You are a large property-owner in the town. Cannot you
consider this appeal as an unenforced rate? It comes to that in the
long run."
The Marquis shrugged his shoulders.
"I think," he said, "that on the subject of charity Englishmen generally
wholly misapprehend the situation. You say that between six and seven
thousand men are out of work in Medchester. Very well, I affirm that
there must be a cause for that. If you are a philanthropist it is your
duty to at once investigate the economic and political reasons for such
a state of things, and alter them. By going about and collecting money
for these people you commit what is little short of a crime. You must
know the demoralizing effect of charity. No man who has ever received a
dole is ever again an independent person. Besides that, you are
diverting the public mind from the real point of issue, which is not
that so many thousand people are hungry, but that a flaw exists in the
administration of the laws of the country so grave that a certain number
of thousands of people who have a God-sent right to productive labour
haven't got it.
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