i6o THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE 



meant well by urging upon Government the necessity of 

 amending the Poor Laws, but their efforts have resulted 

 in disaster to the cause they championed, and pauperism 

 of a monstrous and degrading type has grown out of that 

 mild indulgence which the Governments of the past 

 threw over their legislative measures when dealing with 

 this question. 



In legalising pauperism we have given every 

 able-bodied man and woman in the country the con- 

 stitutional right to put his or her hand into the 

 pockets of the British tax-payer, and worse than this, we 

 have given eveiy Poor Law authority in the country, all 

 bumbledom, in fact, the same Constitutional right to 

 spend as much of the tax-payers' money as they choose. 

 Budgeting for paupers is as common in all official esti- 

 mates as budgeting for the Army, Navy and Civil Ser- 

 vices; the poor-rates item is one of the biggest in the 

 national accounts, and all officials, whether of the Im- 

 perial Government or the Poor Law officers of small 

 rural councils, have come to regard pauperism as a 

 National Institution upon which millions upon mil- 

 lions may be spent without fear or reproach — merito- 

 riously, in fact. 



Pauperism has been with us for so long that we have 

 become quite accustomed to its presence, and there are 

 few among us who would care to question the validity of 

 its claim upon the public purse, or consider the possibi- 

 lity of ridding ourselves of its burden altogether. Yet this 

 overgrown monster, like many other monsters that have 

 been subdued in past times, can be defeated and over- 

 thrown with comparative ease. 



