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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 75

Financial

Financial.

With regard to the financial aspect of the measure I will say little. About 7,000 claims were admitted under the Registration of People's Claims Act, 1896, which, at £18 a head, would mean a minimum cost of over £120,000, without allowing anything for administration. Against this some saving in the normal expenditure on charitable aid would have to be credited. That the total net addition to our annual expenditure would be from £200,000 to £300,000 in a few years, time seems to me a probable conjecture, and this amount it is proposed to charge upon the Consolidated Fund. This liability, huge as it is, is small in comparison with the other issues involved. Bentham said that the Turkish Government had impoverished some of the earth's finest provinces not so much by its exactions as by its effect upon motives. The distinction marks the chief danger of experiments with the poor law. The financial embarrassment which is commonly the result of mistakes in that sphere is a trifle compared with the moral ruin wrought by their effect upon motives. If the expenditure proposed were going to foster the virtues that exalt a nation I would not grudge a penny of it; but as it would foster vice and not virtue, it would pay us better to throw the money into the sea.