sations not as a means of oppression but justice. You might succeed too well-in losing all.' XXXVI. DRINK AND PAUPERISM. pauperism. As to drink, with an increasing consump- Drink and tion every quarter swelling the revenue, the increase chiefly extracted from the better wages of the labouring class, I must leave you to imagine how terrible a subject that is. Drink is now an organised political power, returning brewers and distillers to Parliament, aiding Anglican and Papal divinity, degrading the constituencies, nay, demoralising the very government, which is obliged to make terms with the disastrous tyrant. Against this, and against the third peril, that of pauperism, temperance and social reformers are striving with noble energy, and not without hope. The fourth XXXVII. THE FOURTH DANGER: DEFICIENCY OF The fourth danger, namely, that of the abdeficiency sence of incitements, moral and material, to danger of incite ments to thrift. thrift among the working classes, is more complicated and raises deeper issues. The effect of that poor-law which I have described, has been to sap the independent spirit of the labourers. In England it is but little a man can save, and that little diminishes his prospects of help from the guardians of the poor. The poor-law reverses the maxim of Christ, To him that hath shall be given.' It is the careless, thriftless man or woman who, in old age, can retire to the poor-house or obtain the benefits of outdoor relief. Do wonder that men are improvident under such a system? Do you wonder that such a system has not confuted itself to the densest English intellect after two hundred years and more of trial ? you The Fawcett. agement to But besides the poor-law,' I am quoting Professor Professor Fawcett, another circumstance Discourwhich discourages prudential habits among saving. the working classes is the feeling that no amount of saving which it is possible for them to make will give them any reasonable prospect of rising in life.' There is little hope, or scope either, in business. amount a working man can save is too small to enable any number to compete with. larger capitalists and more accustomed tradesmen. Nor will their savings generally enable them to buy land. A monopoly in the hands of The land the wealthy, subject to the disabilities created by primogeniture, which locks up large tracts of it in one family from generation to generation; held in masses by great corporations; settled in the hands of trustees; land, the most valuable heritage of society, is in England and Scotland the property of a few. Vast districts are destitute, and have been deliberately emptied of population to make room for sheep, grouse, or red-deer. Class laws, protecting game for the amusement of aristocrats and rich commoners, give the *G monopoly. Our colonies and men. land not only the nature of a luxury but also Is there any other outlet for the seething our states population? Yes. There are our colonies and the United States, rich, free, crying out for the strong arms that at home dig and delve with hopeless energy for a daily skinful of meat and drink, to come and win an estate for themselves and their children. This opening we have for years urged the Government to facilitate. But the economist, bound to his fatal laws of supply and demand, has refused to listen; the statesman, at once aristocrat's and capitalist's friend, has declined to promote a reduction in the num ber of British labourers, whatever the consequences; both economist and statesman, indifferent to anything but present material prosperity, have stigmatised the colonies as a useless burden and emigration as a blunder; and the result is that they who might have made a whole empire strong and prosperous, who might have relieved the perilous plethora at home, facilitated the solution of some of our gravest problems, and developed in our possessions a wealth that would have re-established English supremacy in the world, are left to meet those fearful conditions which I have depicted, while they have imperilled the very integrity of an empire whose splendour and extent were eulogised by Daniel Webster in words that can never die. ened decay imperial In speaking to you of the England of to- Threatday, there is no confession I have to make of the more mortifying than that of the threatened sentiment. decay of the imperial sentiment—that in variable preliminary of national degradation. I say threatened, but happily, I trust, averted. It is in high quarters that we have seen these symptoms of degradation; but only among a |