80 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



his or her hand into the pockets of the British tax-payer, and 

 worse than this, we have given all Poor Law authorities in 

 the country, all bumbledom, in fact, the same constitutional 

 right to spend as much of the tax-payers' money as they choose. 

 Budgeting for imupers is as common in all official estimates as 

 budgeting for the Army, Navy, and Civil Services ; the Poor- 

 rates item is one of the biggest in the national accounts, and all 

 officials, whether of the Imperial Government or the Poor Law 

 officers of small rural councils, have come to regard pauperism 

 as a National Institution upon which millions upon millions 

 may be spent without fear or reproach — meritoriously, in fact. 



Pauperism has been with us for so long that we have become 

 quite accustomed to its presence, and there are few among us 

 who would care to question the validity of its claim upon the 

 public purse, or consider the possibility of ridding ourselves of 

 its burden altogether. Yet this overgrown monster, like many 

 other monsters that have been subdued in past times, can be 

 defeated and overthrown with comparative ease. 



Slothful Idleness must cease 



Let it, however, be thoroughly understood that we will no 

 longer support a huge host of able-bodied men and women in 

 slothful idleness, and that we will not be deterred by that 

 squeamish, sickly sentimentality which has hitherto guided 

 and governed the administration of this question. Let us say, 

 firmly and unhesitatingly, that we are tired to death of this 

 loathsome disease which has fastened on to the British people, 

 that our treatment of it has been wrong from the first, and that 

 it has done nothing but develop its growth and increase its 

 virulence. Let us frankly admit that, with the best intentions 

 possible, this pandering of Poor Law guardians all over the 

 kingdom to pauperism has only had the effect of increasing 

 the vast hordes of dissolute poor, who fatten like vampires on 

 tlie very life-blood of the tax-payers. This advance of the 

 pauper hosts has become a national peril, and it is time to crv 

 "halt." ^ 



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 pauperism that the world 

 can show to-day ; to engender a spirit of wasteful extravagance 

 on the part of poor-law officers ; and to establish a feeliug of 

 apathetic indifference on the part of the Government for the 

 time being. 



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

 that would relieve the country of X\\m loatUsomt) incubus. 



