doubled itself. The last Annual Report of the Local Government Board was over,£15,000,000, and since 1908 another,£13,000,000 has been added for old age pensions, with the certainty of a considerable increase in the near future. In 19 10,,£183,000 were spent for the relief of the able-bodied under the Unemployed Workmen Act. To this must be added an unascertained sum for the relief of school children by the Education Authorities, whilst the Insurance Act is eleemosynary to the extent of "ninepence for fourpence." Yet, a feeling of pressure haunts every footstep of our eleemosynary legislation, and the supply creates a demand of ever increasing insistence. The Majority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law points out that notwithstanding our enormous expenditure, amounting to nearly sixty millions a year upon poor relief, education, and public health, we have now an enormous army of paupers quartered upon us unable to support themselves, an army which has recently shown signs of increase rather than of decrease: to what, it says, is this retrogression due? It cannot be attributed to lack of experience (Part II., p. 152). No indeed; the reply to this ingenious question may be that the contrary is the case. We all know the well-worn sayings that "you may have as many paupers as you choose to pay for," "the plaister is never as large as the sore."
The increase in expenditure is serious, but the increase in the dependence of the people is far more alarming, and this applies to all departments of public relief. Up to 1886 there was no public relief outside the Poor Law, but in 1886 Mr Chamberlain's Circular gave the first impulse to the "break-up" of the Poor Law. That Circular made provision for the relief of certain classes of workmen "ordinarily in employment but temporarily un-
