Ireland swarms with soldiers, and, for that matter, every nook and corner of the British Empire is scarlet with military. Royalty and nobility, having no reason for existence, have to be maintained by brute force. Royalty and nobility do not pay for this expenditure; a subjugated people pay for their own debasement. To every pound of the expenditure in the British Empire, sixteen shillings four and one-eighth pence go to the war debt and the support of the army, leaving three shillings seven and seven-eighth pence for all other purposes whatsoever. Military power is the basis of despotism everywhere. Germany groans under it; Russia sweats under it; and wherever a king is tolerated you will find bayonets and artillery in most uncomfortable plenty. Some day, let it be hoped, the kings and nobles will experience the delight of looking down the muzzles of these arms themselves.
Up to the time of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the Irish were compelled to support the archbishops and bishops of a church whose religion is as foreign to them as Buddhism, paying therefor the sum of one hundred and two thousand eight hundred and twenty-five pounds per annum, and to other attaches, for curacies and all that business, a vast amount more. This immense amount of money was a tax yearly upon a starved and overworked people, to keep in luxurious idleness a parcel of drones whose only functions in life were to eat, sleep and hunt; who were of no earthly use to the people who supported them, either in a temporal or a spiritual way. There is one English church at Glengariff, in a parish in which there are only six Protestants, the rector, his wife, two children, and two servants. The rector has as fine a house as there is in the country-side, the cost of which and its support is a burden on a people struggling for their daily bread.
Pauperism is a certain consequence of royalty and nobility. The Queen of England cannot have one thousand men and women about her person under pay without taking bread from the mouths of many people, and the luxury of a noble must find an echo in the other extreme, the workhouse.
The number of adult paupers in England and Wales in 1880, exclusive of vagrants, was seven hundred and eleven thousand seven hundred and twelve and the cost to the labor of the country to relieve them footed up eight millions eight hundred and nineteen thousand six hundred and seventy-eight pounds.
This does not include Ireland and Scotland, but England, the most prosperous part of the British Empire. The English writers on political economy ascribe this appalling pauperism to every cause but the right one. Wipe out royalty, nobility, and landlordism, and give the people a chance to earn their bread, and this army would be reduced to almost nothing.
Crime goes on hand in hand with pauperism. In 1879 the United Kingdom had the enormous number of one million four hundred and ninety thousand four hundred and thirty-nine committals for crime. This does not include the cases of drunkenness or kindred offences which come before magistrates and are summarily disposed of.
