General Booth, the dictator of the Salvation Army, will, it
is believed, be enabled to start his plan for the redemption of the London residuum. In two meetings held in London this week, he informed his audiences that he had received £43,000, and that more money was coming in. He intends, therefore, to make a beginning by purchasing an estate in the country upon which to place men and women gathered in by the officers of the "Army." They will take the very worst, thieves and harlots if they can get them, and make them work, and afterwards ship them to a colony where he had already been offered a million of acres of land. He hopes for assistance from Government in the shape of ships, and of a law per- mitting Poor-Law Guardians, when his scheme is successful, to farm out their poor to him ; but otherwise he seeks no official aid or control. He and the officers of the Salva- tion Army will do the work, and as to the money, all that is given—and he thinks it ought to be much more— will be paid into a Chancery Trust Fund, with himself as sole
trustee. General Booth, it is clear, does not intend to resign his " personal power " over this experiment, and he is quite right. He has succeeded, so far as he has succeeded, by utilising the desire of most men to obey, and to subject him- self to any committee would be to destroy his usefulness. We have pointed out elsewhere what we believe to be the weak place in his scheme, but we wish him every success in a generous and practical, if utopian, experiment.
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