TAXATION AND WASTEFUL EXPENDITURE 177 



rather than spent, but that fact seems to reveal corrupt- 

 ness or incapacity in the spending administration rather 

 than the rottenness of the entire system of which these 

 bodies are but an outgrowth. 



The people rarely think about the matter at all. Public 



^ ^ • • 1 X Attitude 



Pauperism was a recognised State institution before towards 

 they were born, and they accept it at that ; if it is wrong, ^^"Pe"*™ 

 show us how to put it right, is what they say. 



This, in a nutshell, is the attitude adopted towards 

 pauperism by the people and the tax-payers, and a more 

 sickly, unhealthy, harmful attitude cannot be conceived. 



The whole nation has somehow contrived to set up a 

 sort of belief in the necessity for this plague spot on 

 our civilisation, and this weak, flabby spirit of acqui- 

 escence in a positive evil has wrought incalculable harm 

 in every direction. 



The enormous pauper homes all over the country, 

 many of them of costly architectural design and palatial 

 aspect, with elaborate and luxurious fittings, which will 

 hardly be found even in the homes of the wealthy classes, 

 only serve to show that bumbledom, at all events, has 

 set pauperism up as a fetish, while the scandalous 

 waste of public money which has been and is going on, 

 proves that poor law guardians freely offer up the tax- 

 payer's gold on the altar of their god. 



At the moment it is nobody's business to take any 

 action that would reheve the country of this loathsome 

 incubus. There is a general grumbling all along the hue 

 of that vast array of people who are compelled to hand 

 over their rates and taxes to the State coffers, and this 

 means every householder in the country, rich or poor, 



12 



