WCP569

[1]

[in ARW’s hand] Answd Jan. 2nd. 1912

sent D. Mail Ed^r. Letter

Jan. 10.

PULTENEY HOTEL,

BATH.

31st Dec^r 1911

Dear Mr Wallace,

I certainly sent out forms to be signed by those discontented with our method of government to all available Fellows of the Royal Society, & to you with the rest. But so far as my recollection goes, I received no form returned by you. The forms are at my house, while I am in Bath & I can’t make sure. It is quite impossible for a copyist to add a name to those on the forms, though he might easily have missed one; so if I am right in supposing that you did not sign, the writer of the article for the Daily Mail¹ (which I haven’t seen) must [2] have added your name propriâ mosu. Is it not sufficient if you call attention to the mistake? I am not in the least responsible for what is printed in the Daily Mail.

—————

Perhaps it may interest you to hear what was told me a fortnight ago by Marquis Cortès, Mayor of a small town south of Paris. There, they have "compulsory" insurance. He is continually being sent official demands that he should insist on collecting the tax in his district; it appears that the forms sent out by the government are torn up, & no attention is paid to them. He told me that he replies that he is quite without influence as Mayor, & that if the govt wishes to collect the tax, they must do so at the point of the bayonet. So much for practical working in France. In Germany, [3] those servants & employees who elect to pay the tax attain admission to the State Hospitals, and most people do so elect. But it is always in fact deducted from wages; so that, for instance, a German lady-friend of mine pays her servants wages smaller than they used to be by just the amount of the tax.

We all agree that, in general, insurance is a very good thing. But a government department is acknowledged by a very expensive machine, and terms will not be anything like so good as those attainable from any good insurance office, competing with others. The deficit will, of course, be made up out of taxation; but it is the people who are insured who will pay this deficit; because just as surely as water gains its own level, so taxation is distributed, after a shorter or longer period, so as to fall on the class least able to bear it.

These are the reasons, which make me opposed to the present Insurance Bill. I can conceive of tentative measures having been introduced, making [4] it so advantageous to insure, that no sensible person would care not to do so; that is the German plan. Had the govt begun by inspecting actuarily [sic] the accounts of Building Societies, etc. so as to be able to guarantee their soundness; how it helped the weak ones, then possibly a scheme might have worked; but even then, any help given from government funds would simply have come out of the pockets of the class to be helped.

In very general terms:- everything done to destroy individual initiative is harmful to the race; it is an approach to enslaving the people. And while I am sure that you would agree that in individual cases, slavery (to extend the use of the word) is not merely permissible but necessary (in the case of criminals) it is at pity to partially enslave the whole race, in order to make the burden of slavery press ever hard on the weak or criminal minority.

Yours very faithfully | William Ramsay.¹ [signature]