play games, and do anything else that
might keep them out of the drinking-houses. "What is so bad in this
quarter," said Mr. Denison, "is the habitual condition of this mass of
humanity--its uniform mean level, the absence of anything more
civilizing than a grinding organ to raise the ideas beyond the daily
bread and beer, the utter want of education, the complete indifference
to religion, with the fruits of all this--improvidence, dirt, and their
secondaries, crime and disease.... There is no one to give a push to
struggling energy, to guide aspiring intelligence, or to break the fall
of unavoidable misfortune.... The Mission Clergyman," he goes on to say,
"is a sensible, energetic man, in whose hands the work of _civilizing
the people_ is making as much progress as can be expected. But most of
his energy is taken up in serving tables, nor can any great advance be
made while every nerve has to be strained to keep the people from
absolute starvation. And this is what happens every winter.... What a
monstrous thing it is that in the richest country in the world, large
masses of the population should be condemned annually, by a natural
operation of nature, to starvation and death. It is all very well to
say, how can it be helped? Why, it was not so in our grandfathers' time.
Behind us they were in many ways, but they were not met every winter
with the spectacle of starving thousands. The fact is, we have accepted
the marvellous prosperity which has in the last twenty years been
granted us, without reflecting on the conditions attached to it, and
without nerving ourselves to the exertion and the sacrifices which their
fulfilment demands."

And yet Mr. Denison clearly saw that if the people were sufficiently
educated, and taught to practise the virtue of Thrift, much of this
misery might be prevented. "The people," he elsewhere says, "_create_
their destitution and their disease. Probably there are hardly any of
the most needy who, if they had been only moderately frugal and
provident, could not have placed themselves in a position to tide over
the occasional months of want of work, or of sickness, which there
always must be.... I do not underrate the difficulty of laying by out of
weekly earnings, but I say it _can_ be done. A dock-labourer, while a
young, strong, unmarried man, could lay by half his weekly wages, and
such men are almost sure of constant employment."

After showing how married men might also save, Mr. Den