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Title: Notes [Jun, 1889] Author: Freedom Press (London) Date: June, 1889 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 3, No. 31, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3070, retrieved on April 14, 2020.
Mr. W. H. S. Alexander has been good enough to present the English
people with the necessary funds to establish a National Portrait Gallery
in which the public will be able occasionally to see the counterfeit
presentiments of the living and dead mediocrities who have honored this
country by being born in it. By occasionally we mean about four times a
year, on bank holidays, for of course the show will not be on view on
Sundays and will probably be closed pretty early in the evenings, after
the fashion of the National Picture Gallery. Mr. Alexander is the son of
a solicitor who "made" the one hundred thousand pounds which constitute
the gift, and a good deal more, by speculating in house property and
land in the metropolitan suburbs. So that in reality this picture
gallery has been squeezed out of certain of the London workers in the
form of rent by this estimable eccentric's father and his gang.
Last winter this man distinguished himself in another direction. There
were many people out of work at Andover, near which he lives and owns
very many acres of land; and he benevolently set gangs of men 11 to
shave off the tops of the hills," as he put it. What a satire On our
civilization for those whose eyes are not shut. Here is a man with a
quantity of land which he does not use, and whose ideas am certainly
very limited if he believes in there being any inherent virtue in toil,
forcing a number of his fellows to do a useless task before he will give
them the food to which they are rightfully entitled. On the Other hand
there are a number of men, restrained by ignorance, prejudice, and
government from using this land in a useful manner to supply their
wants, degrading themselves by doing unproductive work. Just imagine the
Alexandrian system applied all over the country and all the unemployed
engaged in doing useless work in order to live: what a grand ideal!