Hill. — National Pensions. 701 



that one-half of those over the age of sixty years would be- 

 come claimants for a pension under the necessary conditions 

 of granture- — a proportion much higher than may be expected 

 — the totalhabilities would be £487,994. Thus between pos- 

 sible income and expenditure there is a large margin sufficient 

 to provide contingencies for special cases, and arrange for yet 

 wider benefits in the way of a sick fund as the system becomes 

 more firmly established. 



The scheme here suggested has the merit of being mainly 

 self-sustaining and self-supporting. Every participant of a 

 pension will have provided during the course of years an 

 endowment for himself or herself, and it will not be a ques- 

 tion of poverty bending as a suppliant at the footstool of 

 charity, but it will be old age living in peaceful comfort and 

 content as the outcome of prudential conditions and foresight 

 exercised by a paternal Government. 



In the course of years the claimants would naturally in- 

 crease, and the cost of maintenance would also increase by 

 the sum of £26 for every such addition ; but on such a popu- 

 lation basis as I have quoted above there would be a corre- 

 sponding increase of twenty-six or twenty-seven additional 

 persons added to the number of those entitled to pay their Id. 

 a day into a pension fund, and thus the annual income avail- 

 able for expenditure would be increased even at a greater rate 

 than the proportionate increase of claimants. Under the 

 German system of pensions a condition is attached to the 

 effect that pensions are not subject to pledging, mortgaging, 

 or seizure of any kind. This of necessity would be required 

 under any scheme, as the aim of a generalised scheme is to do 

 away with all those forms of charity which debase humanity, 

 and are a blot upon our modern civilisation. A pension 

 should suffice for fair comfortable maintenance. 



No charity should intervene in the case of pensions, and 

 should it be found that any pensioner abused the privilege of 

 his pension he should be dealt with as is done so successfully 

 in the case of children committed to industrial schools. The 

 boarding-out system has proved highly valuable as a means of 

 training children, and old pensioners who are thriftless might 

 well be " boarded out," the maintenance allowance being paid 

 directly to those who undertake their charge. 



The system which I have been compelled so briefly to out- 

 line does not affect in the slightest all those forms of thrift 

 such as are open to the public at present. Friendly societies 

 may go on in their own way, assurances may continue to be 

 effected on the lives of the people by the various companies 

 now doing business, and all forms of thrift — such as building 

 societies and savings-banks — may do their part in taking 

 charge of the surplus moneys of the workers and the thrifty. 



