What then is there to hinder a big bold experiment? General Booth will have in England largely to _make_ his agriculturists before he can put them upon the land. Here in India we have _millions_ of skilled destitutes ready to hand, and it will be possible within a very short period with a few bold strokes to relieve the congested labor market from one end of India to the other in a manner that can hardly now be conceived. Is not this plan infinitely superior to the spasmodic Egyptian expedient of occasional public works, which cost the State enormous sums and only increase the local difficulty as soon as they are completed? Should we not here be erecting a satisfactory and permanent bulwark against the future inroads of famine? Shall we not rather be increasing the public revenue for future years by millions of pounds and that without adding a single new tax, or relying upon sources so uncertain and detrimental to the public welfare as those founded upon the consumption of drugs and liquors that destroy the health of the people? Shall we not again be increasing the stability and glory of the Empire in caring for its destitute masses and in turning what is now a danger to the State into a peaceful, prosperous and contented community? And finally will not our Poor Man's Paradise be infinitely superior from every point of view to the miserable regulation _workhouse_, that is in other countries offered by the State, or again to the system of charitable doles and wholesale beggary that at present exists? To me it seems that there is indeed no comparison between the two, and General Booth's book has opened out a vista of happiness to the poor, such as we should hardly have conceived possible save in connection with a Christian millennium or a Hindoo "_Kal Yug._" But it may be objected by some that in providing those outlets for the destitute, we should in the end only aggravate the difficulty by enormously increasing the population. This reminds one of the gigantic folly of the miser with his hoards of gold. An amusing eastern anecdote is told of one who having gone two or three miles to say his prayers to a mosque suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to put out an oil lamp before leaving home. He at once retraced his steps and on reaching his house called out to the servant girl to be sure and put out the light. She replied that she had already done so, and that it was a pity he had wasted his shoe leather in walking back so far to remind her. To this he answered that he had already thought of this and had therefore taken off his shoes and carried them under his arm so as not to wear them out!