The last, best fruit which comes to late perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
That philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathise with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.
This is true philanthropy, that buries not its gold in ostentatious charity, but builds its hospital in the human heart.
I have never known a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other.--_Coleridge._
Love it not, and yet love it. Love it with the love of Him who gave His Son to die for it. Love it with the love of Him who shed His blood for it. Love it with the love of angels, who rejoice in its conversion. Love it to do it good, giving your tears to its sufferings, your pity to its sorrows, your wealth to its wants, your prayers to its miseries, and to its fields of charity, and philanthropy, and Christian piety, your powers and hours of labor. You cannot live without affecting it, or being affected by it. You will make the world better, or it will make you worse.
Violence stinks, no matter which end of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan. Sometimes people are just begging for that frypan, and if we weaken for a moment and honor their request, we should regard it as impulsive philanthropy, which we aren't in any position to afford, but shouldn't regret it too loudly lest we spoil the purity of the deed. -- Tom Robbins
"But such services as these might involve him with the authorities of the country in which he practices this kind of philanthropy," said Franz.
"No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I believe; and I believe the Gospel. You missed your epithet. I am not a pagan, but a Christian philosopher--a follower of the sect of Jesus. As His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines. I advocate them: I am sworn to spread them. Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original qualities thus:--From the minute germ, natural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy. From the wild stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master's kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the cross. So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the best account; pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated 'till this mortal shall put on immortality.'"
In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads, Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by him to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then, as Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in forged Russian money which he had prepared: "Raising the use of these means by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let relief be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food was too precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part enemies, Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to purchase food from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them."
"I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing any one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more of affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere strangers."
Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to the unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.
"So much the better for him,--he will suffer less," said the inspector. He was, as this remark shows, a man full of philanthropy, and in every way fit for his office.
"Well, you know whom," said Pierre, with a meaning glance from under his brows. "Prince Theodore and all those. To encourage culture and philanthropy is all very well of course. The aim is excellent but in the present circumstances something else is needed."
At first he was worried at the arrest of the servant, but his illness and death soon set his mind at rest, for the man's death was apparently (so he reflected at the time) not owing to his arrest or his fright, but a chill he had taken on the day he ran away, when he had lain all night dead drunk on the damp ground. The theft of the money and other things troubled him little, for he argued that the theft had not been committed for gain but to avert suspicion. The sum stolen was small, and he shortly afterwards subscribed the whole of it, and much more, towards the funds for maintaining an almshouse in the town. He did this on purpose to set his conscience at rest about the theft, and it's a remarkable fact that for a long time he really was at peace--he told me this himself. He entered then upon a career of great activity in the service, volunteered for a difficult and laborious duty, which occupied him two years, and being a man of strong will almost forgot the past. Whenever he recalled it, he tried not to think of it at all. He became active in philanthropy too, founded and helped to maintain many institutions in the town, did a good deal in the two capitals, and in both Moscow and Petersburg was elected a member of philanthropic societies.
In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his physical strength and health, of which he had till then been unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact that the privations came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this time he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning--and all these quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.
In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space, where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and therefore--to see it and enjoy its contemplation--he naturally threw away the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became. That dreadful question, "What for?" which had formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question, "What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: "Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from a man's head."
