PAUPERISM. 
481 
once in cases of urgency. There was no careless delay of Bumbledom 
possible, nor any chance of a coroner's inquest succeeding an appeal 
for help. No visitor had more than four cases in charge, and 
fraud was almost impossible. The drunken and dissolute were 
subject to severe police regulations. Adverse critics of the plan 
had contended that its success was illusory; that it only diminished 
pauperism in Elberfeld by worrying vagabonds out of the place. 
It seemed to him a sufficient answer to reply that it was a good 
thing that vagabonds, clearly and unmistakably such, should be 
worried ; good for the vagabond himself, and better for the 
innocently destitute ; for nothing made the bread of charity so 
bitter in the mouths of the English poor as the fact that they re- 
ceived it in disgraceful companionship with rogues. He did not 
expect that the plan would effect a reduction equal to that reported 
from Elberfeld in English pauperism ; but it would do great good 
by stopping the unwitting manufacture of paupers resulting from 
private almsgiving, and by organizing the irregular forces of the 
charitable. To be sure not only that imposition was no longer 
possible, but also that desert could not die in silent, unnoted woe, 
would make life brighter, and the morning paper less like a herald 
of coming doom. There was a call for the love of man to a field 
of effort more needing their activity than the shores of Lake 
JSTyanza. But when charity had been organized, and its army 
drilled, much would remain to be done. It was a national duty 
to have the State so organized that no honest man born into it 
could want food who was able to work, and that each honest man 
unable to work should receive not degrading alms, but a pension 
as honourable as any paid to the soldier or dockyard worker. His 
object was national insurance against want. The way to the reali- 
zation of that Utopia had been pointed out by existing friendly 
societies. Those societies already counted 4,000,000 of members, 
owned £11,000,000, and saved £2,000,000 yearly to the rate- 
payers. There was shown a way to make firm footing out of the 
quaking bog of pauperism. Let the State exhibit as much concern 
for honest men as it did for rogues ; let it give as much care to 
make honest industry secure as it gave to the protection of vaga- 
bondism, and there would come a content to the homes of England 
long strange to them. A national benefit society, po-sessing all 
the advantages of smaller societies, and exempt from their risks, 
would be found practicable whenever England should be as deter- 
