FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97  
98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   >>   >|  
l survive, perhaps, in an unconquerable hatred of government. The women and girls are shirt-makers, tailoresses, jam-makers, biscuit-makers, match-makers, and rope-makers. In this parish the only gentlefolk are the clergy and the ladies working in the parish for the Church; there are no substantial shopkeepers, no private residents, no lawyer, no doctor, no professional people of any kind; there are thirty-six public-houses, or one to every hundred adults, so that if each spends on an average only two shillings a week, the weekly takings of each are ten pounds. Till lately there were forty-six, but ten have been suppressed; there are no places of public entertainment, there are no books, there are hardly any papers except some of those Irish papers whose continued sufferance gives the lie to their own everlasting charges of English tyranny. Most significant of all, there are no Dissenting chapels, with one remarkable exception. Fifteen chapels in the three parishes of Ratcliff, Shadwell, and St. George's have been closed during the last twenty years. Does this mean conversion to the Anglican Church? Not exactly; it means, first, that the people have become too poor to maintain a chapel, and next, that they have become too poor to think of religion. So long as an Englishman's head is above the grinding misery, he exercises, as he should, a free and independent choice of creeds, thereby vindicating and assorting his liberties. Here there is no chapel, therefore no one thinks; they lie like sheep; of death and its possibilities no one heeds; they live from day to day; when they are young they believe they will be always young; when they are old, so far as they know, they have been always old. The people being such as they are--so poor, so hopeless, so ignorant--what is done for them? How are they helped upward? How are they driven, pushed, shoved, pulled, to prevent them from sinking still lower? For they are not at the lowest depths; they are not criminals; up to their lights they are honest; that poor fellow who stands with his hands ready--all he has got in the wide world--only his hands--no trade, no craft, no skill--will give you a good day's work if you engage him; he will not steal things; he will drink more than he should with the money you give him; he will knock his wife down if she angers him; but he is not a criminal. That step has yet to be taken; he will not take it; but his children may, and unless they
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97  
98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
makers
 

people

 

chapels

 

public

 

chapel

 
papers
 
Church
 

parish

 
ignorant
 

hopeless


vindicating

 

assorting

 
creeds
 

choice

 
exercises
 

independent

 
liberties
 
possibilities
 

thinks

 

lowest


things

 

engage

 

children

 

angers

 

criminal

 

sinking

 

prevent

 

pulled

 

upward

 

driven


pushed

 
shoved
 

misery

 

depths

 

stands

 
fellow
 

criminals

 
lights
 

honest

 
helped

conversion
 

adults

 
hundred
 
spends
 

average

 

professional

 
thirty
 

houses

 
shillings
 

suppressed