Pauperism has been, for some time, the question of the day in England, the burning question, as they say over here. John is making theories. Theories! he was wont to exclaim, the British nation can afford to laugh at theories. This is the remark that a Conservative, possessed of more pretension than foresight, made one day before Thomas Carlyle. "My dear sir," replied the apostle of force in England, "the French nobility of a hundred years ago said they could afford to laugh at theories. Then came a man and wrote a book called the 'Social Contract.' The man was called Jean Jacques Rousseau, and his book was a theory, and nothing but a theory. The nobles could laugh at his theory; but their skins went to bind the second edition of his book." Yes, John, my friend, you are quite right to make theories: it is high time. But do not neglect to put them into practice: open your museums and picture galleries on Sundays, and shut a few public-houses;[10] do not rest content with sending missionaries to your poor, to tell them that they, like you, may one day dwell in the mansions of the blessed; make them taste a few of the sweets of this life, amuse them, help them to shake off the stupefying influence of drink; teach them little by little that you do not mean to support them in idleness and drunkenness, and that Unions and other houses of refuge for old age are not instituted to encourage them to be careless and thoughtless for the morrow. Try to make thinking men of them; at present they are but slaves. Unfortunately for you, all these people can read. Beware of the day on which they get sober. Take care of your skin: it is not impossible that there may be yet a good deal of binding to be done. [10] See Appendix (d). * * * * * "At the four corners of Trafalgar Square, the London _Place de la Concorde_, four pedestals are to be seen. Three are surmounted by statues, the fourth is waiting."[11] [11] _John Bull et son Ile_, p. 85. It is waiting still. If England is short of heroes, let her install General Booth on the fourth pedestal; but for goodness and symmetry's sake, let her set someone upon it. * * * * * The statue of Queen Anne, that stands in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, in the heart of the City, has been wanting a nose for the past five or six years. For a shilling she might be provided with a beauty. Yet no; the fat aldermen of Beefsteakopolis, who dine at three or four guineas a head, and have lately spent twelve thousand pounds upon a ridiculous and hideous monument that stands at the entrance to the part of London that is under their jurisdiction, refuse a nose to the sovereign in whose reign lived the great Marlborough, hero of Blenheim and Malplaquet. Yet nobody can doubt that a nose would be very useful to the poor thing, neglected by John Bull, and stuck up there, in one of the most furiously draughty spots in London.