1878. New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5369, 12 June 1878, Page 2

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