THE INCUBUS OF TAXATION 119 



else than temporarily relieve an ever-present and an 

 ever-growing demand on the tax-payers' pockets? 



If we maintain our present attitude towards this Terrible 

 terrible social question; this sickly, mawkish attitude problems 

 of taking the backbone out of our manhood by en- 

 couraging poverty and offering a premium to pauperism ; 

 if we continue to give every able-bodied man and woman 

 in the country the legal right to thrust their hands deep 

 down into the pockets of the British tax-payer and live 

 at his expense the year round ; is there a man among us 

 bold enough to assert that we are doing that which is 

 best for the people, or that which is just to the tax- 

 payer? 



Can we, as a justice-loving people, a people who are 

 really desirous of doing that which is best for our own 

 countrymen, honestly and truthfully affirm that our 

 Poor Laws, which were conceived in mercy and ad- 

 ministered in compassion, are the best and most helpful, 

 uplifting and practical that we are capable of framing? 



Is it not incontestably true that our Poor Laws, which 

 were altered in 1834, and amended now and again to 

 meet what were considered certain requirements of the 

 times, have had the effect of demoralising the people, 

 inducing appalling and unprecedented poverty, im- 

 perilKng the commonwealth, and doing a gross injustice 

 to the general body of tax-payers? 



In reply to this group of startling questions there will 

 be found many apologists who, with the ready skill of 

 practised controversiahsts having specious arguments 

 ready to hand, will endeavour to prove that the reverse 

 of all this is in reality the case ; but as an ounce of fact is ' 



