Lord Derby, in laying the first stone of a new
borough hospital at Bootle, a suburb of Liverpool, has expressed his opinion that it is far from unlikely that the provision for the relief of the diseases of the poor throughout the kingdom may before very long be thrown upon the rates, just as the provision for the education of the poor, and for the support of the absolutely destitute, are already. Still he does not wish to see this change as yet ; "it is good that society should have a wide field for the exercise of personal energy and private munificence because so the poorest class are reconciled in some measure to the existence of the inevitable inequalities of fortune, and the possessors of wealth are reconciled by their claims upon them to the fact that in a moral and social, though not in a legal point of view, their property is only in the nature of a trust." There is a good deal in the first reason ; but as to the second, we don't sup- pose that many of those who really hold their property as a trust for others need reconciling to that trust, nor do we quite see how they could be reconciled to it, by being constantly asked to give. No doubt, calling your property a trust for others does pretty often reconcile you to spending 99 per cent, of it upon yourself, — which is by no means, however, Lord Derby's plan. He ended his speech very happily by remarking that now that Bootle had got a hospital, it was no paradox to say that their next effort should be so to diminish the causes of sickness that it should get no patients ; and he answered for himself that so far as his interest in Bootle was concerned, Bootle should have "broad streets, good drainage, plenty of light, and plenty of air."
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