There is one point about these massacres in the St.
Pancras infirmary to which we should like to call the attention of Mr. Gladstone, and that is the demoralizing hatred which is felt towards the present system of rates. The poor are literally mur- dered by the bad smells in the infirmary—one poor little baby was this week killed by them as suddenly and as certainly as if poison had been administered ;—and still the ratepayers support the guardians in their resistance to expense. They deserve, no doubt, all the Pall Mall Gazette says about them ; but still there is another side—the excessive severity with which the rates press upon a class who, in order to earn £2 a week, have to occupy houses rented at /40 or £50 a year. It is all very well to say the difference between a 3s. 6d. rate and a 4s. one is very little, but a demand for a 4s. rate from a greengrocer is a demand for one-tenth of all he has to live on, and, of course, it hardens him. It does not harden him the less because his cus- tomer, living on Consols, in a house of £100 a year, pays £20 to the rates, or an income tax of eightpence in the pound only. If the poor rate-payers ever come to understand how it is that the shoe pinches them so frightfully, the Poor Law will go down, and a good deal else with it. 1hey are not afraid of the ugly rash.
Previous page
