for some form of State endowment, either for themselves or for their dependents. The onus is surely upon those who have led us into this labyrinth to lead us out. Perhaps even now, at the eleventh hour, they will come forward and press for the initiation of a scheme of registration which formed originally an integral part of their proposals, and for a system of organised co-operation.
The first practical step appears then to be to press for a searching and judicial inquiry into existing conditions, an inquiry from which politicians and theorists alike should be rigorously excluded. Disorganised voluntary charity is an evil, but disorganised State charity is a far worse one, because it is on a much greater scale and is much less capable of control. Surely the time has come when public-spirited men of both parties should agree to exclude these questions from the sphere of party politics, and to put a stop once and for all to this legislative chaos which is supplementing wages, increasing the cost of living, pauperising the poor, and perpetuating poverty. Modern free traders may be reminded once more of the words of Cobden, which indicate a very different social policy:—
"Mine," he says, "is that masculine sort of charity which would inculcate in the minds of the working classes the love of independence, the privilege of self-respect, the disdain of being patronised or petted, the desire to accumulate, and the ambition to rise."
The Prime Minister recently used these words:—
"I do not think there is any doctrine more fatal to the root principle of democratic government than that it should consist in the constant amelioration, at great expense to the community, of the social conditions of the less-favoured class in the country at the sole and exclusive expense of other classes" ("Times," 12th July).
They may be commended to the attention of the democracy of this country.
PRINTED BY OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND.
