JANUARY 71 



Ihe savings of others to their own pockets. As to the thought- 

 less or indeed wicked person who has neglected to put by suffi- 

 cient for his old age out of twelve shillings a week, well, he must 

 take the consequences and go to the workhouse with any depen- 

 dent upon him. To force him to provide for himself would be to 

 emasculate the race and to deprive it of the instinct of thrift and 

 the stimulus of relf-denial. 



\V'ell. if this be so, I should like to see the race emasculated. 

 I think that the object of all good government ought to be to 

 provide for the greatest happiness of the greatest number in 

 every legitimate way that does not involve interfering with the 

 established rights of others. T think that the • survival of the 

 fittest ' theory can be pushed too far. It is very well to point to 

 Nature ; but I answer that I do not approve of Nature — that in fact 

 all our life as a race, as communities, as individuals, is one long 

 struggle against Nature. Of course Nature must win in the end, 

 but at least we can mitigate her cruelties. My sympathies go out 

 ■ to the weak, the unfortunate, and even to the improvident. T am 

 more moved by the sight — let us say — of the drayman who, with 

 his family, sinks to the workhouse because of a too frequent indul- 

 gence in bad beer (bought at a ' tied house ') than by that of the 

 glory of his employer, the brewer, who (having had opportunity 

 and being strong and provident), because he has mastered the art 

 of making that beer cheaply and selling it dear, is now a noble 

 lord with an estate that will pay death-duties on a million. I 

 would not interfere with the brewer and his million, except perhaps 

 by way of a graduated income-tax, but I would try to protect the 

 drayman against himself, for his family's sake if not for his own. 

 Moreover, I Avould see, by the way, that the beer with which he 

 fuddles his brain was beer, not the mixture of quassia chips, sugar, 

 and other foreign ingredients which in some instances, perhaps, 

 has helped to make a millionaire of his master, and that the 

 public-house where he deals has liberty to sell him whatever brew 

 he may prefer. 



Doubtless these ideas are very radical, but there are points 



