With all our prosperity—with all the grandeur, the glitter, and the refinement of our civilisation—with all our moralising institutions and our love of social order and mental improvement, we yet find the national heart devoured, tortured, and preyed upon by that undying serpent—Pauperism!
Yes: the millions are not so happy, so prosperous, or so comfortable as they ought to be;—for they are compelled to gnaw the tares of civilisation's field, while the proud and heartless oligarchy self-appropriate the corn!
Proud and heartless, indeed, are the rulers and the mighty ones of this land; and if the millions remain passive and patient, that pride and that heartlessness will grow, the one more despotic and the other more selfish.
It was but a few days ago that we marked two distinct articles in the morning newspapers, which formed a contrast fearfully significant in its evidence of the pride and the heartlessness which we abominate on the one hand, and of the distress and suffering which we so deeply deplore on the other.
One of these articles consisted but of four lines: the other occupied nearly two columns.
The first stated as laconically as possible that bread had risen to thirteen-pence the quartern loaf, and recorded a rapidly-disposed of regret that provisions should be so dear, on account of the poor. The second gave a laboured, fulsome, and tediously wire-drawn narrative of "Her Majesty's State Ball."
Thus the misery endured by millions in consequence of dearness and scarcity, is a trivial matter deserving only of four lines; whereas the trumpery nonsense and childish tom-foolery of a royal dance are deemed of sufficient importance to merit nearly two columns!
Oh! instead of giving balls and splendid entertainments at such a time, if the Sovereign of this land were to say to the people, "Ye are starving, and it makes my heart bleed to think that from your very vitals are wrung the hundreds of thousands of pounds which are wasted by myself and the other members of the Royal Family on our frivolities, our whims, our caprices, and our wanton extravagances: therefore will I give ye back one half of the enormous income which I have hitherto enjoyed, in the full confidence that my example will be imitated by many others who prey upon you;"—did the Sovereign thus speak to the nation, the nation would be justly proud of its Sovereign; and yet this Sovereign would only be performing a duty dictated by humanity and common justice.
What would be thought of the father of a family who feasted on turtle and venison, accompanied by generous wines, every day, while his children were thrust into the cold, humid cellar, to devour a mouldy crust and drink water?
Yet the Sovereign delights in the attribute of a general and comprehensive paternal solicitude in the welfare of the people: but it is an attribute which exists only in the imaginations of grovelling courtiers or lick-spittle historians.