It has been stated that "the depression," about which we
say something elsewhere, has dried up the springs of charity; but the Charily Record states that £3,000,000 was bequeathed in charity this year, and Mr. Burdett, the statist, estimates the total sum expended annually in charitable gifts at £7,000,000, or more than the revenue of a second-class State, and more than the sum usually raised by taxation for the poor. This, too, is independent of the great sum expended on foreign missions, and in subscriptions in aid of voluntary schools. The return is a most creditable one, and if swollen by the sum bestowed privately and without record, would excite amazement even among those who know that the British are the most liberal people in the world. We only wish we could be equally sure that the money was well spent ; but there is improvement, we believe, liven in this resin et The single failure of English charity occurs, strangely enough, in the Society for the Protection of Children, which has hardly half enough revenue to supply its peremptory needs.
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