In 1798 Joseph Lancaster, himself a Friend, opened his first school for the education of the poor; and the cause of unsectarian religious education found in the Quakers steady support. They also took an active part in Sir Samuel Romilly's efforts to ameliorate the penal code, in prison reform, with which the name of Elizabeth Fry (a Friend) is especially connected, and in the efforts to ameliorate the condition of lunatics in England (the Friends' Retreat at York, founded in 1792, was the earliest example in England of kindly treatment of the insane). It is noteworthy that Quaker efforts for the education of the poor and philanthropy in general, though they have always been Christian in character, have not been undertaken primarily for the purpose of bringing proselytes within the body, and have not done so to any great extent. Entry: A
It was justly observed by Sir Joshua Fitch (_Ency. Brit._, 10th ed., xxvii. p. 655) that "the public provision for the education of the people in England is not the product of any theory or plan formulated beforehand by statesmen or philosophers; it has come into existence through a long course of experiments, compromises, traditions, successes, failures and religious controversies. What has been done in this department of public policy is the resultant of many diverse forces and of slow evolution and growth rather than of pure purpose and well-defined national aims. It has been effected in different degrees by philanthropy, by private enterprise, by religious zeal, by ancient universities and endowed foundations, by municipal and local effort, and only to a small extent by legislation. The genius--or rather characteristic habit--of the English people is averse from the philosophical system, and is disposed to regard education, not as a science, but as a body of expedients to be discovered empirically and amended from time to time as occasion may require." Clearly, then, the English system of public education, as it results from successive acts of the administration and the legislature, is one which can only adequately be appreciated in the light of an historical survey of the various stages which have led up to it and the social conditions by which they were determined. The history of state education in England begins tardily in 1832, when after a generation of hesitation and controversy a beginning was made upon an exceedingly modest scale with the system of treasury grants in aid of elementary schools. The diverse forces which were at that date at work in the education of the nation as a whole, retarding state interference and marking out the limits within which it was long to be confined, derive their origin from a much remoter period. Entry: A
HANWAY, JONAS (1712-1786), English traveller and philanthropist, was born at Portsmouth in 1712. While still a child, his father, a victualler, died, and the family moved to London. In 1729 Jonas was apprenticed to a merchant in Lisbon. In 1743, after he had been some time in business for himself in London, he became a partner with Mr Dingley, a merchant in St Petersburg, and in this way was led to travel in Russia and Persia. Leaving St Petersburg on the 10th of September 1743, and passing south by Moscow, Tsaritsyn and Astrakhan, he embarked on the Caspian on the 22nd of November, and arrived at Astrabad on the 18th of December. Here his goods were seized by Mohammed Hassan Beg, and it was only after great privations that he reached the camp of Nadir Shah, under whose protection he recovered most (85%) of his property. His return journey was embarrassed by sickness (at Resht), by attacks from pirates, and by six weeks' quarantine; and he only reappeared at St Petersburg on the 1st of January 1745. He again left the Russian capital on the 9th of July 1750 and travelled through Germany and Holland to England (28th of October). The rest of his life was mostly spent in London, where the narrative of his travels (published in 1753) soon made him a man of note, and where he devoted himself to philanthropy and good citizenship. In 1756 he founded the Marine Society, to keep up the supply of British seamen; in 1758 he became a governor of the Foundling, and established the Magdalen, hospital; in 1761 he procured a better system of parochial birth-registration in London; and in 1762 he was appointed a commissioner for victualling the navy (10th of July); this office he held till October 1783. He died, unmarried, on the 5th of September 1786. He was the first Londoner, it is said, to carry an umbrella, and he lived to triumph over all the hackney coachmen who tried to hoot and hustle him down. He attacked "vail-giving," or tipping, with some temporary success; by his onslaught upon tea-drinking he became involved in controversy with Johnson and Goldsmith. His last efforts were on behalf of little chimney-sweeps. His advocacy of solitary confinement for prisoners and opposition to Jewish naturalization were more questionable instances of his activity in social matters. Entry: HANWAY
