It seems to me we may go further and say even that the intentions of Government with regard to character are not being carried out. Will anybody look at the Bill and consider the position of the widow? Take the case of a widow of respectable character with a number of children, who has been obliged since the first of January to appeal to the guardians. She cannot get a pension. She is absolutely excluded. Is there a more deserving case in the world than the woman left without a husband to work for her, living with the care and responsibility of children incapable of working for themselves? I cannot imagine any case more worthy of assistance; but it will not be assisted. The woman has been driven to accept Poor Law relief, and she is excluded. When you turn to the case of a man who has subscribed to a friendly society from the age of sixty, it does not matter what his wife's character may be. She is sure of a pension. The Chancellor of the Exchequer dealt with that question on the Report stage, and thoroughly misunderstood it. He thought my noble friend the Member for Marylebone was maintaining the proposition that a wife who carried out her household duties with economy and efficiency was not really helping to earn the pension of which her husband, by subscribing to a friendly society, was securing possession. That was not my noble friend's contention. He was pointing out that a husband might have been thrifty, and might have subscribed for ten years to a friendly society, but if he died a year after reaching the age of seventy, his widow, whatever had happened before, if she had every vice incident to poor humanity, would have an absolute right to a pension because her husband, in spite of thriftless ways and worse, had been able to continue his subscriptions for ten years. I cannot see that that carries out the views of the Government and of the House, yet that is the Bill as it must go to a House where it is impossible, even if the Government desire to allow it, to make any change in the amount charged upon the taxpayers.

There is another point as to character. Of all the people we want to assist, I have warmer sympathy with none than with the man or woman who, towards the end of a long and honorable

life, is not well enough after the age of seventy to be looked after in his or her own home. What is the remedy for that person? There is none save the workhouse infirmary. We have heard a great deal of the brand and stigma of Poor Law relief. It may have been exaggerated by some; but we all agree that the selfrespecting among the poor look with extreme repulsion upon receiving assistance through the machinery of the Poor Law or in Poor Law buildings. But these people, who have, by the necessity of their condition, to make use of Poor Law machinery and buildings are to be deprived of what is called, we believe most falsely, the right to a pension. They are not to have five shillings a week; they are to lose their homes; they are to suffer the stigma of Poor Law relief. It is a great mistake to suppose that the Bill touches the cases of all the poor over seventy years of age, or even deals with the most deserving cases. It does not, and the professions of the Government in this respect, as well as in others, are wholly baseless.

There is one other point on which I must say a word. You are dealing with a sum which at the lowest is £6,500,000, and, according to the Honorable Member who last spoke, will be much more.. You are giving that over absolutely to bodies which are responsible to no legal tribunal whatever. I have the utmost confidence in the general honesty of the committees and county councils and of the officials of the Government; but are we wrong to look with some suspicion on the possibility that this vast potentiality of bribery will never be misused? The six or seven million sterling is to be distributed at the discretion of certain individuals. That discretion is not fettered by strict legal interpretation; it is a matter of estimate and judgment. If an Imperial officer thinks that a man has not really been a very creditable character, or if somebody has enemies, it is conceivable that that person may lose both his pension and his vote. I do not believe there is much danger of abuse in this country. I do not believe that this Bill will lead to it. Even if the theory is ever worked out, which I do not believe it will be, I admit that, if there is a danger, it is not a great one here. I am not so sure that where party politics run high, as in Ireland, you can

be so certain of the working of it. It is not that Irishmen have a larger portion of original sin than the rest of us; but the way in which local administration is worked in Ireland has a tinge of party politics which it has not in any other part of the United Kingdom, and I am afraid that if the Bill is worked on the theory of the Government, it will be found that every friend of a local authority in Ireland will be over the age of seventy, while no enemy of the local authority will ever get beyond the age of sixty-nine.

