"Can't you hear 'em at it, eh?"
"It scares them out of everything but hand-to-mouth
politics. Any other remedy is too heroic. They go on
pointing out and contemplating and grieving, with their
percentages of misery and degeneration; and they go on
poulticing the cancer with benevolence--there are people
over there who want the State to feed the schoolchildren!
Oh, they're kind, good, big-hearted people; and they've
got the idea that if they can only give enough away
everything will come right. I was talking with a man one
day, and I asked him whether the existence of any class
justified governing a great country on the principle of
an almshouse. He asked me who the almsgivers ought to
be, in any country. Of course it was tampering with my
figure--in an almshouse there aren't any; but that's the
way it presents itself to the best of them. Another fellow
was frantic at the idea of a tax on foreign food--he
nearly cried--but would be very glad to see the Government
do more to assist emigration to the colonies. I tried to
show him it would be better to make it profitable to
emigrate first, but I couldn't make him see it.
"Oh, and there's the old thing against them, of course--
the handling of imperial and local affairs by one body.
Anybody's good enough to attend to the Baghdad Railway,
and nobody's too good to attend to the town pump.
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