ii6 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE 

 in their egregious folly, they are weak enough to continue 

 their supplies? Year by year does the demand for more 

 and more millions increase, and can a living man point to 

 the slightest modicum of good done to the body politic? 

 Can it be said by even one political economist, politician, 

 statesman or statist, that these many millions that are 

 so uncomplainedly surrendered every year by the com- 

 plaisant tax-payers of this country, have done even the 

 faintest trace of good in reducing the widespread 

 poverty of the people, in providing work for the army 

 of unemployed that is marching up and down the 

 country seeking work and finding none, or in relieving 

 the unparalleled conditions which surround the entire 

 position affecting this great social question? 



Can the Government of to-day, or any administration 

 that has been in office during the last fifty years, point 

 to any real good that has been done in the past with the 

 tax-payers' millions, or predict a time when this sense- 

 less drain on the public will cease? 



Can any Government, past or present, affirm, with- 

 out fear of contradiction, that their predecessors of 1834, 

 in passing their Poor Law Amendment Act, have done 

 aught else than encourage poverty by making a legal 

 charge on the public revenues? 



Can they show, indeed, that the Act has resulted in 

 the shghtest amelioration in the poverty-stricken condi- 

 tion of the people? 



No! emphatically and unequivocally no! 



In order that the position may be clearly understood 

 by the people of this country, some statistics bearing on 

 the question are appended for easy reference : 



