170 Friendly Soeieties, State Action, and the Poor-law. 
Adding this to the cost of his sick-pay and burial-money, 
11. 4s., his provision is secured for 1/. 14s. a year. 
If he prefers his pay to commence at 65 at 5s. a week, it will 
cost him Is. 5^d. per month, or 17s. 6rf. per annum, which, 
together with his other insurance of 11. 4s., amounts to 21. Is. Qd. 
The expense of this provision compares favourably with what 
he commonly pays into his club in certain districts of this 
country. The provision itself is, as I admit, of a humble kind, 
but meritoriously attained. Five shillings a week is a larger 
amount than the rate will afford him. 
Many a man is hale and hearty when upwards of seventy 
years of age, and capable of making a fair day's work. " It 
would conduce to his health and happiness if he could take his 
work pretty much as it suited him. Labourers with a pro- 
vision of this kind in store for them, with money payable at 
death, would be kept altogether from resort to the rate ; and 
when totally incapacitated from work, relatives would prefer 
to make him comfortable at home, instead of leaving him to 
the care of the House." 
My plan, it will be seen, is for a self-supporting system, and 
not, as erroneously supposed by the late Mr. Sotheron Estcourt, 
by whom the Commissioners were grievously misled on this 
point, a system which would entail a charge on the Revenue. 
The labourer, by paying no more than he now pays to his club, 
will have the certainty of a maintenance and a home of his 
own. It is no fallacious assumption to say that a percentage 
of careful and industrious men — small, if you will, for a time, 
but sufficient to influence many before long — will gladly avail 
themselves of the advantages placed within their reach. Once 
provide for them a system which has the element of durability 
in it, and the funds of which are protected and duly dispensed, 
being the property of the members, they will then have an 
inducement to secure their support, and consequently to pro- 
mote their comfort and welfare, which has never yet been 
afforded the English labourer. The squire and clergyman will 
form and manage no more benefit societies ; they will send their 
friends to the Post-Office;* and will cease to bolster up by 
misplaced kindness and subscriptions the benefit societies of the 
poor, which merely help them on the road to destitution. That 
the indirect but powerful influence, already noticed, of a better 
administration of the laws of relief would also expedite their 
attempts to provide for themselves, cannot be reasonably 
doubted. 
* 'J'ho cessation of the foiniinp; of now snviiigs-biinks is a parallel case. The 
Post-OlBce is preferred. The old private banks are on tlie decline. 
