(b) It ought not to be difficult to get each one to do two annas worth of work, and this will be more than sufficient to cover their expenses. We have no desire to become sweaters.
(c) Begging is hard work. If you don't believe it, come and try it! I and many of my officers have begged our food as religious mendicants, so that we, are able to speak from experience! It is at best a life of sacrifice, hardship and suffering. And yet we have practised it under specially favorable circumstances, particularly those of us who are Europeans. But that there can be any sort of rest, or ease, or enjoyment in it to those who are driven to it by the pangs of hunger, unsupported by any spiritual consolations, I cannot conceive. On the contrary I should say that the task of the beggar is so hard, and disagreeable not to say shameful, that the majority of them would leap to do the most menial tasks that would deliver them from a bondage so painful.
Have you ever solicited help and been refused? Have you known what it is to feel the awful sickenings of heart at hope deferred? Have you known what it is to be regarded with suspicion, with contempt, with dislike, with scorn, or even with pity by your fellow men? If so, you may be able to realise the experiences that every beggar has to go through a hundred times a day, many of them with feelings every bit as sensitive as your own. Will he demean himself and work hard at so miserable a calling and yet be unwilling to do some light work, with which he can earn an honest living? I for one cannot believe it, till I see it.
(d) Our experience further contradicts it in dealing with the more depraved, hardened and supposed-to-be-idle criminals and prostitutes, whom we receive into our Prison Gate and Rescue Homes. When Sir E. Noel Walker was visiting our Prisoners' Home in Colombo he was astonished at the alacrity with which the men obeyed orders, and the eagerness with which they worked at their allotted tasks. He asked the Officer in Charge whether he ever "hammered" them, and was surprised at finding that the only hammer he ever required was the allsufficient hammer of love. And yet the gates were always open and they were free to walk out whenever they liked. Moreover, beyond getting their food and a very humble sort of shelter, their labour was entirely unpaid.
(e) Finally by means of a judicious system of rewards and promotions we should educate and encourage them into working, besides teaching them industries which would be useful after they had left us.
(3.) But some one else will say "They are thievish and will rob you. They are roguish and will decieve you. You don't know whom you have to deal with." Well, if we don't know them, we should think nobody does! I would answer,
(a) Granted that some of them cheat us. All will not. And why should the honest suffer with the rogues?
(b) What if we do lose something in this way? It would be little in comparison with the enormous gain. I feel sure it would in no case exceed ten or twenty per cent, on the collections made, and that would be a mere trifle.
(c) Our system of regimentation would largely guard against any such danger and would be an encouragement to honesty.
(d) It is notorious that there is "honour among thieves." They would
watch over one another. Among them "nimak-harami" or
"faithlessness to their salt" would soon come to be regarded as a
crime of the first water.