On Tuesday, Sir John Gorst, at the Central Hall, Scrutton
Street, Shoreditch, attempted to show his Socialistic leanings to a not very sympathetic audience. "Laissez faire" would not solve the social problem, and if society was to endure, there must be some interference on the part of the State. The cause of the present social disease was "the extraordinary congestion of unskilled labour in the great towns," caused by immigration from the country. No remedy would be per- manent which did not take the people back to the land, or prevent them leaving it. The people who had acquired some wealth in the towns, should be induced to invest in small holdings in the country. There should be registers of the unemployed. So far, there is nothing to disagree with. Sir John Gorst added, however, words implying that the com- munity "were under an obligation to find some sort of work which the unemployed could do." This is the droit de travail, —a doctrine which brought untold misery on France when it was accepted in 1848, and had, after a few months' trial, to be abandoned. The unemployed have a right by law to be kept from starving, but this is a very different thing from the right to have work found for them. To admit the abstract right to work is to stereotype destitution. It cost Paris 12,000 lives lost in street-fighting, to get rid of the evils which sprung up like mushrooms from the national workshops.
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