That is the result round their pleasant city, and this within their industrious and practical one: let us keep, for the reference of future ages, a picture of domestic life, out of the streets of London in her commercial prosperity, founded on the eternal laws of Supply and Demand, as applied by the modern Capitalist:
“A father in the last stage of consumption—two daughters nearly marriageable with hardly sufficient rotting clothing to ‘cover their shame.’ The rags that hang around their attenuated frames flutter in strips against their naked legs. They have no stool or chair upon which they can sit. Their father occupies the only stool in the room. They have no employment by which they can earn even a pittance. They are at home starving on a half-chance meal a day, and hiding their raggedness from the world. The walls are bare, there is one bed in the room, and a bundle of dirty rags are upon it. The dying father will shortly follow the dead mother; and when the parish coffin encloses his wasted form, and a pauper’s grave closes above him, what shall be his daughters’ lot? This is but a type of many other homes in the district: dirt, misery, and disease alone flourish in that wretched neighbourhood. ‘Fever and smallpox rage,’ as the inhabitants say, ‘next door, and next door, and over the way, and next door to that, and further down.’ The living, dying, and dead are all huddled together. The houses have no ventilation, the back yards are receptacles for all sorts of filth and rubbish, the old barrels or vessels that contain the supply of water are thickly coated on the sides with slime, and there is an undisturbed deposit of mud at the bottom. There is no mortuary house—the dead lie in the dogholes where they breathed their last, and add to the contagion which spreads through the neighbourhood.”—Pall Mall Gazette, January 7th, 1871, quoting the Builder.
As I was revising this sheet,—on the evening of the 20th of last month,—two slips of paper were brought to me. One contained, in consecutive paragraphs, an extract from the speech of one of the best and kindest of our public men, to the ‘Liberal Association’ at Portsmouth; and an account of the performances of the 35-ton gun called the ‘Woolwich infant’ which is fed with 700-pound shot, and 130 pounds of gunpowder at one mouthful; not at all like the Wapping infants, starving on a half-chance meal a day. “The gun was fired with the most satisfactory result,” nobody being hurt, and nothing damaged but the platform, while the shot passed through the screens in front at the rate of 1,303 feet per second: and it seems, also, that the Woolwich infant has not seen the light too soon. For Mr. Cowper-Temple, in the preceding paragraph, informs the Liberals of Portsmouth, that in consequence of our amiable neutrality “we must contemplate the contingency of a combined fleet coming from the ports of Prussia, Russia, and America, and making an attack on England.”
Contemplating myself these relations of Russia, Prussia, Woolwich, and Wapping, it seems to my uncommercial mind merely like another case of iron railings—thieves outside, and nothing to steal within. But the second slip of paper announced approaching help in a peaceful direction. It was the prospectus of the Boardmen’s and General Advertising Co-operative Society, which invites, from the “generosity of the public, a necessary small preliminary sum,” and, “in addition to the above, a small sum of money by way of capital,” to set the members of the society up in the profitable business of walking about London between two boards. Here is at last found for us, then, it appears, a line of life! At the West End, lounging about the streets, with a well-made back to one’s coat, and front to one’s shirt, is usually thought of as not much in the way of business; but, doubtless, to lounge at the East End about the streets, with one Lie pinned to the front of you, and another to the back of you, will pay, in time, only with proper preliminary expenditure of capital. My friends, I repeat my question: Do you not think you could contrive some little method of employing—yourselves? for truly I think the Seraphic Doctors are nearly at their wits’ end (if ever their wits had a beginning). Tradesmen are beginning to find it difficult to live by lies of their own; and workmen will not find it much easier to live, by walking about, flattened between other people’s.
Think over it. On the first of March, I hope to ask you to read a little history with me; perhaps also, because the world’s time, seen truly, is but one long and fitful April, in which every day is All Fools’ day,—we may continue our studies in that month; but on the first of May, you shall consider with me what you can do, or let me, if still living, tell you what I know you can do—those of you, at least, who will promise—(with the help of the three strong Fates), these three things:
1. To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.
2. To help other people at theirs, when you can, and seek to avenge no injury.
3. To be sure you can obey good laws before you seek to alter bad ones.
Believe me,
Your faithful friend,