Other European countries have managed to classify their poor. In France the medical patients go to hospitals, the infirm aged poor have special "hospices," and the blind and the idiots are separated from the little children, each having their appropriate establishments. Of course we take a great and to some extent justifiable pride in our Local Government institutions, but as the world becomes more complex and difficult, it is beginning to be seen that backward and less intelligent districts do not get the full value out of legislation and rates that a progressive and vigorous district obtains. It is one thing to pass an Act of Parliament and another thing to get a local elective body to administer it intelligently. If we could level up the worst administration of Guardians to the best, a great deal would be done, but there is no manner of doubt that the State ought to impose a time limit on the General Mixed Workhouse and to enact that after such a date no Board of Guardians shall be allowed to house men, women, and children in the unclassified barracks in use to-day. If any body of Guardians do not feel capable of carrying out such a decree the State must take their job over and do it for them. For eighty years the law makers have been told by their own experts what their workhouses were, and why they ought to be abolished and the fact that the greatest sufferers from the iniquity are poor children who cannot voice their complaints, and exist in dumb ignorance of the wrongs that are done to them, does not make our position as the wrong-doers any less deserving of damnation. CHAPTER XV REMEDIES OF TO-DAY Ring out the feud of rich and poor; Ring in redress to all mankind. TENNYSON: "In Memoriam." When Absalom cried out in a loud voice, "Oh, that I were made judge in the land that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!" he was, as we should say nowadays, playing to the gallery. Yet, sincerely uttered, what a noble wish it was. Let it stand as an expression of the still unfulfilled ideal of judicial duty and public service which we owe to-day to the poor of this country. Every man has not as yet a judicial system that does justice to every man. And I fear that Absalom's fine saying was only an election cry in his campaign against his father, recalling to the voters perhaps David's inconsistency in the theory and practice of justice in the matter of Uriah and his wife. In those days the King, the Lawgiver, and the Judge were but one person, so that to be made Judge was to be made Lawgiver and King, and you not only administered the laws but made them as you went along. Absalom was only an office seeker, but his election address contained a noble sentiment.