possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves endless
claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If
property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties
make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of
it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much
to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for
charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor
are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented,
disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.
Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial
restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some
impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise
over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the
crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated
at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being
discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such
surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute.
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been
made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the
poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the
poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man
who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to
practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be
ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should
decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the
rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As
for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to
take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty,
discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and