took to be the right view of a proposed measure
for medical reform.

"Now," he said, "if you've emptied out your
bag of wind will you tell why you doctors, living
in the heart of things, full of deep moment, able,
if you have eyes, to see the marrow of a
hundred social truths, worry about these trifles—
councils, quacks, registers, licensing bodies——
You want just free trade."

"But, my good sir——"

"Free trade, I say. Now let me ask whether
you have ever given any attention to the subject
of county rating."

"I know nothing about it."

"Then you are an ass, my dear friend--an ass.
It lay under your nose. I had lately convinced
myself that one of the most important wants of
the day is an equalised poor-rate."

"Oh, I see. Thomas from down-stairs has
been speaking to you."

"Thomas!" my friend cried with a face of
blank amazement. "What should he know
about politics?"

So here I thought myself not quite the only
gentleman who did not see into what lay close to
his nose.

"No; I have had my attention called to the
subject by a very intelligent member of the
House. I have gone through the facts, and
they are very striking. Why didn't you
doctors tell us long ago what you must have seen
of the working of all this among the poor? But
you have your brains spread upon plaisters;
there's nothing but mixture in your heads.
Don't look as if you had a pill in your throat;
listen to me. Look here: you pale up the
poor in parishes, and say each pays its own.
Here's a purgatory of a parish, never mind its
name, there are hundreds of them in England,
and I won't bless them with the name of a saint.
Here's the old parish of Bread the Less, with
poor inhabitants as plentiful as mites in cheese,
tightly paled in. Cosy gentlemen from the
adjoining paradise of Cake the Greater look over the
pales and cry, 'Rally about your beadle, gentlemen;
support your own poor!' Some poor worm
wriggles up the paling and falls over into the
blessed land. He is taken up between finger
and thumb and thrown back into Purgatory,
with a 'Will you support your own poor, gentlemen?
That fellow has no settlement here, you
know.' 'But,' cries a soul in pain, 'we must
pay four shillings in the pound to get our many
poor only starvation commons. The few you
have you can feed handsomely, though you pay
only fourpence in the pound'—truly, no more is
paid, my dear doctor, by the rich people in
Paddington—'and, after all, you could more easily
pay forty pounds than we can pay four shillings.
Are we to be the dogs who lick the wounds of
Lazarus while he is fed only by the crumbs
under your table, Dives?' That's the way they
ought to talk, only they never do. They see
their necessity, and talk of putting on the screw.
They make what we in the West call hard-
hearted guardians and overseers. Pooh, pooh,
sir! Have I a hoof growing? Have l claws?
Do you see my tail anywhere? If anybody is the
monster, it is I. Those people are blind in their
way, I have been as blind in mine. Why, sir,
the Bank of England itself, and that's Dives,
I think, occupies the best part or the whole of
the parish of St. Christopher-le-Stock, and
though its premises are worth fifty thousand
pounds a year, it only pays a farthing a pound
to the London poor. That is its crumb to
Lazarus. The actual total is not more than is
paid by a single house in other parts of London;
it is not half as much as is paid by the Times
printing-office; not a third as much as is paid
by the Apothecaries' Company. The Bank of
England pays Lazarus a farthing in the pound.
The poor parish of St. Nicolas Olave pays eight
shillings in the pound. The richer a parish
grows the less it has to pay. The poorer a
parish grows the more it has to pay. Very
reasonable, eh? When Regent-street was built,
an immense number of poor dwellings were
destroyed, no substitutes for them were erected,
and the poor were tossed into surrounding
parishes, to fall on their legs if they could.
When the improvements were made in the
Strand and Trafalgar-square, the same happened.
When New Farringdon-street was formed, the
same was done. A horde of poor was hunted
over the borders of one parish to settle down in
another as it could. A waste was made in the
centre of London, and it has contributed
nothing to relieve the distress it magnified up to
the present day. When New Oxford-street was
made, and the homes of thousands in St. Giles's
were destroyed but not built up again
elsewhere, the poor again were crowded down upon
each other, rammed together, and taxed trebly
to pay for one another's miseries. When
Victoria-street, Westminster, was made, a member
of the chapter observed, 'I am happy to say we
improve rapidly. We have got rid of many
hundreds of the worst of the poorer class.' He
was asked whither they were gone, and
answered, 'Really, that is not a subject for our
consideration, the parishes where they are now
living must look to that!' Now, doctor, a state
of things like this breeds facts by tens of
thousands. Pamphlets and Blue-books are full of
them, but the lanes, and wretched rooms, and
workhouses, and workhouse-gates at night, with
the poor wretches shivering outside, they also
are full of them."

"Yes, truly."

"I do not for an instant think that the
Legislature knew how cruel a thing it was when, in
1832, they declared that domestic service was
not to establish for the poor a settlement among
the rich. But I don't speak only of London,
surely not. Look all over the country. See the
farmers denying cottages to labourers in rural
parishes, though the denial forces them to come
and go three or four miles to and from work, and
all in order that they may not acquire a settlement
ment and fall upon their parish rate. Into a
big country town the labourers are forced from
miles of the surrounding country, and the county
townsman pays perhaps, as in Norwich, three or