I have been endeavoring to show that if it is attempted to work the Bill according to theory, you throw an almost impossible task upon the executive, and your discrimination will be arbitrary, and the class you most want to help will be excluded. But will the Bill be worked according to theory? Will its operation be confined to persons over seventy, and of virtuous character? I do not believe for one moment that it will. We are very good-natured people, particularly so when we are dealing with other people's money; and the duty of excluding anybody from the benefits of the Act will be a painful and also an expensive one. Every committee which declares a person in its district, or county, or borough, to be ineligible for a pension, has to do that which is very painful from the point of view of humanity, and very disagreeable from the point of view of the local purse. When humanity and economy are on one side, I think they are too strong for any legislative dikes which the Government may raise against them, and I do not believe that the dikes that the Government have raised will keep out the waters of expenditure for one moment. Honorable Gentlemen below the gangway greatly regretted that they could not discuss their Amendment for reducing the age from seventy to sixty-five. I do not think that it will make very much difference. I believe that under this Bill everybody who desires a pension and can show a decent appearance of being seventy will probably be found eligible by a kindly Imperial officer and a charitable county committee.

That raises one or two points of very great importance. The first point touches on what I have described as the second

great question raised by this Bill—namely, its future effect on social reform. If you are going to use, as I am sure you are going to use, this Bill as a mere method of giving pensions at the taxpayers' expense to persons in declining years, and who have not got a very black mark against their characters, how will you prevent its becoming a mere part of the outdoor relief system of the country? You cannot do it. It is quite true that you have got a different machinery for allocating the money, but to suppose that the ordinary citizen is going nicely to distinguish between what he gets through the Imperial officer and the committee and what he gets through the relieving officer and the board of guardians, and to regard one as discreditable and the other as creditable, is really trespassing upon our credulity. There will not be that broad distinction in the public mind. It will gradually be thought, what is, indeed, the fact, that this is a mere addition to outdoor relief as outdoor relief is now administered in a large number of parishes in this country. In a very large number of unions in this country it is perfectly well known that outdoor relief is given on easy terms to persons who can show a good character. In those districts it ceases to be a badge of discredit. A proof of poverty it may be, but it is not a badge of discredit, and these pensions, which will certainly be given in somewhat reckless fashion under this Bill, will be regarded as a substitute an improved substitute I admit, because it is larger in amount for that outdoor relief, and there will not be that broad distinction between out relief on the one side and pensions on the other which, I think, everybody would desire should be kept unimpaired. And, remember, if you give, as I think you will give, these five shilling pensions, easily and without examination, to persons whose age has not been proved, though advanced in life, they really do become a subvention of wages. The man of sixty-five or sixty-six who conceives himself, or is conceived by his neighbors, to be, roughly enough for the purposes of this Bill, of the age of seventy, and is still capable of a fair day's work, will be very glad to supplement his pension by doing a certain amount of odd jobs if he can get anybody to employ him. But he will neither desire, nor

will he obtain, an amount of wages which will diminish the amount he gets from the State. What he will get will be as much as, but no more than, will enable him to get the full five shillings and, if his labor is worth more than that, the employer gets labor at less than its true market price, and these pensions become quite clearly and plainly a subvention in aid of wages, as was the case under the old Poor Law.

This leads to another question connected with social reform on which I confess I feel very strongly. What is to be the relation of this measure to the inquiry now going on with regard to the reform of the Poor Law and to the legislation which the Government propose to found thereon at some future period? The late Government, conscious that the Poor Law system of the country was antiquated and utterly worn out, appointed a Royal Commission to consider the subject. That commission has been working hard for three years. The Government hope that it will report this year. I go merely on common rumor when I say I think that that is a somewhat sanguine estimate. It might have been accurate before this Bill, but this Bill has wholly changed the problem which is before them. The Commission was appointed to consider the Poor Law as it stood in 1906, but you have profoundly altered the Poor Law by this. Bill, and I cannot imagine-I have had no communication with any member of the Commission how the commissioners

are going to report without fresh investigation and without waiting to see how this Bill is going to affect the problem of outdoor relief. I believe this Bill is going to substitute five shilling pensions, broadly speaking, for outdoor relief almost all over the country. If it is going to do that, it is quite evident that the whole problem of outdoor relief will be completely changed, and I do not know how in these circumstances you can expect a Commission, dealing with so complex a subject, to report with any confidence to the Government and the House. The truth is the Government must be perfectly well aware that they ought to have taken this question of old-age pensions as part of the general problem of poverty. You cannot divorce the two. If only for the purpose of distinguishing pension