(2) "Cartoon" is also a term now applied to the large political drawings in the humorous or satirical papers of the day. At an earlier period satirical prints were styled "caricatures," and were issued separately. Gillray, Rowlandson, the three Cruikshanks, Heath and others were popular favourites in this class of design. Even the insignificant little cuts by Robert Seymour in _Figaro in London_, the _diableries_ in _The Fly_, and the vulgar and rancorous political skits identified with the flood of scurrilous little papers of the time, were dignified by the same term. The long series of _Political Sketches_ by "H.B." (John Doyle) were the first examples of unexaggerated statement, and fair and decorous satire. With the advent of _Punch_ and its various rivals (_The Peep-Show, The Great Gun, Diogenes_ and the like), the general tone was elevated. _Punch_ at first adopted the word "pencilling" to describe the "big cut," which dealt variously with political and social topics. But when in 1843 there was held in Westminster Hall the great exhibition of "cartoons" from which selection was to be made of designs for the decoration in fresco of the new Houses of Parliament, _Punch_ jocularly professed to range himself alongside the great artists of the day; so that the "mad designe" of the reign of Charles I. became the "cartoon" of that of Queen Victoria. John Leech's drawing in No. 105 of that journal was the first caricature to be called a cartoon: it was entitled "Substance and Shadow: the Poor ask for Bread, and the Philanthropy of the State accords--an Exhibition." Later, _Punch_ dropped the word for a while, but the public took it up. Yet the _New English Dictionary_ curiously attributes the first use of it to Miss Braddon in 1863. Entry: 2
No statement of the influence which Massachusetts has exerted upon the American people, through intellectual activity, and even through vagary, is complete without an enumeration of the names which, to Americans at least, are the signs of this influence and activity. In science the state can boast of John Winthrop, the most eminent of colonial scientists; Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford); Nathaniel Bowditch, the translator of Laplace; Benjamin Peirce and Morse the electrician; not to include an adopted citizen in Louis Agassiz. In history, Winthrop and Bradford laid the foundations of her story in the very beginning; but the best example of the colonial period is Thomas Hutchinson, and in later days Bancroft, Sparks, Palfrey, Prescott, Motley and Parkman. In poetry, a pioneer of the modern spirit in American verse was Richard Henry Dana; and later came Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell and Holmes. In philosophy and the science of living, Jonathan Edwards, Franklin, Channing, Emerson and Theodore Parker. In education, Horace Mann; in philanthropy, S. G. Howe. In oratory, James Otis, Fisher Ames, Josiah Quincy, junr., Webster, Choate, Everett, Sumner, Winthrop and Wendell Phillips; and, in addition, in statesmanship, Samuel Adams, John Adams and John Quincy Adams. In fiction, Hawthorne and Mrs Stowe. In law, Story, Parsons and Shaw. In scholarship, Ticknor, William M. Hunt, Horatio Greenough, W. W. Story and Thomas Ball. The "transcendental movement," which sprang out of German affiliations and produced as one of its results the well-known community of Brook Farm (1841-1847), under the leadership of Dr George Ripley, was a Massachusetts growth, and in passing away it left, instead of traces of an organization, a sentiment and an aspiration for higher thinking which gave Emerson his following. When Massachusetts was called upon to select for Statuary Hall in the capitol at Washington two figures from the long line of her worthies, she chose as her fittest representatives John Winthrop, the type of Puritanism and state-builder, and Samuel Adams (though here the choice was difficult between Samuel Adams and John Adams) as her greatest leader in the heroic period of the War of Independence. Entry: A
HOWE, SAMUEL GRIDLEY (1801-1876), American philanthropist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, on the 10th of November 1801. His father, Joseph N. Howe, was a ship-owner and cordage manufacturer; and his mother, Patty Gridley, was one of the most beautiful women of her day. Young Howe was educated at Boston and at Brown University, Providence, and in 1821 began to study medicine in Boston. But fired by enthusiasm for the Greek revolution and by Byron's example, he was no sooner qualified and admitted to practice than he abandoned these prospects and took ship for Greece, where he joined the army and spent six years of hardship amid scenes of warfare. Then, to raise funds for the cause, he returned to America; his fervid appeals enabled him to collect about $60,000, which he spent on provisions and clothing, and he established a relief depot near Aegina, where he started works for the refugees, the existing quay, or American Mole, being built in this way. He formed another colony of exiles on the Isthmus of Corinth. He wrote a _History of the Greek Revolution_, which was published in 1828, and in 1831 he returned to America. Here a new object of interest engaged him. Through his friend Dr John D. Fisher (d. 1850), a Boston physician who had started a movement there as early as 1826 for establishing a school for the blind, he had learnt of the similar school founded in Paris by Valentin Haüy, and it was proposed to Howe by a committee organized by Fisher that he should direct the establishment of a "New England Asylum for the Blind" at Boston. He took up the project with characteristic ardour, and set out at once for Europe to investigate the problem. There he was temporarily diverted from his task by becoming mixed up with the Polish revolt, and, in pursuit of a mission to carry American contributions across the Prussian frontier, he was arrested and imprisoned at Berlin, but was at last released through the intervention of the American minister at Paris. Returning to Boston in July 1832, he began receiving a few blind children at his father's house in Pleasant Street, and thus sowed the seed which grew into the famous Perkins Institution. In January 1833 the funds available were all spent, but so much progress had been shown that the legislature voted $6000, later increased to $30,000 a year, to the institution on condition that it should educate gratuitously twenty poor blind from the state; money was also contributed from Salem, and from Boston, and Colonel Thomas H. Perkins, a prominent Bostonian, presented his mansion and grounds in Pearl Street for the school to be held there in perpetuity. This building being later found unsuitable, Colonel Perkins consented to its sale, and in 1839 the institution was moved to South Boston, to a large building which had previously been an hotel. It was henceforth known as the "Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum (or, since 1877, School) for the Blind." Howe was director, and the life and soul of the school; he opened a printing-office and organized a fund for printing for the blind--the first done in America; and he was unwearied in calling public attention to the work. The Institution, through him, became one of the intellectual centres of American philanthropy, and by degrees obtained more and more financial support. In 1837 Dr Howe went still further and brought the famous blind deaf-mute, Laura Bridgman (q.v.) to the school. Entry: HOWE
