d burrow elsewhere.

Can it be wondered at that these people are dirty and idle; and that
many of them ultimately prefer the settled conditions of prison or
workhouse life, or take to vagrancy?

I cannot find a royal specific for this evil; humanity will, under any
conditions, have its problems and difficulties. Vagrants have always
existed, and probably will continue to exist while the human race
endures. But we need not manufacture them! Human rookeries and rabbit
warrens must go; England, little England, cannot afford them, and
ought not to tolerate them. But before we dispossess the rooks and the
rabbits, let us see to it that, somewhere and somehow, cleaner nests and
sweeter holes are provided for them. The more I think upon this question
the more I am convinced that it is the great question of the day, and
upon its solution the future of our country depends.

See what is happening! Thousands of children born to this kind of
humanity become chargeable to the guardians or find entrance to the
many children's homes organised by philanthropy. One course is taken the
bright and healthy, the sound in body and mind, are emigrated; but the
smitten, the afflicted, the feeble and the worthless are kept at home
to go through the same life, to endure the same conditions as their
parents, and in their turn to produce a progeny that will burrow in
warrens or scuttle out of them even as their parents did before them.

But the feebler the life, the greater the progeny; this we cannot
escape, for Nature will take care of herself. We, may drive out the
rabbits, we may imprison and punish them, we may compel them to live
in Adullam Street or in lazar houses, we may harry them and drive them
hither and thither, we may give them doles of food on the Embankment or
elsewhere. We may give them chopping wood for a day, we may lodge them
for a time in labour homes; all this we may do, but we cannot uplift
them by these methods. We cannot exterminate them. But by ignoring them
we certainly give them an easy chance of multiplying to such a degree
that they will constitute a national danger.

CHAPTER VI. THE DISABLED

In this chapter I want to speak of those who suffer from physical
disabilities, either from birth, the result of accident, or disease.
If this great army of homeless afflicted humanity were made to pass in
procession before us, it would, I venture to say, so touch our hearts
that we should not want the procession repea