London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

It is in the crowded city, however, that the seeds of good or evil are brought to the highest state of maturity, and virtue and vice most rapidly developed, under the forcing influences that everywhere abound.

“Great cities,” says Dr. Guthrie, “many have found to be great curses. It had been well for many an honest lad and unsuspecting country girl, that hopes of higher wages and opportunities of fortune—that the gay attire and polished tongue, and gilded story of some old acquaintance—had never turned their steps cityward, nor turned them from the rude simplicity, but safety of their rustic home. Many a foot that once lightly pressed the heather or brushed the dewy grass, has wearily trodden in darkness, and guilt, and remorse, on these city pavements. Happy had it been for many that they had never exchanged the starry skies for the lamps of the town, nor had left their lonely glens, or quiet hamlets, or solitary shores, for the throng and roar of our streets. Well for them that they had heard no roar but the rivers, whose winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but oceans, whose stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than encounter the flood of city temptations, which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into ruin.

“Yet I bless God for cities. The world had not been what it is without them. The disciples were commanded to ‘begin at Jerusalem,’ and Paul threw himself into the cities of the ancient world, as offering the most commanding positions of influence. Cities have been as lamps of light along the pathway of humanity and religion. Within them science has given birth to her noblest discoveries. Behind their walls freedom has fought her noblest battles. They have stood on the surface of the earth like great breakwaters, rolling back or turning aside the swelling tide of oppression. Cities, indeed, have been the cradles of human liberty. They have been the radiating, active centres of almost all church and state reformation. The highest humanity has been developed in cities. Somehow or other, amid their crowding and confinement, the human mind finds its fullest freest expansion. Unlike the dwarfed and dusty plants which stand in our city gardens, languishing like exiles for the purer air and freer sunshine, that kiss their fellows far away in flowery fields and green woodland, on sunny banks and breezy hills, man reaches his highest condition amid the social influences of the crowded city. His intellect receives its brightest polish, where gold and silver lose theirs, tarnished by the scorching smoke and foul vapours of city air. The mental powers acquire their full robustness, where the cheek loses its ruddy hue, and the limbs their elastic step, and pale thought sits on manly brows, and as aërolites—those shooting stars which, like a good man on his path in life, leave a train of glory behind them on the dusky sky—are supposed to catch fire by the rapidity of their motion, as they rush through the higher regions of our atmosphere, so the mind of man fires, burns, shines, acquires its most dazzling brilliancy, by the very rapidity of action into which it is thrown amid the bustle and excitements of city life. And if, just as in those countries where tropical suns, and the same skies, ripen the sweetest fruit and the deadliest poisons—you find in the city the most daring and active wickedness, you find there also, boldly confronting it, the most active, diligent, warm-hearted, self-denying and devoted Christians.”[2]

London then may be considered as the grand central focus of operations, at once the emporium of crime and the palladium of Christianity. It is, in fact the great arena of conflict between the powers of darkness and the ministry of heaven. Here, within the area of our metropolis, the real struggle is maintained between the two antagonistic principles of good and evil. It is here that they join issue in the most deadly proximity, and struggle for the vantage-ground.

Here legions of crime and legions of vices unite and form an almost impenetrable phalanx, while the strong man armed enjoys his goods in peace—no, not in peace, for here too the banner of the cross is most firmly planted, and Christianity wins its freshest laurels. Here is the stronghold, the occupation of which by the everlasting gospel, has given vigour, support, and consistency to the religion of the world. Here is concentrated that fervent and apostolic piety that has made itself felt to the remotest corner of the earth; and here is the nucleus of missionary enterprise, and the radiating centre of active benevolence.

“The Christian power that has moved a sluggish world on, the Christian benevolence and energy that have changed the face of society, the Christian zeal that has gone forth, burning to win nations and kingdoms for Jesus,” have received their birth or development in London.

Since, then, this busy mart of the world, in which the most opposite and dissimilar wares are exhibited, is made up of such composite materials and conflicting elements, it is only fair that while estimating its capabilities for crime, and endeavouring to plumb its depths of depravity, ignorance, and suffering, we should, when possible, faithfully depict their opposites, and take cognizance of such instrumentalities as present the best antidotes and alleviations.

It is questionable, indeed, how far the cause of religion and morality would be promoted by a ghastly array of facts, representing the dimensions of crime in all its naked deformity, or by any exhibition, however truthful, of vice and wretchedness under their most repulsive aspects, and without any cheering reference to corrective and remedial agencies. The effect produced upon the mind, in such a case, would be, in the generality of instances, blank despair; and the only influence thus excited would partake strongly of that morbid sympathy and unhealthy excitement, awakened by delineations of fictitious distress.

To unravel the dark catalogue of London profligacy, and present to the eye of the reader the wearisome expanse of guilt and suffering, unrelieved by any indications of improvement, would be like exhibiting the convulsive death-agony of a drowning man without the friendly succour of a rope, or like conjuring up the horrors of a shipwreck without the mental relief afforded by a life-boat.

We need the day star of hope to guide us through the impenetrable gloom of moral darkness. The olive branch of mercy and the rainbow of promise are as needful tokens of social and religious improvement, as of abated judgments and returning favour.