True, my dear readers, true—and may God bless her and her scholars. Do you think the working men forget them? But look at St. Giles's, or Spitalfields, or Shadwell, and say, is not the harvest plentiful, and the labourers, alas! few? No one asserts that nothing is done; the question is, is enough done? Does the supply of mercy meet the demand of misery? Walk into the next court and see!
* * * * *
I found Mr. O'Flynn in his sanctum, busy with paste and scissors, in the act of putting in a string of advertisements—indecent French novels, Atheistic tracts, quack medicines, and slopsellers' puffs; and commenced with as much dignity as I could muster:
"What on earth do you mean, sir, by re-writing my article?"
"What—(in the other place)—do you mean by giving me the trouble of re-writing it? Me head's splitting now with sitting up, cutting out, and putting in. Poker o' Moses! but ye'd given it an intirely aristocratic tendency. What did ye mane" (and three or four oaths rattled out) "by talking about the pious intentions of the original founders, and the democratic tendencies of monastic establishments?"
"I wrote it because I thought it."
"Is that any reason ye should write it? And there was another bit, too—it made my hair stand on end when I saw it, to think how near I was sending the copy to press without looking at it—something about a French Socialist, and Church Property."
"Oh! you mean, I suppose, the story of the French Socialist, who told me that church property was just the only property in England which he would spare, because it was the only one which had definite duties attached to it, that the real devourers of the people were not the bishops, who, however rich, were at least bound to work in return for their riches, but the landlords and millionaires, who refused to confess the duties of property, while they raved about its rights."
"Bedad, that's it; and pretty doctrine, too!"
"But it's true: it's an entirely new and a very striking notion, and I consider it my duty to mention it."