We are apt to think of this as the great age of charities, as it is indeed the age of great charities; but in past centuries, when public and official charities and reformatories were practically unknown, private charities did the more abound, and covered many fields, especially local fields, which are now considered as the public functions of the state or the local community. In the earlier days the state took no steps to relieve pauperism or improve the highways, and these, with most forms of education, were dependent upon the help of individuals or of private foundations. Therefore, early philanthropists endowed many things which they would now be taxed to support. Thus there were formerly many more objects of private charity than at present, and probably a relatively larger amount of charitable giving.

In this country we cannot appreciate how numerous were these earlier charitable, educational and ecclesiastical foundations nor how troublesome they became, because so many were badly managed or grew obsolete. In 1818 Lord Brougham brought the question of the abuse of private charitable foundations before the House of Commons and thereafter succeeded in obtaining the appointment of four successive commissions of inquiry. These sat from 1818 to 1837 and were the longest in duration and the most prolific in facts of all parliamentary inquiries. The results of their investigations are embodied in thirty-eight folio volumes, comprising about 25,000 pages, compiled at a cost of $1,250,000, and describing 28,880 charities, with an aggregate annual income of six million dollars. Yet these commissions apparently overlooked more than 4,000 regular endowments which were subsequently discovered and listed.

England and Wales, with an area of only 58,324 square miles, or less than one and one-fifth times the size of the State of New York, contain 14,458 civil parishes, that is, districts upon which separate poor rates are levied. In 1876, eighty per centum of these parishes, comprising over ninety-five per centum of the total population of England and Wales, possessed private charitable, educational and other like endowments bring