282 MY LIFE 



abundant reports and other documents submitted to me, I 

 had plenty of opportunities for realizing what English rule 

 really meant. In the ruin wrought by our land settlements 

 especially, I collected a large number of facts and statistics; 

 and I offered John Morlcy to work them into a paper on 

 'The Indian Cultivator and His Wrongs'; but Morley did 

 not care for the subject. The fact is, nobody in England 

 wishes to move in the matter. I sent Knowles a paper two 

 years ago about the same subject, dealing especially with the 

 Ganges Canal — a vast blunder, bolstered up by cunningly 

 contrived balance-sheets, in which deficits are concealed as 

 fresh investments ; but he would not take it. I only got 

 this article into the Contemporary by leaving out India, and 

 looking at the question from a purely English point of view. 

 I'm afraid the fact can't be blinked that most Englishmen 

 don't mind oppression as long as the oppressed people are 

 only blacks. A startling outrage, like the Zulu War, wakes 

 them up for a moment; but chronic and old-standing sores, 

 like India or Barbadoes, do not affect them." 



Neither do " chronic and old-standing sores " at home 

 affect them. The slums, slow starvation, murder and suicide 

 from want, one-third of our population living without a 

 sufficiency of the bare necessaries for a healthy life — food, 

 clothing, warmth, and rest; while another third, comprising 

 together those who create the wealth of the nation, have not 

 the amount of relaxation or the certainty of a comfortable 

 old age which, in a country deserving to be called civilized 

 every human being should enjoy. This, however, is a step 

 or two beyond land nationalization, before leaving which I 

 must refer to one application of its principles which any 

 Government declaring itself to be " Liberal " ought at once 

 to make law. I call it — 



Security of the Home. 



It is an old boast that an Englishman's house is his castle, but 

 never was a boast less justified by facts. In a large number of cases a 

 working man's house might be better described as an instrument of 

 torture, by means of which he can be forced to comply with his land- 



