them no taint of pauperism or eleemosynary relief. They
ought, it is said, to be universal; to be looked on as a matter of
strict right; to be considered as of the same nature as the pension
given to the soldier or the Civil Servant.

It is obvious that all this may carry us very far. It is estimated
that some of the most popular proposals would involve an annual
expenditure of considerably more than twenty millions of
pounds--making allowance for the saving that might be effected in the
ordinary poor-law relief, but not counting the cost of administration.
And this expenditure would be a growing one; and once accepted it
could hardly be withdrawn. The vast addition to the national debt that
might follow a great European war or the great shrinkage of the
national income that might easily follow some revolution in trade or
manufacture, might render the burden of taxation incomparably more
serious than at present; but once the great mass of the population had
learned to regard State support in old age as their normal prospect
and their inalienable right, it would be impossible, without producing
a social revolution, to recede. All the advantages gained by
generations of economical administration of the national finance would
be nullified; while the certain result of this crushing addition to
taxation would be to weaken incalculably the spirit of thrift,
providence, and self-reliance, and at the same time to lower wages, by
removing one of the great considerations by which they are regulated.
And this reduction of wages would fall not only on the recipient of
the pension, but also on multitudes who would never live to attain it.
Nothing can be more certain than that a general system of pensions
attached to the labour of the wage-earner must lower wages, at least
among all those who are approaching the pension age; while it would
prevent or retard their natural increase over a far wider area.

It would also most certainly bring with it the gravest danger of
corruption. It would not be easy to secure the pure and the impartial
administration of these vast funds; but the political dangers would be
much more serious. It is proposed that the pension system should be
first introduced on a small scale, but gradually extended till it
included all the aged poor, or at least all who were deserving. Such a
question would infallibly pass into the competitions of party warfare.
It would become in most constituencies one of the most p