834 BErouT— :892. 



local authority, or has partially provided for himself in other ways, to the satisfac- 

 tion of the local authority, he is to be entitled to a pension of Ss. Gd. per week, 

 with the addition of an extra amount according to the payments which he has 

 made. And, further, there are to be pensions, if the local authority should see tit, 

 of 3s. Gd. per week even for the persons declared ineligible, provided that they can 

 show unavoidable illness or misfortune. The necessary funds are to be raised by 

 a special rate to be called the 'Pension Rate.' I need not do more than call 

 attention to these provisions to show how disastrous such a law would be. Tlie 

 burden which would be imposed on the County Councils of deciding upon the 

 merits or demerits of each case ; the wide discretion allowed in the award of 

 pensions, even to the criminal and drunkard, if only what can be construed into 

 ' unavoidable misfortune ' can be proved ; and tlie danger that absolutely dillerent 

 constructions of the law would prevail in dili'erent localities — all combine to make 

 it next to impossible but that its operations should be fatal to the exercise of 

 thrift, and should bring back in redoubled force many of the evils of extensive out- 

 door relief, with greatly increased burdens on the ratepayer. Among the political 

 economists I regret to say that an eminent professor, and, what is more (I speak 

 with bated breath), a former President of this Section, has thrown his great weight 

 into the scale of wide, if not lavish, distribution of outdoor relief. I am not 

 quite sure that I understand Professor Marshall's position, but he propounds in the 

 ' Economic Journal ' sixteen questions which he thinks should be considered before 

 any large scheme is undertaken for the relief of the aged, and which seem 

 incidentally to show his antagonism to most of what I had thought to be the 

 generally accepted maxims of poor-relief. 



But let it not be supposed that advocates of a firm and careful administration 

 of the Poor Law consider it the only thing required to prevent or deal with all 

 cases of old-age pauperism. In the best-regulated Unions, especially in towns, 

 there will always be cases — too many, ahts ! — of highly deserving old people who 

 are unable to maintain themselves, and of whom no just person could bear to think 

 as condemned to outdoor relief, and still less to incarceration in a workhouse. These 

 are precisely the cases which are best brought out where outdoor relief has either 

 been entirely abolished or is quite the exception. For these — and experience in 

 well-managed Unions has shown how comparatively few they are — there surely 

 remains the exercise of a well-ordained charity which will step in and prevent a 

 consummation so much to be deprecated. Children and other relatives, who under 

 a loose system of poor-relief are too apt to consider that in one shape or other their 

 parents and aged kinsfolk may naturally be left to the tender mercies of the Poor 

 Law, are brought together and induced to contribute to their support ; and pension 

 societies, such as the Tower Hamlets Pension Committee, the Local Pension 

 Committees of the Charity Organisation Society, and the like, are willing and 

 anxious to come to the rescue. Nor is this organised assistance to those whom the 

 late Duke of Albany called ' the aristocracy of the poor ' of use to the recipients 

 only. In hundreds of cases which have come under my own knowledge in East 

 London, for instance, it has been the means of inspiring in men and women a holy 

 zeal for charity which, without any hateful feeling of patronage on the one side, or 

 of cringing dependence on the other, gives a scope, such as none other can supply, for 

 a true friendship between rich and poor and blesses both the giver and the receiver. 

 I have endeavoured to show, in these few and necessarily brief remarks about one 

 of the great social questions which occupy men's minds to-day, that for the 

 promotion of the best interests of our aged poor there may be a 'more excellent 

 way ' than a vast organisation of State-aided pensions. May we work out 

 this and other similar problems, as Englishmen do, calmly, wisely, and to good 

 effect ! 



But, turning to our immediate duty as members of this Section, let us en- 

 deavour to ascertain what we can do to inculcate and foster sound views on these 

 and similar subjects. In the proceedings of this British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science we may see how intimately the work of Section F is 



