TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 831 



In Italy the question of establishing a National Pension Fund has also been 

 widely discussed, and in past years several schemes have been proposed to the 

 Legislature. A Bill is now before the Chamber providing for the establishment of 

 a central governing body, whose duty it would be to administer funds partly sub- 

 scribed by authorised savings banks or other self-help societies and by individuals, 

 and partly by the State from various specified sources. Every Italian, man or 

 ■woman, certified to belong to the working-L-lasses, may subscribe to the fund, but 

 not more than 500 lire, or 20/. per annum, and every person who has subscribed for 

 not less than twenty years is to be entitled at sixty to a pension, the amount of 

 ■which is to be determined by the amount of the contributions made to the funds 

 with the addition of compound interest. No pension may exceed '201. per annum. 

 Provision is also made, in the case of the subscriber's death, for the payment to his 

 representatives of all contributions and interest. It is evident that this scheme 

 does not go very far in the direction of establishing a general Old-age Pension 

 Fund. 



In April 1891 the Danish Legislature passed a law giving every Danish sub- 

 ject, man and woman, the right to a pension at sixty years of age. Exception is 

 made of persons who have been convicted of crime, who have fraudulently made 

 over their property to relatives or others, who have brought themselves to distress 

 by extravagance or evil-living, who have during the preceding ten years received 

 relief from the poor-law (assistance publique), or who have been convicted of men- 

 dicity. Applications for pensions are to be addressed to the parish (commune), 

 who will make all inquiries, and fix the amount of the relief to be granted, which 

 may be in money or in kind. The relief may be withdrawn if the pensioner should 

 become ineligible through misconduct or spend his pension improperly, and, if he 

 marries, his pension is ipso facto withdrawn, and he becomes chargeable to the 

 poor-law. It -will be seen, therefore, that there is in Denmark no sentimental 

 objection to an inquiry into an applicants moral character and pecuniary position 

 such as Mr. Booth so strongly deprecates, and that the so-called pensions are but 

 an extension of the system of what we should call outdoor relief. The pension is 

 to be derived from the parish, subject to certain conditions as to the applicant's 

 place of birth, or, if the place of birth cannot be determined, from the poor-law, 

 and the State contributes half the expenses of the parishes in distributing the 

 relief, provided that those expenses do not exceed one million crowns (55,000/.) in 

 each of the years 1891-95, and two million crowns (110,000/.) in subsequent years. 

 No appeal lies against the decision of the communal authorities. 



It is evident that, as only one of the three schemes last mentioned is in 

 actual operation, they cannot as yet be fully judged, but I venture to question 

 whether there is anything which we could think of following here. In this 

 country there is, no doubt, a holy horror of the workhouse, but there is also a 

 perhaps unreasonable prejudice in favour of 'going as you please,' and a scarcely 

 less pronounced aversion, upon the whole reasonable and certainly characteristic, 

 to being what the French would call 'administered.' I can hardly imagine 

 my countrymen, of any class or disposition, subjecting themselves to a regular 

 system of Government interference in afluirs of which the management, or mis- 

 management for the matter of that, they have always considered to be a Briton's 

 birthright. Lot us ask ourselves, atter looking at the question in all its 

 bearings, whether we must not give up the idea of anything like compulsion 

 in matters of thrift, if indeed we must not also give up the idea, when it 

 came to the point, of anything in the nature of Government help and 

 intervention. 



But is there, then, no way in which help can be rendered to our deserving poor? 

 Must the present state of things go on, and the public conscience continue to be 

 .shocked at the sight of thousands of old people lapsing hopelessly into pauperism ? 

 Let us examine the present state of things, and look a little into its causes. How 

 is old-age pauperism brought about .'' There is doubtless a not inconsiderable part 

 of our population which might make at least some provision for old age, but which 

 prefers the careless living from hand to mouth, and considers subscription to a burial 

 club the only claim which the future has upon it. As I have already said, even 



