THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN A PHILAN- THROPIC MOOD. T HIS
House of Commons will make some big blunder before it has done. It is said, as we mention elsewhere, to be an unusually intellectual House, that is, it contains an unusual number of cultivated and thoughtful Members, but there are questions which it hardly treats with the ability of a committee of old ladies. The moment, for instance, any question connected with the poor comes up for serious discussion, the House appears unable to think, and falls into a kind of paroxysm of pity, amidst which its reason ceases to work. It wasted hours on Wednesday, for example, and an immense amount of fluent speech and good feeling, on a project for benefiting old age which is worthy only of Laputa. We all desire, we suppose, that the deserving poor, when they grow old, should have something to live on, should not be forced into the work- house, and should not, merely because of their poverty, be subjected to any form of degradation. That is a pious wish which no one would dream of repudiating, any more than he would repudiate a desire to take care of the blind, or to find a remedy for cancer. But most men, we think, if they took up such a subject seriously, would begin to reflect upon the difficulties, would calculate ways and means, and would be careful, in proposing a plan, to be sure that they did not create evils much worse than those they cured. That, however, is not the course which approves itself to the House of Commons. That body on Wednesday actually refused to wait a few days till the Report of a Special Commission on the subject had been received, and discussed its subject throughout as if motive was the only thing to be considered, as if ques- tions of money did not signify, and as if the difficulty of separating the sheep from the goats was one which anybody who chose could solve. The proposal before the House, Colonel Palmer's, was substantially that every man and woman in the Kingdom who reached the age of sixty-five, and had never been in prison, and had at some time or other subscribed to a benefit-society, should be entitled to a pension of 7s. a week, payable out of the rates, and this whether he lived in London or Caithness. It was shown by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre that the expense would probably be £15,000,000 a year, or an extra 50 per cent. in the pound on rates, or 7d. in the pound on Income-tax ; but that made no sort of difference,—everybody went on admiring the idea. Even Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, who was put up to secure delay, only ventured to attack the Bill on details, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer accepted the object as entirely desirable, and only pleaded that it must be much more fully discussed. Mr. Chamberlain was altogether in favour of the principle, though he admitted the expense, and Mr. Everett, the " yeoman " Member, actually went further than the mover, and wished to spend £20,000,000 a year in pensions, without, as we understand him, any reference to character, because "that would gladden the hearts of the poor as they had never been glad- dened by any act of the Legislature." The whole House, in fact, was in the temper of those good people who think that all misfortunes should be alleviated by grants to the unfortunate from the Treasury.
We venture to say plainly that the project of pensioning old industrials out of national means is hopelessly imprac- ticable. The cost would be too great. The distinction of character which it is proposed to draw, could not be kept up without injustice, the very worst people being often found among those who are thrifty or who keep on the safe side of the law, and the scheme would then become one for pension- ing all industrials as we pension soldiers. It is said that we should save on Poor-rates, but that is a mistake. The Poor-rate is only £7,000,000 a year, and three-fifths of that is spent on buildings, officials, lunatics, poor under sixty-five, and children, none of which outlay would be abolished or lessened. The scheme, if a really wide one, would cost, as Mr. Everett said, £20,000,000 a year, and would not benefit the best class of the population, the workers who provide for their own or their families' old age, one jot. Indeed, the people it would benefit first of all are those who feel help to their parents an intolerable burden, and that class of the poor, a much more limited one than is supposed, which regards "the house" with a feeling of acute dread. For this, and only this, we are to make England almost unculturable by an addition of one-half to the existing rates ; or to deprive the wages- paying class of £20,000,000 a year. No House repre- senting taxpayers will ever vote such a scheme, nor is it advisable they should, for its very first result must be to render thrift unnecessary, and therefore burdensome. The poor are worried enough as it is by applications for their savings, and with a pension to be quoted against them at all times, they would not be able to keep a shilling.
That when we are a little more civilised many of our social problems, and especially this of old age, will be settled by a wide application of the principle of insurance, we are certain, and we do not doubt that, if Parliament chose, it could do much in this direction even at once. It has only to supervise and guarantee the operations of the Friendly Societies, to make it possible even now for work- men to provide against sickness, old age, and death, and this without in the slightest degree impairing their self- respect. We are not sure even that a considerable grant might not be made in aid of sickness, and are quite sure that certain kinds of disability, like blindness, paralysis, or idiotcy, might be as fairly helped through this machinery as through that of the Poor-law ; but to pension the whole industrial class is not wise, and would in the end cost more than the State could bear. Mr. Everett says everybody in State employ is pensioned ; but that is only because a pension is a cheap form of wage, and we are not sure that system is not a mistake, whether, that is, we ought not to supersede all pension allowances by a deferred annuity office, in which the servants of the State could buy their annuity or their sum down, up to the amount they pleased ; we should then be rid of the dead weight, and rid too of the suffering caused by the different position of pensioners, the bachelor living in comfort on the sum which will not maintain a man with wife and. family.
That, however, is a side-question. What we maintain is, that to tax the whole nation for the benefit of a class within it is unjust and unwise ; and that to promise to do it, as the House of Commons virtually did, by its " sym- pathetic " discussion of Wednesday, is simply silly. The community can no more prevent all forms of misfortune than an individual can prevent pain happening to himself; and when it takes upon itself to do it, usually does as much harm as good. There was no Poor-law at all in Scotland till Dr. Chalmer's time, and. we doubt not there were frightful individual cases of misery ; but then that is why the Scotch are what they are, the people in all the world who least need charity.
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