684 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



by fewer hands. Countries, equally with the several pro- 

 ducers of wealth in them, are being done to death by those 

 who have succeeded in appraising their own worth by a gold 

 standard, no matter how the gold was obtained. 



The hive of human working-bees was never so industrious 

 in this world of ours as it is to-day, and at no other period 

 was a single individual so capable of producing so much by 

 the application of the arts and sciences to the industrial needs 

 of mankind. And yet, with so much that makes for a pro- 

 mised time of comfort and contentment, it cannot be said 

 that poverty is decreasing, and that those who toil will never 

 be in want. Indeed, the various forms of benevolence that are 

 to be met with the world over show that poverty is rampant, 

 though wealth is equally rampant, no matter whether we 

 take our standpoint to view the scene in the old or in the 

 newer centres of civilisation and refinement. Poverty is 

 rampant ! And to show the truth of this in the richest 

 country of the world it is only necessary to point out that 

 in the year 1888 there were 825,507 paupers in England, 

 while the sum of £8,626,164 was paid for their mainten- 

 ance, or at the rate of £10 9s. per head per annum. In addi- 

 tion to this vast army of poor and needy, there were 157,103 

 paupers of the better class, but who are classed as pensioners, 

 and are maintained directly out of State funds, and not from 

 the rates. The cost of each pensioner was at the rate of 

 £49 per annum, or nearly five times as great as that paid for 

 each of the paupers, the total grant for pensions being 

 £7,731,405. 



It is not necessary to point out the conditions existing in 

 the Australian Colonies, or in America, or Europe. The con- 

 trasts are equally as marked in those continents as in the case 

 cited. Our own country, young as it is, has not escaped the 

 blighting prospects of poverty in homes by a comfortless old 

 age. As yet these aspects of our social life have not become 

 so evident as in the Old World, but they are sufficiently marked 

 to show that as years go by the contrast between poverty and 

 riches is becoming more and more pronounced. Charitable Aid 

 Boards, homes, refuges, industrial schools, and others are al- 

 ready in existence, and in 1895 the Government paid a subsidy 

 on account of charitable aid amounting to £51,212, to which 

 the sum of £38,907 must be added as the amount derived from 

 rates. The number of inmates in the sixteen benevolent 

 asylums of the colony at the end of 1895 was 1,169 males and 

 775 females, of whom 866 males and 261 females were over 

 fifty years of age ; whilst out-relief was given to 3,776 persons. 



It would be useless to give the almost fabulous amount of 

 wealth owned by England at the present time, and it is hardly 

 necessary to show that the wealth of New Zealand is increasing 



