Source B displays the idea that the costs of Liberal social reforms were a major problem. Firstly, it focuses on the kingdoms “great wealth” with the adjective “great” attempting to emphasise how affluent the country was. The writer then claims that this will be “destroy[ed]” via “unjust taxation”. By following such high appraisal with emotive language such as “destroy” and “unjust”, the writer highlights how considerably the costs of the old age pensions will negatively affect the country. However, the provenance of the source is the Times newspaper which was a conservative newspaper and so would most likely be bias against the measure which could have resulted in exaggeration. This is proven true at the very start of the source where it is claimed that there are no “restraining provisions of the Poor Law” when in fact there are a multitude of restraints, for example, previous convicts were unable to benefit from the act. …show more content…
The measure will “sap the character of the people” as it teaches them not to rely on themselves. When the pensioner act was introduced, the money was raised by taxes on middle and upper class people, causing resentment. They complained that money went to people who were lazy and did not want to work. Critics also suggested that allowance systems made the situation worse because they encouraged poor people to have children that they could not afford to look after. So, to some extent, Source B supports this idea and presents the concept that perhaps the loss of self-sufficiency was the main reason for criticism of Liberal social