78 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE 



parts, while the State subvention amounts to about one- 

 third of the whole. 



It is just here that an emphatic protest against the 



contemplated action of the present Government in this 



country is necessary, otherwise a gross injustice will be 



done to the entire body of British tax-payers. 



Sound and If it be true that the Government " Old Age Pension " 



Just Scheme 



Required Scheme is to fall entirely on the tax-payers of this country, 

 a more wanton, cruel and mischievous piece of legisla- 

 tion could not possibly be devised. 



Nobody wants measures of injustice, except a few 

 advanced Socialists, who would welcome even the worst 

 forms of Anarchism in their mad desire to pull down the 

 existing order of things ; and if this Government, or any 

 succeeding Government, betrays the tax-payers of Great 

 Britain merely to catch the ephemeral vote of a few 

 social iconoclasts, they deserve extinction as a political 

 party. 



The British working-man would, of course, not be 

 fool enough to reject a scheme of " Old Age Pensions " 

 which came entirely out of the pockets of the British 

 tax-payers, not he! If you are fools enough to shell out 

 so liberally I am not fool enough to refuse what you 

 offer — he would say — and quite right, too; but he 

 doesn't expect this ridiculously quixotic method of 

 dealing with the matter. Put before him a sound, sen- 

 sible, practical scheme, whereunder he would be ex- 

 pected to co-operate with his employer and the State, in 

 building up for himself a certainty in the future in 

 respect to a suitable provision for old age or premature 

 infirmity, for sickness and suchlike misadventures of 



