OLD AGE PENSIONS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10594, 1 March 1895, Page 2

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,—l was very much interested in readme the annual report of the Canterbury Women’s Institute, printed in extenso, in, your issue of Feb. 14. I was specially pleased and interested dn reading that, among all its numerous elevating aims and aspirations, it actually included the advocacy of a ’ pension' for our old and .poor, and our impecuniously infirm. In'England, as if to encourage us here, some of the greatest of statesmen and politicians are addressing their constituents (or rather have addressed them) xn very commendatory expressions relative to pensions for their old and poor. Also Mr Broadhurst, M.P. for Leicester, has tabled a motion in the British Parliament; and, in reference to the utterances of Mr Chamberlain, the following is an extract from the Christian World “ The calm reasonableness of Mr Chamberlain’s long, speech on old age pensions, in Birmingham Town Hall, and that.- warmth of his sympathy, are pleasantly reminiscent of his Radical days. We are glad to say, farther, that there was not a bitter sentence in the speech. He showed how ope in two, or nearly one in two, of the working classes who live to sixty-five is compelled to have recourse to the poor laws. ,He repudiated the suggestion that this is due to their idleness, their drunkenness, and their thriftleasness. The fact, is, he said, that the conditions of our civilisation are very hard upon the old; they are growing harder every day, and an old man in the struggle for existence, from the bitter competition, to which every one is subjected, is thrust to'the wall by younger and stronger. Hia belief, from a careful study of the evidence given before the Boyal Commission, of which he was a member, was that the great majority of those persons who at sixty-five become paupers, are persons who have led a fairly thrifty, a fairly industrious, and a generally sober life.” Such are the favourable comments of one of England’s moat able and most astute of politicians ; and I derive myself, and I fancy thousands in New Zealand will, a peculiar gratification in knowing that otir advocacy for pensions for our old and poor is also an aspiration of one whose social status in England, as well as his commanding intelligence, have given him a world-wide celebrity,—l am, &c.. * ALFRED WILSON.