CHARITY, TAXATION, AND PAUPERISM.

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owner of notes or bonds or diamonds, because thesethings are easily concealed.

Raise the revenues by taxing real estate, which is veryvaluable in the cities and of little worth in the country.Tax only what everybody uses, what all can see, whatany one can value. If we would keep people away fromthe towns, we must make life in the country less burden-some, and work in the country more remunerative.

III. This tax on real estate alone, is no socialisticscheme. It is not proposed to abolish all poverty by areform which consists in ceasing to tax the very poorestout of the small earnings which they might otherwisesave. Nor is it a plan to do away with competition.Competition with its great rewards and fearful punish-ments, which make men do their best, is necessary andinevitable. Harsh as the law of the survival of the fittestmay appear, it is a law. Much, however, of involun-tary poverty is the result of unwise and cramping laws,and may be and should be alleviated by repealing suchlaws, not by making new ones.

Many will not agree to this, thinking that education isthe sovereign remedy: so it may be, in the long run; but,for the present, education but makes a less contentedman or a more dangerous criminal.

Many religious persons think that nothing but theGospel will help ; that all poverty is due to original sin ;that God ’s grace is the sole relief. And this seems to bethe view taken in the Pope’s recent Encyclical on Labor.