44 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



expenditure in respect to Poor Law administration, and similar 

 subjects, so lavish and wasteful, and withal so useless and 

 ineffectual, as to amount to a public scandal and a positive 

 injustice to every tax-payer in the kingdom. 



He is also forced to recognise that his apathy in regard to 

 fiscal affairs has resulted in maladministration to such an 

 extent as to cause widespread loss to State, land-owners, and 

 farmers, as well as poverty and misery to the working-classes ; 

 and it has cast upon the tax-paying community far heavier 

 burdens than there is the least necessity for, burdens of which 

 all are heartily sick and tired, because they know, from bitter 

 everyday experience, that all effort is futile, and that these 

 burdens are borne without affording the least real relief to 

 those for whose benefit they were imposed. 



He sees that the whole question is becoming more difficult 

 and menacing each year, that the poverty of the people has 

 become so prevalent as to demand more and more attention 

 and support from the State and the charitable public, and that 

 it has, in fact, become the most important question of the day. 

 It looms largely in the Government progi'amme of work in 

 every session ; it forms the basis uf all Socialist agitation and 

 enterprise ; it is a favourite war-cry of all the people's " cham- 

 pions," and he is so accustomed to its presence that he has 

 come to regard it as an integral part of the social fabric, a 

 necessary result of human life. 



Poverty, the Heritage of Tax-payers 



Looked at, then, from any point of view, the destruction of 

 agriculture by Cobden's unfortunate policy has wrought incal- 

 culable harm all round — to landlords, farmers, the State, and 

 the people ; and Poverty reigns where Prosperity should rule. 

 Poverty, indeed, has been with us for so long that we have 

 come to regard it as a " heritage of the ages " ; it always has 

 been and always must be, and there is no use in trying to get 

 away from the fact. Poverty, we say, is j ust one of the effects 

 of human existence, as wealth is another ; it always has existed 

 and always will exist, and there is really no use talking 

 about it. 



"No use talking about it!" exclaim Free-trade opponents. 

 " Is there not ? " JSTevertheless, let us talk about it in order to 

 see if what we say in this respect is not one of those human 

 fallacies which are as plentiful as blackberries in autumn, and 

 only require a little pricking to prove what airy bubbles they 

 arc in reality. We think there is no use talking about the 

 question of poverty, because it is a common belief that it 



