Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/63

 have by the Old Age Pensions Act re-established a gigantic system of outdoor relief without waiting to hear the judgment of a Commission appointed to inquire into the working of the Poor Law. They have committed this act of supreme rashness, as we now know for certain, without having taken the trouble to ascertain the cost of a most dubious experiment. This our political guides have done, if we judge them with the very utmost charity possible, out of compassion for the miseries of the poor, without thinking for a moment of the burden they might impose on ratepayers whose efforts just kept them out of pauperism. Such leaders will not become wiser or more prudent when they find that their seats depend on the approval of new constituents whose tender-heartedness forbids them to see the evil of any form of charity which, at whatever cost to the State, gives immediate relief to individual distress which excites their sympathies. The other reflection is that, even if education strengthens, as I believe fully it will, the intellectual powers of women, yet the fruits of education come to ripeness only after long years, and