Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
In a Scheme for the working out of social salvation the great,
the only, test that is worth anything is the success with which they
attain the object for which they are devised. An ugly old tub of a
boat that will land a shipwrecked sailor safe on the beach is worth
more to him than the finest yacht that ever left a slip-way incapable
of effecting the same object. The superfine votaries of culture may
recoil in disgust from the rough-and-ready suggestions which I have
made for dealing with the Sunken Tenth, but mere recoiling is no
solution. If the cultured and the respectable and the orthodox and the
established dignitaries and conventionalities of Society pass by on the
other side we cannot follow their example.
We may not be priests and Levites, but we can at least play the part of
the Good Samaritan. The man who went down to Jericho and fell among
thieves was probably a very improvident, reckless individual, who ought
to have known better than to go roaming alone through defiles haunted
by banditti, whom he even led into temptation by the careless way in
which he exposed himself and his goods to their avaricious gaze.
It was, no doubt, largely his own fault that he lay there bruised and
senseless, and ready to perish, just as it is largely the fault of
those whom we seek to help that they lie in the helpless plight in
which we find them. But for all that, let us bind up their wounds with
such balm as we can procure, and, setting them on our ass, let us take
them to our Colony, where they may have time to recover, and once more
set forth on the journey of life.
And now, having said this much by way of reply to some of my critics,
I will recapitulate the salient features of the Scheme. I laid down at
the beginning certain points to be kept in view as embodying those
invariable laws or principles of political economy, without due regard
to which no Scheme can hope for even a chance of success.
Subject to these conditions, I think my Scheme will pass muster.
It is large enough to cope with the evils that will confront us;
it is practicable, for it is already in course of application, and it
is capable of indefinite expansion. But it would be better to pass the
whole Scheme in its more salient features in review once more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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