178 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE 



but they only grumble and growl. Let us, however, cease 

 growling and do something. Let us make up our minds, 

 since it is necessary for State purposes that we should be 

 taxed, that these taxes be wisely spent, not wasted. Let 

 us insist that our millions be laid out in a manner that 

 will encourage the people to cultivate habits of self-help, 

 thrift and industry, and not in a way that brings upon 

 them the degradation of pauperism. 

 Practical Let US make it abundantly clear to Government, and 



and Co- 

 operative all concerned, that every penny we yield up in rates and 



^ *® taxes must be spent along utilitarian lines, and that the 

 system of relief to the people must be practical and co- 

 operative, i.e., if the State finds it necessary to call upon 

 us to help the people, we, in turn, ask that the State set 

 up some practical system of relief, whereby those requi- 

 ring aid maybe helped to become self-supporting citizens, 

 and so, in time, find themselves in a position to pay back 

 to the State in direct or indirect taxes, the sum spent on 

 them in their need. 



Let us make it as clear as daylight that we are tired to 

 death of seeing our money spent to no other result than 

 to encourage the worst and most dissolute type of pau- 

 perism that the world can show to-day; to engender a 

 spirit of wasteful extravagance on the part of municipal 

 officers; and to establish a feeling of apathetic indiffe- 

 rence on the part of the Government for the time being. 



We want to see good results from those milhons which 

 the State wrings yearly from the British tax-payers, for 

 many of them can ill afford what they are forced to part 

 with. 



We want to see a just and proper appreciation of this 



