Page:The Laboring Classes of England.djvu/35

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OF THE LABORING CLASSES.
29

done more to uphold what is falsely called the "dignity of the nation," than any other town in the country. In Glasgow, in the five years ending in 1840, as many as 62,051 persons were attacked by typhus fever, a disease generally produced by filth, intoxication and vice. In Liverpool, 35,000 to 40,000 of the lower population live in cellars, without any means of light or ventilation but the door. A like picture is presented to the eye of an attentive observer of society, in Leeds, Birmingham, Brighton, London, and almost all the large towns.

The Journal of Civilization, says, If it were required to draw a strong picture of man, morally and socially degraded by misery, the savage tribes of distant zones would in all probability be selected to sit for it. Yet such darkly shaded originals, such painful realities, need not be sought in remote lands. Let the street beggar or the London thief be followed to his home, (if he have one,) and mankind will be seen existing in degradation as great, enduring misery as sharp, as the South Sea Islanders, or the South Africans in their worst aspect. Amongst them, poverty, vice, ignorance, have no contrast to heighten their effects; but here in England—in London, perhaps at our own back door, wretchedness the most acute, infamy the most shocking, exist upon the same square acre with a high condition of luxury and wealth; and despite their near neighborhood, it may be safely conjectured that the British public know more of the social misery of savage nations, than they do of their own poor. Yet, upon this ignorance, the debased and the criminal are specially legislated for, sometimes incorrectly, always inefficiently.

Amongst the various causes of this state of things, the principle, I believe, is, that of mammon worship. This is one of the vices of modern English society, along with an undue depreciation and neglect of the duties, obliga-