In my judgment there is some better way. I think every hospital, every asylum, every home for waifs and orphans should be supported by taxation, not by charity; should be under the care and control of the State absolutely.
I do not believe in these institutions being managed by any individual or by any society, religious or secular, but by the State. I would no more have hospitals and asylums depend on charity than I would have the public school depend on voluntary contributions.
I want the schools supported by taxation and to be controlled by the State, and I want the hospitals and asylums and charitable institutions founded and controlled and carried on in the same way. Let the property of the State do it.
Let those pay the taxes who are able. And let us do away forever with the idea that to take care of the sick, of the helpless, is a charity. It is not a charity. It is a duty. It is something to be done for our own sakes. It is no more a charity than it is to pave or light the streets, no more a charity than it is to have a system of sewers.
It is all for the purpose of protecting society and of civilizing ourselves.
SPAIN AND THE SPANIARDS.
SPAIN has always been exceedingly religious and exceedingly cruel. That country had an unfortunate experience. The Spaniards fought the Moors for about seven hundred or eight hundred years, and during that time Catholicism and patriotism became synonymous. They were fighting the Moslems. It was a religious war. For this reason they became intense in their Catholicism, and they were fearful that if they should grant the least concession to the Moor, God would destroy them. Their idea was that the only way to secure divine aid was to have absolute faith, and this faith was proved by their hatred of all ideas inconsistent with their own.
Spain has been and is the victim of superstition. The Spaniards expelled the Jews, who at that time represented a good deal of wealth and considerable intelligence. This expulsion was characterized by infinite brutality and by cruelties that words can not express. They drove out the Moors at last. Not satisfied with this, they drove out the Moriscoes. These were Moors who had been converted to Catholicism.