The chartered company of these days is therefore very strongly fixed within limits imposed by law on its political action. As a whole, however, very remarkable results have been achieved. This may be attributed in no small degree to the personality of the men who have had the supreme direction at home and abroad, and who have, by their social position and personal qualities, acquired the confidence of the public. With the exception of the Royal Niger Company, it would be incorrect to say that they have been financially successful, but in the domain of government generally it may be said that they have added vast territories to the British empire (in Africa about 1,700,000 sq. m.), and in these territories they have acted as a civilizing force. They have made roads, opened facilities for trade, enforced peace, and laid at all events the foundation of settled administration. It is not too much to say that they have often acted unselfishly for the benefit of the mother country and even humanity. We may instance the anti-slavery and anti-alcohol campaigns which have been carried on, the latter certainly being against the immediate pecuniary interests of the companies themselves. It must, of course, be recognized that to a certain extent this has been done under the influence of the home government. The occupation of Uganda certainly, and of the Nigerian territory and Rhodesia probably, will prove to have been rather for the benefit of posterity than of the companies which effected it. In the two cases where the companies have been bought out by the state, they have had no compensation for much that they have expended. In fact, it would have been impossible to take into account actual expenditure day by day, and the cost of wars. To use the expression of Sir William Mackinnon, the shareholders have been compelled in some cases to "take out their dividends in philanthropy." Entry: CHARTERED
BASS, the name of a family of English brewers. The founder of the firm, William Bass (b. 1720), was originally a carrier, one of his chief clients being Benjamin Printon, a Burton-on-Trent brewer. By 1777 Bass had saved a little money, and seeing the growing demand for Burton beer he started as a brewer himself. The principal market for Burton beer at that time was in St Petersburg, whither the beer could be sent by water direct from Burton via the Trent and Hull, and William Bass managed to secure a tolerable share of the large Russian orders. But in 1822 the Russian government placed a prohibitory duty on Burton ales, and the Burton brewers were forced into cultivating the home market. William Bass opened up a connexion with London, and established a fairly profitable home trade. A misunderstanding between the East India Company and the London brewers who were the proprietors of Hodgson's India [v.03 p.0490] Pale Ale, at that time the standard drink of Englishmen in the East, resulted in Bass being asked to supply a beer which would withstand the Indian climate and be generally suitable to the Indian market. After a series of experiments he produced what is still known as Bass's pale ale. This new and lighter beer at once became popular all over India, and Bass's firm became the largest in Burton. After William Bass's death the business was carried on by his son, M. T. Bass, and then by his grandson, Michael Thomas Bass (1799-1884). In 1827 a vessel laden with Bass's beer was wrecked in the Irish Channel. A large proportion of the cargo was however salved and sold at Liverpool, where it met with great approval in the local market, and through this chance circumstance the firm opened up a regular trade in the north-west of England and Ireland. "Bass" was, however, little drunk in London till 1851, when it was supplied on draught at the Exhibition of that year, since which time its reputation has been world-wide. In 1880 the business was turned into a limited liability company. Michael Thomas Bass, besides actively conducting and extending the firm's operations, was a man of great public spirit and philanthropy, and the towns of Burton and Derby are largely indebted to his munificence. He took a keen interest in all questions affecting the welfare of the working classes, and was largely instrumental in securing the abolition of imprisonment for debt. On his death, prior to which he had taken into partnership Messrs Ratcliff and Gretton, two of the leading officials of the brewery, converting the business into a limited company known as Messrs Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton, Ltd., the control of the firm passed to his sons, Michael Arthur Bass and Hamar Bass (d. 1898). Michael Arthur Bass (1837-1909), after twenty-one years in parliament as member first for Stafford, then for two divisions of Staffordshire, was in 1886 raised to the peerage as Baron Burton; by a special patent of 1897 the peerage descended to his daughter, Nellie, the wife of Mr J. E. Baillie of Dochfour, the baronetcy descending to his nephew W. A. Hamar Bass (b. 1879). Entry: BASS