retaliation by shooting me, my survivors hang him. The net result
suggested by the police statistics is that we inflict atrocious
injuries on the burglars we catch in order to make the rest take
effectual precautions against detection; so that instead of
saving our wives' diamonds from burglary we only greatly decrease
our chances of ever getting them back, and increase our chances
of being shot by the robber if we are unlucky enough to disturb
him at his work.

But the thoughtless wickedness with which we scatter sentences of
imprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank bed,
and flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as
nothing compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate
poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or
else a virtue to be embraced as St Francis embraced it. If a man
is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor.
If he is not a gentleman, let him be poor. If he is addicted to
the fine arts or to pure science instead of to trade and finance,
let him be poor. If he chooses to spend his urban eighteen
shillings a week or his agricultural thirteen shillings a week on
his beer and his family instead of saving it up for his old age,
let him be poor. Let nothing be done for "the undeserving": let
him be poor. Serve him right! Also--somewhat inconsistently--
blessed are the poor!

Now what does this Let Him Be Poor mean? It means let him be
weak. Let him be ignorant. Let him become a nucleus of disease.
Let him be a standing exhibition and example of ugliness and
dirt. Let him have rickety children. Let him be cheap and let him
drag his fellows down to his price by selling himself to do their