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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 75

A Model Preamble

A Model Preamble.

The preamble of the Bill is one from which no humane person could dissent:—"Whereas it is equitable that deserving colonists who during the prime of life have helped to bear the public burdens of the colony by the payment of taxes, and to open up its resources by their labor and skill, should look to the colony for a pension in their old age." With the aspiration of that preamble we can surely all agree. But it points, as the title of the Bill points, to a pension for which all deserving colonists can qualify by living to the necessary age and doing the necessary work; and when the enacting parts of the measure proceed to restrict the class who are to receive pensions by conditions which bear no relation whatever, except by way of contradiction, to their labor and skill, or to their contributions to the public weal, the lie is given to preamble and title alike. To make the preamble anything but a false pretence it should run:

Whereas it is equitable that colonists who during the prime of life may or may not have helped, etc., etc., and who from divers causes have been unable or unwilling, and continue to be unable or unwilling to provide for themselves.

To make the preamble a fitting prelude to a discriminating scheme of charitable aid it should run:—

Whereas it is equitable that deserving colonists who, etc., etc. (as in the Bill), and who from divers not discreditable causes have been unable to provide for themselves should look to the colony for a pension in their old age, and whereas it is inequitable that undeserving colonists who have not helped to bear the public burdens of the colony by the payment of taxes, nor to open up its resources by their labor and skill, and who from divers discreditable causes have been unable or unwilling and continue to be unable or unwilling to provide for themselves, should look to the colony for a pension in their old age.