118 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



really the power to right the wrong from which the people are 

 suffering. 



The Government, the Opposition, and the other political 

 parties in Parliament and out of it, the press, political econo- 

 mists, and the great army of speakers and writers who never 

 fail in suggesting remedies, may spend huge sums in useless 

 relief works, or still vaster sums in endowing our warship 

 industry with fictitious energy ; philanthropists, struck with 

 the pathos of the situation, may increase their generous doles ; 

 public and private charity may multiply its beneficence, and 

 between them all many extra millions may be raised annually ; 

 but all this mighty effort will be of no avail, because we are 

 still dealing with effects rather than causes. 



Disease too Deep-seated to yield to Palliatives 



There are diseases in the body politic, as in the corporal 

 body, that yield readily to certain treatment, while there are 

 others which defy treatment by the usual processes of the 

 materia mcdiea. The question we are considering is a case in 

 point; this disease of unemployment and poverty is too deep- 

 seated in the national body to be relieved by the many pallia- 

 tives that are constantly being tried : and yet we go on trying 

 them year after year. 



This form of treatment is not only futile : it is wrong 

 and cruel. It is wrong, nay, well-nigh criminal, to spend 

 millions of the tax-payers' money year after year with reckless 

 disregard of consequences, and with the knowledge that it is 

 spent in vain ; while it is cruel to keep vast bodies of men and 

 women in a state of semi-destitution and unemployment, when 

 a just appreciation of the requirements of the case would at 

 once supply the remedy. 



No Hope for the People if their Eulers ignore Facts 



Attention is again called to the fact that the land of the 

 United Kingdom employs, supports, and feeds 5,000,000 of the 

 population, when it ought to maintain from 12,000,000 to 

 16,000,000 (according to the system of agriculture employed); 

 and if tlie public men of this country, who shape its destinies, 

 will persist in ignoring this supreme verity which governs the 

 entire position, there is really no hope for the people, now or 

 in the future. There is no chance of saving the man who, 

 before he casts himself into the sea from the deck of an ocean 

 liner, swallows a deadly dose of poison, nor is there any chance 

 of saving a country whose rulers and public men are possessed 



