174 Friendly Societies, State Action, and the Poor-law. ] 
in the Table at p. 169. In village clubs care is taken that the 
member shall not belong to more than one. The same restric- 
tion would be useful in the Post Office Friendly Society. 
The advantages of my plan are — 
1. A system of sickness-pay, burial - money, and old - age 
insurances, suited to farm and other labourers, which possesses 
the essential condition of durability. * " Nothing short of a 
national convulsion will affect it." — Hon. E. Stanhope. 
2. It will afford a standard of good management and eco- 
nomical administration, and encourage the improvement of 
local societies, by which the welfare of their members will be 
promoted. 
3. It will enable industrious and prudent men to secure inde- 
pendence by means of investing their money, now paid into 
benefit clubs and societies, which, either from their construction 
or mismanagement, or both, disappoint them in such effort. 
4. Members removing from one part of the country to another 
may transfer their insurance to their new district. 
5. Endowments, which have already been described, will be 
brought within reach of many persons of both sexes who will 
make good use of them. 
That this Method, the cost of which is purposely taken at 
little less than that of the ordinary benefit clubs, may not only 
pay its way, but in time make surplus capital, of great use in 
future to the members, there must be good management, 
comprising the selection of the right sort of members, as well 
as careful administration of the funds, and safe investments of 
the capital. It did not receive the attention from the Com- 
mission to which its admitted importance gave it some claim. 
And as the improvements in the law relating to Friendly 
Societies, which the Commission recommended, fail to deal 
satisfactorily with the insurances of the poor, I may without 
presumption, as I trust, call attention to my proposal, in the 
belief that it will go far towards securing a remedy for the evils 
which still remain untouched by law. That the Commissioners 
were led to an erroneous conclusion, by the misapprehension of 
Mr. Sotheron Estcourt that the revenue would be chargeable 
thereby, and the error of Mr. Scudamore, on the presumed 
necessity of espionage for the prevention of fraud, any one who 
reads the evidence and their final Report, and will compare my 
proposal with the same, may satisfy themselves. Some thousands 
of the best of the labourers in this country would by this time have 
been rescued from a poor future had their decision been right. 
* This condition does not appear to have met with the attention of the Com- 
mission which it deserves. 
