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 a consummation is impossible and that the burden of the maintenance of the aged poor must rest with the State.

Here again, if you once accept the principle, there is no limit to its extension; invalidity is a far more real claim to our sympathy even than old age, which comes to all, and for which there is a whole lifetime to prepare, and if we are to pension the aged we must also pension those who are incapacitated for labour from whatever cause: already in Germany the invalidity claims have far outstripped the old age claims. The fixing of any age is unscientific; some are "too old at forty," others capable of good work long after they are sixty or even sixty-five. The opponents of old age pensions believe that they would act in supplementation of wages, and so indefinitely postpone the true solution of the problem of provision for old age, and that they would be detrimental to thrift, because they would impose upon the thrifty the burden of the maintenance of the unthrifty. Finally, they know that the expectations which have been aroused have already had a disastrous effect upon the efforts that the working classes are themselves making through the great friendly societies and similar organisations, to provide against old age. At the time when old age pensions were first brought by Mr Chamberlain within the field of practical politics, there had been steady progress in this direction. For example, in 1871 there were twenty-one paupers in every hundred of the population over sixty, in 1891 there were only thirteen, and there was every reason to hope that this improvement might have continued. In the words of Lord Rothschild's Committee in 1898—"We desire to refer to one consideratoin [sic] which the course of our inquiry has strongly impressed upon us. It is that a large and