POVERTY NOT A NECESSITY 37 



The present unhealthy social and economic condition of the 

 body ])oUtic is as much the result of disobeying Nature's laws 

 as are the thousand and one diseases generated in the corpus 

 humanum by similar disobedience. Nature is a beneficent 

 motlier, but she brooks no disobedience, and he who overrides 

 her laws and sets them at naught must of necessity suflcr. 



Disobedience of Natukal Laws 



Nature intended that man should cultivate the soil. The 

 British people sixty j^ears ago threw aside their agricultural 

 industry and took to other pursuits. In this they disobeyed 

 one of Nature's greatest laws and — they suffer. 



This is the simple fact underlying the entire situation, and 

 in it alone will be found the solution of the riddle and the key 

 to the position. 



The British people have it in their power to right a self- 

 inflicted wrong; but if they will not do so — well, they must 

 continue to bear the burden. 



Meanwhile, all classes share in the suffering, and herein 

 lies an injustice so palpable and widespread as to need no 

 demonstrating here. Every rate-payer and tax-payer in the 

 country has been fully cognisant of it for years, and has chafed 

 under the soreness which this shameful and yet altogether 

 unnecessary burden causes. But nothing of any jj?'«c^ica^ 

 value has been done. The recent victory of Eeform over 

 Progressive Socialism in the London County Council, in other 

 municipal councils, and amongst Poor Law Guardians, may 

 check reckless expenditure in certain directions, and thus give 

 some relief ; but the great scandal of I'OOR Law ExrENDiTUKE 

 has not been touched, and millions of the taxpayers' money 

 are, in the meantime, being squandered annually. 



Why is it, in spite of the fact that the Government and all 

 classes of the community are fully aware of this gross scandal, 

 that it is allo\ved to go on year after year, and decade after 

 decade, unchanged ? Why is it that each successive Govern- 

 ment finds the necessity of providing in their budget the 

 prodigious sums that are spent annually on pauperism ? 



Only One Answer 



There is only one reply : ]^)ecause in sacrificing its greatest 

 industry — agriculture — to a selfish fiscal system, the greatest 

 trading and manufacturing country in the world, with its 

 mighty P^mpire stretching to the confines of the earth, and thus 

 possessing all the inherent properties of phenomenal wealth 



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