OLD-AGE PENSIONS.
[To TEE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—In the letter which you have allowed me to contribute in the Spectator of August 3rd to the discussion of old-age pensions I was unable through pressure of other matter to speak of the political aspect of the question. Will you allow me to add a few words upon that topic ? In this connexion, as in connexion with the question of cost, the experience of New Zealand, short as it is, is instructive. The scheme set in working in 1898 took shape first in 1896, when an act passed the Colonial Legislature enabling Colonists to register claims to old-age pensions and to obtain certificates which should entitle them to receive allowances so soon as the necessary provision should be made by a financial act. When, therefore, the full measure was passed two years later it came forthwith into operation, so that in 1899 the New Zealanders enjoyed a full year's working of the Statute at a cost to the Treasury of £157,000. A good, but in the light of events, a very modest beginning. The annual charge grew in amount by small annual increments until 1903, when twelve thousand five hundred pensioners received £210,000. By this time the system had reached its full development, and fluctuations commenced. In the two following years small reductions occurred both in the number of the recipients and in the amount of the charge. The annual charge appeared then to be settling down at about £200,000 a year as its natural figure. But acquiescence in a natural figure on the part of twelve thousand voters with claims on the Exchequer would have been a most unnatural state of feeling. It is, therefore, in no wise surprising that these worthy people, who had been placated with 5s. a week in 1898, should have forthwith demanded more, and should have made good their demand in 1905, when an amending Act was passed and their pittance raised to 108. a week. At that figure it stands for the present. He would be a bold man who would undertake to prophesy Eta to how long it will remain at that figure, seeing its increase is the chief political interest of two and a half per cent. of the voters of the Colony. Perhaps two and a half per cent. does not strike the reader as being a formidable proportion of the whole electorate. If so, that is because that reader is not sufficiently familiar with the statistics of popular elections. He will be assisted to realise its significance if he bears in mind that a majority of less than two and a quarter per cent. at the polls turned Lord Rosebery out of office in 1895 and installed Lord Salisbury in his place, and a majority of very little more than two and a quarter per cent.—falling far short of two and a half per cent.—renewed Lord Salisbury's term of office in 1900. The late Administration in this country, for all its strength, never commanded a majority in the country equal in proportion to the body of pauper voters in New Zealand at the present time. That such a political force will be permanently kept at bay by an allowance after the rate of 10s. a week seems preposterous. This, then, is the political aspect of the question. Are we, or are we not, to create a pauper constituency ? And on this head I venture to appeal to politicians of all ways of thinking who take their politics seriously. Let them but consider how intolerable the burden of public life will become if a solid vote, numerous enough to decide any closely contested election, is to be secured by the bribe of a shilling a week, or whatever it may be, to be paid by the State to two and a half per cent. of the voters in the constituency. To avoid this intolerable pressure the Legis- lature has hitherto made the receipt of public charity a dis- qualification for the exercise of the vote. The experience of New Zealand shows how all-important that rule is. The fact that no advocate of any old-age pension scheme dares propose that disfranchisement should attach to the receipt of an old- age pension allowance shows how ill-informed and ill-prepared to discuss the question on its merits is the public mind which we are all seeking to convince, If old-age pensions were the only way of meeting the difficulty, considerations such as the foregoing ought to give us pause. But surely the previous question awaits an answer. Is it the only—even the best—
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