"Lord! what queer thoughts thou hast, Jim!" said the woman who had previously fainted, and she burst into a half-convulsive laugh.
"Indeed, it's altogether a mystery to me," said the man who had so recently found his son; "we seem to be born for nothing but trouble. And then the queerest thing is that we are to go to hell, at last, if we don't do every thing exactly square. My poor father always taught me to reverence religion; and I don't like to say any thing against it, but I'm hard put to it, at times, Jim, I'll assure ye. It sounds strange, that we are to be burnt for ever, after pining and starving here; for how can a man keep his temper, and be thankful, as they say we ought to be, when he would work and can't get it, and, while he starves, sees oppressors ride in their gigs, and build their great warehouses?"
"It's mere humbug, John, to keep us down: that's what it is!" said Jim: "one of these piety-mongers left us a tract last week; and what should it contain but that old tale of Bishop Burnet, about the widow that somebody who peeped through the chinks of the window-shutters saw kneeling by a table with a crust of bread before her, and crying out in rapture, 'All this and Christ!' I tell thee what, John, if old Burnet had been brought down from his gold and fat living, and had tried it himself, I could better have believed him. It's a tale told like many others to make fools and slaves of us: that's what I think. Ay, and I told the long-faced fellow so that fetched the tract. He looked very sourly at me, and said the poor did not use to trouble themselves about politics in his father's time, and every body was more comfortable then than they are now. 'The more fools were they,' said I: 'if the poor had begun to think of their rights sooner, instead of listening to religious cant, we should not have been so badly off now:' and away he went, and never said another word.
"But I don't like to give way to bad thoughts about religion, after all, Jim," said John: "it's very mysterious—the present state of things: but we may find it all explained in the next life."
"Prythee, John," exclaimed the other, interrupting him, impatiently, "don't talk so weakly. That's the way they all wrap it up; and if a guess in the dark and a 'maybe' will do for an argument, why any thing will do. Until somebody can prove to me that there is another life after this, I shall think it my duty to think about this only. Now just look at this, John! If there be another life after this, why the present is worth nothing: every moment here ought to be spent in caring for eternity; and every man who really believes in such a life would not care how he passed this, so that he could but be making a preparation for the next: isn't that true, John?"
"To be sure it is, Jim; and what o' that?"
"Why, then, tell me which of 'em believes in such a life. Do you see any of the canting tribe less eager than others to get better houses, finer chairs and tables, larger shops, and more trade? Is old Sour-Godliness in the north, there, more easily brought to give up a penny in the dozen to save a starving stockinger than the grinders that don't profess religion? I tell thee, John, it's all fudge: they don't believe it themselves, or else they would imitate Christ before they tell us to be like him!"
Reader! the conversation shall not be prolonged, lest the object of this sketch should be mistaken. These conversations are real: they are no coinages. Go to Leicester, or any other of the suffering towns of depressed manufacture, where men compete with each other in machinery till human hands are of little use, and rival each other in wicked zeal to reduce man to the merest minimum of subsistence. If the missionary people—and this is not said with a view to question the true greatness and utility of their efforts—if they would be consistent, let them send their heralds into the manufacturing districts, and first convert the "infidels" there, ere they send their expensive messengers to India. But let it be understood that the heralds must be furnished with brains, as well as tongues; for whoever enters Leicester, or any other of the populous starving hives of England, must expect to find the deepest subjects of theology, and government, and political economy, taken up with a subtlety that would often puzzle a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. Whoever supposes the starving "manufacturing masses" know no more, and can use no better language, than the peasantry in the agricultural counties, will find himself egregiously mistaken. 'Tis ten to one but he will learn more of a profound subject in one hour's conversation of starving stockingers than he would do in ten lectures of a university professor. Let the missionary people try these quarters, then; but let their heralds "know their business" ere they go, or they will make as slow progress as Egede and the Moravians among the Greenlanders. One hint may be given. Let them begin with the manufacturers; and, if they succeed in making real converts to Christianity in that quarter, their success will be tolerably certain among the working-men, and tolerably easy in its achievement.
There is no "tale" to finish about John or his lad, or Jem and his wife. They went on starving,—begging,—receiving threats of imprisonment,—tried the "Bastile" for a few weeks,—came out and had a little work,—starved again; and they are still going the same miserable round, like thousands in "merrie England." What are your thoughts, reader?