PROBLEM FOR THE BRITISH TAX-PAYER 159 



"As a matter of fact, however, the present system is 

 going all in the opposite direction, and just in the pro- 

 portion in which it goes in this opposite direction so does 

 the pauperising of the people proceed. 



" The vast sums of money now being expended help 

 the respectable poor but little, they are squandered by 

 various bodies of bumbledom in fostering and encoura- 

 ging thriftlessness, idleness, dissoluteness. Public money, 

 hard-earned and often ill-spared, is thrown broad-cast 

 over those whom drink or laziness or the neglect of those 

 legally liable to maintain them — and capable of maintain- 

 ing them — have rendered destitute. This money is not 

 spent; it is wasted. And it is being wasted yearly by 

 extravagant and irresponsible persons — for the boards of 

 guardians spend practically all the money devoted to 

 indoor and outdoor relief — in ever-increasing quantities, 

 and with the deplorable result of an ever-increasing 

 body of pauperised people. It is high time to call a halt 

 to this waste of public money and to the futile folly of 

 gilding and stereotyping the pauper." 



These extracts put the case very clearly and in a man- 

 ner that wiU appeal not only to the tax-payer, but to 

 every section of the British people, save that compara- 

 tively small body of wastrels who will not work. 



There is no getting away from the fact that our Poor Worst 

 Laws, taken all round, are the worst and most unsuitable Laws in 

 that could possibly be devised. They are the worst in Eu- ^^^^^ 

 rope, in the world, and so long as the people of this 

 country submit to them, so long will the poor continue 

 to be pauperised, degraded and brutaUsed. 



The philanthropists of three quarters of a century ago 



