“Would you deny assistance to the aged and the sick?” asked a lady.
“I would abolish the Poor Laws, which establish the right of an asylum to old and infirm people, who actually often live for twenty years in the union at an expense to the country of say £250.”
“Would you refuse to help them altogether?”
“I would. By that means people would be made more provident, and would invest their savings when young to keep them when old.”
“Then you would leave them to starve?”
“Not at all. I would simply stimulate them to work; if they were unfit to work, they must die. I would not prevent anybody giving them food and shelter, though I would teach people that by so doing they were hindering the great law of Nature—the survival of the fittest.”
“What about hospitals for consumptives, asylums for idiots and other shelters for hopeless cases?”
“Oh! while there was a reasonable chance of restoring a consumptive person to health, and enabling him to work, I would do what I could for him. If his case became quite hopeless, I would have him mercifully despatched, that he might not burden the State. As for idiots, the subjects of incurable mental disease, cripples that could do nothing useful, and all other maimed and useless people, I would get rid of them in the same way—of course under the most careful restrictions against abuse.”
“Don’t you think the State should refuse permission to marry to people who cannot produce a certificate of perfect health from a physician employed by the Government, with a view of checking the multiplication of consumptive and ill-developed folk?”