“Or whether you had misunderstood him,” Brooks continued, doggedly.  “This fund has become absolutely necessary unless we wish to see the people starve in the streets.  There are between six and seven thousand operatives and artisans in Medchester to-day who are without work through no fault of their own.  It is our duty as citizens to do our best for them.  Nearly every one in Medchester has contributed according to their means.  You are a large property-owner in the town.  Cannot you consider this appeal as an unenforced rate?  It comes to that in the long run.”

The Marquis shrugged his shoulders.

“I think,” he said, “that on the subject of charity Englishmen generally wholly misapprehend the situation.  You say that between six and seven thousand men are out of work in Medchester.  Very well, I affirm that there must be a cause for that.  If you are a philanthropist it is your duty to at once investigate the economic and political reasons for such a state of things, and alter them.  By going about and collecting money for these people you commit what is little short of a crime.  You must know the demoralizing effect of charity.  No man who has ever received a dole is ever again an independent person.  Besides that, you are diverting the public mind from the real point of issue, which is not that so many thousand people are hungry, but that a flaw exists in the administration of the laws of the country so grave that a certain number of thousands of people who have a God-sent right to productive labour haven’t got it.  Do you follow me?”

“Perfectly,” Brooks answered.  “You did not talk like this to Mr. Wensome.”

“I admit it.  He was an ignorant man in whom I felt no interest whatever, and I did not take the trouble.  Besides, I will frankly admit that I am in no sense of the word a sentimentalist.  The distresses of other people do not interest me particularly.  I have been poor myself, and I never asked for, nor was offered, any sort of help.  Consequently I feel very little responsibility concerning these unfortunate people, whose cause you have espoused.”

“May I revert to your first argument?” Brooks said.  “If you saw a man drowning then, instead of trying to save him you would subscribe towards a fund to teach people to swim?”

“That is ingenious,” Lord Arranmore replied, smiling grimly, “but it doesn’t interest me.  If I saw a man drowning I shouldn’t think of interfering unless the loss of that man brought inconvenience or loss to myself.  If it did I should endeavour to save him—­not unless.  As for the fund you speak of, I should not think of subscribing to it.  It would not interest me to know that other people were provided with a safeguard against drowning.  I should probably spend the money in perfecting myself in the art of swimming.  Don’t you see that no man who has ever received help from another is exactly in the same position again?  As an individual he is a weaker creature.  That is where I disagree with nearly every existing form of charity.  They are wrong in principle.  They are a debauchment.”