A HAVEN OF REST 



which, we are all aware, the British State makes such a 

 brilliant success. We know how the poor love the 

 Workhouse, and how happy they are in it / yet one can 

 scarcely take up a police report without finding some 

 desperate pauper sentenced for revolt. Oh, no doubt it 

 will be a Merry England when these disinterested and 

 dashing tinkers get their way. 



We have known, in parenthesis, a pauper establishment, 

 run by voluntary effort, in which a hundred and fifty old 

 men and ninety old women were kept happy and con- 

 tented by a handful of soft-voiced nuns. No need to call 

 in the policeman, in Portobello Road / for there old age is 

 reverenced at once and pitied, and the double aspect of 

 the most natural of all the commandments is put into 

 everyday practice, so unobtrusively and simply that no 

 one can guess how heroically. 



But the religious question will soon be treated in the same 

 way as the land question / so no invidious comparisons need 

 be drawn. Little boys and little girls are to be taught that 

 the State is henceforth to take the place of God in their infant 

 minds. How comfortable and warm a creed ! How it 

 will strengthen their character for living, and ease the 

 thoughts of the dying. There is no God: but there is a 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer and a dashing gentleman at 

 the Home Office, you have not been created or re- 

 deemed, little boy ! We have no prayers to teach you. 

 There are no divine commandments which you need obey 

 -naturally, since there is no Divine Father. There are 

 no sacraments to sustain and elevate your soulfor little 

 boys and girls have no souls ! But cheer ye : you were 

 evolved by a natural process, and the State is here to 



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