'Graft' v. Pensions

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8, 27 February 1908, Page 9

'Graft' v. Pensions

When Mark Twain was in London some time ago, he was the ' lion ' of a dinner given toy a literary club fin the modern Babylon.' One of the rules of the club required that each member should formally and fai set phrase introduce his guest to the company. ' I like that custom ', Mark drawled slowly out in his reply, ' for it remands me of the time I lectured in, a- little town in the Rockies. My chairman was a well-to-do " cow-puncher ", who found the situation evidently irksome. " I 'mi told I must introduce this yer man t'ye, boys", said he; "but I can only say two things in bis fajvor. One is, that he's never been in gaol, and the other is, that I don't know why ".'

The revelatfions of official ' graft ' and plain and ornamental roguery that every mail brings from France •suggest a similar ' testimonial ' in regard to a considerable body of the liquidators and lawyers that arefattening upon the plundered property of the religious 1 Orders. Even M. Combes is -staggered with thie enor-* mous deficits in the liquidators' accounts. Thus (to mention <aniy one or two Instances) M. Combes (says the Pails correspondent of a London contemporary) ' pointed out that the liquidator received 484,94.9 francs by way of a»n advance from the Treasury for his operations connected with the property of the Mariandstes of Paris. The sales are said to have yielded 985,302; francs ; and yet the man has paid to the Caisse des. Depots only a sum of 137,358 francs, and has repaid the Treasury nothing. Again, in the case of the Paris Gbl-ates, the liquidator was given an advance of 354,983 lrancs by the Treasury ; his operations realised 164,180 francs, but, instead of using ,this sum to repay the ad- • vance, he has kept it -for other causes. The liquidation of the property of the Paris Franciscans brought in 752,953 francs ; but nothing of this has been used to defray the Treasury advance of about half that sum. Such cases as these, said M. Combes, in an interview with M. Marcel Hutin, could be multiplied indefindtiely '< On the eve of general elections a few years ago, the French Chamber of Deputies offered the workers of the coumtry the property of the religious Orders as the nucleus of an old-age pensions fund. The bribe took", as a bribe of a similar nature captured a complaisant nobility in the days of the Eighth Helnry in England. Two years ago— also on the eve of the general, elections—the Deputies altered down the age-limit in the Government Pensions Bill from sixty-fivie to sixty. This meant, in pensions alone, an additional State subsidy of £14,000, 00i0. Again the bait took. But when the elections were over, the Government raised the agelimit once more to sixty-five. And a few days ago the Ministry declared its intention to limit the State subsidy to £4,000,000 a year, to exclude large classes of workers from the benefits of their pension scheme, and to insist on contributions from employers and em- ' ployees, after the German principle— a proposal which has met w'ithi considerable opposition in 'the country. The upshot of the matter seems to be the abandonment, for the present, of the old age pensions scheme. Judging by the experience of the liquidations up -to the present, the French worker is not likely to derive the value of a brace of brass buttons from the (plundered property of the religious Orders. And all the fair promises have left him, for the time being, only the hope deferred which maketh the heart sick.