But once you start thinking on these lines you get
into deep water. One of the objects of the Welfare State is to enable its citizens to lead " a full life." Nobody has yet laid down what a full life ought to be full of, but it would certainly pay most of us to lead a much emptier one. If, however, we all became tee- totallers and non-smokers, the virtuous, who are already both, would face a sharp rise in taxation. The man who owns a dog helps to support the man who cannot abide the creatures. The motorist, anathematised by the pedestrian and the cyclist as a death-dealing juggernaut, makes life economically easier for both of them. Every rabbit shot in these islands increases the nation's supply of meat and diminishes the wastage of farm pro- duce ; but the man who shot it had to pay for either a gun licence or a firearms certificate, plus the purchase tax on his cartridges, and the anti-blood-sport people; who benefit both from his action and from his contribution to the national ex- chequer, have no hesitation in describing him as a thoroughly bad citizen.
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