The Gurney Professor of History and Political Science at Harvard University, Mr. David Owen, has produced a comprehensive and thoroughly entertaining survey of charity in England and Wales—he has little to say on Scotland or Ireland—in the last 300 years. This is English Philanthropy 1660-1960 (Oxford University Press, yos.).

The story he has to tell is in many respects one of astonishing endeavour and success, and he quotes a report which appeared in The Times in 1885 to the effect that the income of London charities was at that time greater than the revenues of Sweden or Denmark or Portugal and twice that of the Swiss Confederation.

ROOTED IN CHARITY Charitable efforts may not have solved the problems of poverty or bad housing, but, as Mr. Owen points out, virtually every national social service now functioning had its roots in charitable enterprise. Mr. Owen regards sympathetically the complementary roles played in Britain today by the state and voluntary agencies and quotes the Nathan Report: "While a society is alive and growing it will not make rigid choices between state action and voluntary action, but both alike will expand as the common expression of its vitality".

Many colourful figures emerge from these pages. There was Thomas Firman in the iyth century, who after the great plague provided the poor of London with raw materials for continuing their work and then began to stockpile corn and coal for them. He collected money with great assiduity from his friends, raising large sums for St. Thomas's Hospital and Christ's Hospital, for Huguenot refugees, for releasing debtors from prison and for printing the Bible in Welsh.

GUY AND WILBERFORCE There was Thomas Guy, who made his money largely by importing copies of the English Bible printed in the Netherlands and by speculating successfully in the shares of the South Sea Company, and whose name is still commemorated in his great hospital.

There was William Wilberforce, who regularly gave away one-quarter of his income and subscribed to some 70 organisations. Wilberforce was one of those who attended the meeting at the City of London Tavern in 1824 when the body now known as the Royal National Life-boat Institution came into being.

CONFESSES SURPRISE On the history and administration of the R.N.L.I. Mr. Owen is both thorough and scrupulous. He admits that in considering its work he began with an attitude of surprise, writing: "To Americans it is something of a paradox that in semisocialised Britain an essential service, which in the United States from the early days was handled by the Coast Guard, is left to a private charitable agency. Like [continued on page 358 many other things that foreigners find mysterious in British life this is a result of historical circumstances, almost of historical accident." He then goes on to analyse the findings of the Select Committee of the House of Commons towards the end of the last century, which emphatically pronounced in favour of the voluntary system for the life-boat service.

INDEPENDENT SPIRIT On the organisation today he comments: "At the Grosvenor Gardens headquarters one senses a determination, born of a long and honorable tradition, to continue as an independent service, neither subsidised nor controlled by public agencies." Mr. Owen's book is unlikely to be superseded as a standard work on charity in the period which he has covered.

P.H..