Then, the whisper went among the priests and teachers, saying to each, "In thy soul thou knowest it is a truth, O man, that there are good things to be taught, on which all men may agree. Teach those, and stay this cry."
To which, each answered in like manner, "It is a great wrong—BUT IT WILL LAST MY TIME." And so he put it from him.
I saw a poisoned air, in which life drooped. I saw disease, arrayed in all its store of hideous aspects and appalling shapes, triumphant in every alley, by-way, court, back-street, and poor abode, in every place where human beings congregated—in the proudest and most boastful places, most of all. I saw innumerable hosts, fore-doomed to darkness, dirt, pestilence, obscenity, misery, and early death. I saw, wheresoever I looked, cunning preparations made for defacing the Creator's Image, from the moment of its appearance here on earth, and stamping over it the image of the Devil. I saw, from those reeking and pernicious stews, the avenging consequences of such sin issuing forth, and penetrating to the highest places. I saw the rich struck down in their strength, their darling children weakened and withered, their marriageable sons and daughters perish in their prime. I saw that not one miserable wretch breathed out his poisoned life in the deepest cellar of the most neglected town, but, from the surrounding atmosphere, some particles of his infection were borne away, charged with heavy retribution on the general guilt.
There were many attentive and alarmed persons looking on, who saw these things too. They were well clothed, and had purses in their pockets; they were educated, full of kindness, and loved mercy. They said to one another, "This is horrible, and shall not be!" and there was a stir among them to set it right. But, opposed to these, came a small multitude of noisy fools and greedy knaves, whose harvest was in such horrors; and they, with impudence and turmoil, and with scurrilous jests at misery and death, repelled the better lookers-on, who soon fell back, and stood aloof.
Then, the whisper went among those better lookers-on, saying, "Over the bodies of those fellows, to the remedy!"
But, each of them moodily shrugged his shoulders, and replied, "It is a great wrong—but it will last my time!" And so they put it from them.
I saw a great library of laws and law-proceedings, so complicated, costly, and unintelligible, that, although numbers of lawyers united in a public fiction that these were wonderfully just and equal, there was scarcely an honest man among them, but who said to his friend, privately consulting him, "Better put up with a fraud or other injury than grope for redress through the manifold blind turnings and strange chances of this system."
I saw a portion of this system, called (of all things) Equity, which was ruin to suitors, ruin to property, a shield for wrong-doers having money, a rack for right-doers having none: a by-word for delay, slow agony of mind, despair, impoverishment, trickery, confusion, insupportable injustice. A main part of it, I saw prisoners wasting in jail; mad people babbling in hospitals; suicides chronicled in the yearly records; orphans robbed of their inheritance; infants righted (perhaps) when they were gray.
Certain lawyers and laymen came together, and said to one another, "In only one of these our Courts of Equity, there are years of this dark perspective before us at the present moment. We must change this."
Uprose, immediately, a throng of others, Secretaries, Petty Bags, Hanapers, Chaffwaxes, and what not, singing (in answer) "Rule Britannia," and "God save the Queen;" making flourishing speeches, pronouncing hard names, demanding committees, commissions, commissioners, and other scarecrows, and terrifying the little band of innovators out of their five wits.