ii8 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE 



the country is better for these squandered milUons, or 

 that the position of the people has improved? 



Will Government give tax-payers a substantial 

 guarantee that the three to four hundred millions that 

 they will exact from them during the next ten years will 

 do more good than the two hundred and ninety-six 

 millions which they have paid into the State coffers 

 during the last ten years? 



Can Government give the country any assurance, 

 worth the paper it is written on, that even their Scottish 

 Small Holdings Bill, or their Small Holdings Bill for 

 England, will really and permanently relieve the poverty 

 of the people, generally improve the position, and re- 

 duce, even by a trifle, the heavy burden of poor-rates? 



Is there a single statesman in Parliament or out of it, 

 who, calmly and dispassionately viewing the position 

 and nicely balancing in his far-seeing mind the many 

 impossibilities of the case, can conscientiously assure us 

 that under the existing conditions of our economic 

 administration and the peculiarly enervating effect on 

 the people of our Poor Laws, there is the very faintest 

 chance of permanently improving the position so as to 

 find work for all and do away with the necessity for 

 poverty? 



After the bitter experience of the last seventy years 

 and the many sad manifestations of condign failure 

 which are, alas, too abundantly spread around us to- 

 day, is there a man in the Kingdom who, apart from 

 party bias and political influence, can honestly say that, 

 if the poor-rates be increased from £35,000,000 annually 

 to £45,000,000, these added ten millions will do aught 



