Mr. Chamberlain attributed the reduction of pauperism by 20 per
cent., and of committals for crime by nearly 30 per cent., chiefly to popular elementary education, and he earnestly advocated the abolition of fees in every elementary school in England and Wales. He declared that the spread of the allotment system under the recent Act, and the amending Bill of the present Session, would divert rural labourers from flocking into the towns, and would so enhance the wages of town labour. And he urged State aid to labourers' pensions by a State guarantee of 5 per cent, compound interest for the annual payments by which they were to buy pensions com- mencing at a given age. There we cannot go with Mr. Chamberlain. To encourage labourers to earn old-age pen- sions is a policy worthy of all support, and even voluntary generosity may fairly be appealed to to help in securing them. But to tax the thrifty poor in order to help the thriftless poor, is, to our thinking, socialism of a very dangerous kind.
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