For the maintenance of this vicious circle enormous sums of public money were required. Failing such vast expenditure, Nature unaided would have righted matters to some extent, and the Poor Law guardians would have become by so much the less wielders of power and influence, dispensers of public money. Some of these Poor Law guardians gave up more or less honest trades to take to Poor Law guardianship as a business; and they waxed fat upon it.
Every now and again came disclosures. Guardians were shown to have paid ten shillings a score for such and such a commodity this year, and next year to have refused a tender for the supply of the same article at 9s. 8d. a score, in favour of the tender of a relative or protégé of one of their number at 109s. 8d. a score. I remember the newspapers showing up such cases as these during the week of my arrival in London. The public read and shrugged shoulders.
"Rascally thieves, these guardians," said the Public; and straightway forgot the whole business in the rush of its own crazy race for money.
"But," cried the Reformer to the Public, "this is really your business. It is your duty as citizens to stop this infamous traffic. Don't you see how you yourselves are being robbed?"
You must picture our British Public of the day as a flushed, excited man, hurrying wildly along in pursuit of two phantoms—money and pleasure. These he desired to grasp for himself, and he was being furiously jostled by millions of his fellows, each one of whom desired just the same thing, and nothing else. Faintly, amidst the frantic turmoil, came the warning voices in the wilderness:
"This is your business. It is your duty as citizens," etc.
Over his shoulder, our poor possessed Public would fling his answer:
"Leave me alone. I haven't time to attend to it. I'm too busy. You mustn't interrupt me. Why the deuce don't the Government see to it? Lot of rascals! Don't bother me. I represent commerce, and, whatever you do, you must not in any way interfere with the Freedom of Trade."
The band of the reformers was considerable, embracing as it did the better, braver sort of statesmen, soldiers, sailors, clergy, authors, journalists, sociologists, and the whole brotherhood of earnest thinkers. But the din and confusion was frightful, the pace at which the million lived was terrific; and, after all, the cries of the reformers all meant the same thing, the one thing the great, sweating public was determined not to hear, and not to act on. They all meant:
"Step out from your race a moment. Your duties are here. You are passing them all by. Come to your duties."