376 BKITATN FOll THE BUITON 



auotlier £100,000,000 from philanthropists annual!// to support 

 it, is about as bad a state of aiTairs as could possibly exist, and 

 he, moreover, discerns that if this adventitious bolstering u]) 

 were withdrawn, the condition of the masses would be so awful 

 as to cause instant revolution. The only conclusion John T>n\\ 

 can come to is — that this Free-trade system, which he has been 

 obliged to adopt, litcraUij and trulij costs the 'people £135,000,000 

 a/initall// to maintain. 



It Costs £135,000,000 Annually in Charities to Buttress 



Free-trade 



This is the charge that will be vehemently denied by those 

 who, for various reasons, are personally interested in maintain- 

 ing existing conditions, but however much they may rave and 

 bluster, the Government finds it necessary to raise £35,000,000 

 annually in Poor Bates, while what is called the — Philanthropic 

 Public — hnd it equally necessary to contribute each year over 

 £100,000,000 (see Chapter XI.) to provide merely for the most 

 prominent and aggressive cases of pauperism, drunkenness, 

 vice, crime, and sickness. 



It is held by the anti-Free-traders that the poverty of the 

 United Kingdom is so phenomenal as to constitute a shame to 

 Governments, an unnecessary drain on national funds, an 

 insuperable obstacle to the prosperity of the masses, a curse to 

 the people, and a standing menace to national peace. Upwards 

 of one-half of the entire population never cease in their efforts 

 to mitigate, to some small extent, the sufferings of the other 

 half, while the Salvation and Church Armies, through their 

 Soup Kitchens and Night Shelters, the perennial " lielief 

 Works " of the State, and the numerous dodges resorted to by 

 Municipal bodies throughout the kingdom to find work for the 

 poor and needy, all proclaim the fact that the British people 

 are in a state of destitution, the like of which finds no parallel 

 in the civilised world. The added fact that, in spite of this 

 mighty effort, only the most acute cases of poverty are dealt 

 with, furnishes indubitable proof that the 'poverty and destitu- 

 tion of the British 'people is really heyond human poiver to yrapple 

 with cffectualbj. It is then deliberately affirmed that this mass 

 of pauperism and unenviable destitution is the direct and 

 inevitable result of a set of social and economic conditions that 

 are peculiar to Great Britain, and as unsuited to her needs as 

 they would be to those of any other civilised country. 



This degrading and contemptible condition, which Socialists 

 declare forces 3l),000,000 of the population of this country to 



