Nevertheless, when charity and sympathy build and support large almshouses, until, as in London, one-third of all the property tax goes to the poor fund, then charity becomes an institution for breeding paupers and imbeciles. Such charity is the misuse of a virtue. Nine-tenths of all the paupers of one generation in England are children of the paupers of a preceding generation.
The following is what an eminent Englishman has to say of the condition of things in his country:
"We have a standing army of 1,200,000 paupers, and our permanent and occasional paupers number together at least 3,000,000. Our paupers are maintained at a yearly cost of about £30,000,000 to the community, and were it not for the Draconic administration of our poor-laws all our work-houses would be overcrowded by workers who would gladly exchange freedom and starvation wages for the confinement of the workhouse. No other nation has an army of paupers similar to that of Great Britain."—J. Ellis Barker, in "Great and Greater Britain."
A Cat Story
Once upon a time there was an excellent Queen who ruled over a beautiful and fruitful island. The island was not large; it had an area of only a few square miles, and the inhabitants numbered but a thousand. They lived mainly by fishing and agriculture.
The Queen loved both her people and her cats. As she would not allow a kitten killed, cats soon overran the palace. Some of these cats, dominated by the mousing instinct, took up their habitation in the fields and woods; for mice, small birds, squirrels, and all manner of cat-game were plentiful on the island.
The cats continued to multiply, until they became a great pest to the farmers, killing their chickens, ducklings, and song-birds. Then the good Queen divided the island between her people and her cats. She gave a tenth of the island to the cats. A fence was built between the cats and the people.
The cats soon multiplied to the number of 20,000, but there was not forage enough to feed them through the next winter; consequently, half of them died during the cold weather. In the autumn of the following year there were again 20,000 cats on the island, half of which were doomed to die by starvation during the winter; but the kind-hearted Queen taxed the people for food sufficient to feed the cats, and to save as many lives as possible.