354 WHAT DEMOCRACY WILL YET DO. Squire Walters, and the next of Squire Wyndham. Where it will be the following day no one knows. The sport of snaring them is a much greater pleasure and temptation to the poor, than the sport of shooting them is to the rich. The sport is immensely increased by the danger and the consequences of detection, and by the mode in which it is carried on, It is as exciting as smuggling. In the dark and stormy nights the young peasants venture by twos and threes into the strictly watched and solitary enclosures of their landlords; they are in constant risk of being discovered by the gamekeepers, and of being torn from their homes and consigned to jail; they are tempted by the excitement of the enterprise, and by the desire to add something to the miserably scanty fare of their families. The poor fellows have no other amusement, and therefore take to this dangerous sport with the greatest zest. "But what are the consequences of detection? Here comes the enormous evil resulting from these laws. If detected, the young peasant, who is very often a man who has never committed any other crime or offence against the laws; who has only yielded to the same kind of impulse as that which makes his landlord love sport; who has, in short, only done that which we should all do without the least remorse were we in his position; this poor fellow, who had no other amusement in which he could indulge, and who has been goaded on by misery and destitution, is caught by a gamekeeper, is carried off to the tribunal of the petty sessions, where his own landlord, who is interested in his punishment, or where some other neighboring landlord, who is equally interested in his punishment, for the sake of his own sport, is sitting as judge! Before such an unfair tribunal the poor fellow is placed. No jury is allowed him. He is tried, judged, condemned and sentenced by the landlords themselves, and is by them sent off to the county jail, there to spend one, two, or six months, and often a whole year, in company with felons and criminals of the worst possible character. There he becomes inured to the contemplation of vice of all kinds, and of all degrees. There he gradually loses all horror of it; and thence he returns, hardened in villainy, and prepared for the commission of deeds from which he would have shrunk when he entered. "During the time of his incarceration, his poor wife and family are driven to the workhouse in order to escape starvation; their household goods are all sold up; their independence of character is ruined; and the happiness of a whole family is often destroyed for ever. This is no fanciful picture. It is an occurrence of every day in the rural districts. About 5,000 such committals take place every year in England and Wales." Well may Mr. Kay exclaim, in view of this dreadful condition of things: "If democracy should ever invade this country—and the march of events during the last half century ought to show us that it will be in the midst of us in a few years the people, among the first laws they will pass, will establish a great system of compulsory and gratuitous education, and will oblige all parents to send their children to school. The most stringent educational regulations that have been ever put in force are those of Switzerland and America." To a man who looks with sympathy and brotherly regard on the mass of the people, who is chiefly interested in the "lower classes," England must present much that is repulsive. . The condition of the lower classes at the present moment is a mournful comment on English institutions and civilization. The multitude are depressed in that country to a degree of ignorance, want and misery, which must touch every heart not made of stone. In the civilized world there are few sadder spectacles than the present contrast in Great Britain of unbounded wealth and luxury, with the starvation of thousands and tens of thousands, crowded into cellars and dens, without ventilation or light, compared with which the wigwam of the Indian is a palace. Misery, famine, brutal degradation, in the neighborhood and presence of stately mansions, which ring with gaiety, and dazzle with pomp and unbounded profusion, shock us as no other wretchedness does. It is a striking fact, that the private charity of England, though almost incredible, makes little impression on this mass of misery; thus teaching the rich and titled, "to be just before they are generous," and not to look to private munificence as a remedy for the evils of selfish institutions.—Channing's "Duty of Free States." CONDITION OF THE POOR IN THE LARGE TOWNS. A I. WAY from the garden fields, the filthy cottages and the heathen peasantry of England, to the foul cellars and murky dens of the large towns, with their sick and starving inhabitants. If, in the former, we saw so much to excite pity, disgust and indignation, in the midst of the richest and most beautiful rural districts in the world, what shall we see when we leave the landscapes of Nature, and gaze on the crowded receptacles of the large manufacturing towns, where the toiling operatives by the million are hived? In my first work on England, I shocked many of my readers by saying: "I should rather see the children of my love born to the heritage of Southern Slavery than to the doom of the operative's life." Subsequent events and observation have deepened the meaning of these terrible words. The slavery of the Negro has ceased-the slavery of the operative still exists, and it has embraced new myriads in its merciless folds, and sunk new millions into deeper wretchedness and degradation. It has defied all the efforts of philanthropy, and all the power of prayer. And it will defy all things except Justice and Education. Class legislation and cruel exaction have long held sway, and their work is done. Nothing can save the adult generation of England's depressed classes. Their doom is sealed. Neither man nor God can achieve their redemption. It is too late-the work is done. The ruin can never be repaired. Atonement can not be made to them for the immolation. They are bound hopelessly to the altar 358 THE MISSION OF HUMANE WRITERS. their thin blood has oozed out-the ashes of the victims are falling there, and there they will remain forever. Let English philanthropy then turn away from the thankless, the fruitless, the bootless task. Only give the fathers and mothers clothing, and shelter, and bread for a few days longer. You can do no more for them. BUT TURN TO THEIR CHILDREN. Give them JUSTICE, in the name of God and EDUCATION, in the name of Immortality. IT II. T is not a pleasant task that I have set myself to do. But it will be done. The cry of the poor, no matter how far my suffering brother may be from me, shall be heard by others, no matter in what land they dwell. No country so distant now no community so far away on the other side of the globe, but shall listen to the groan of the despairing, the wrong of the oppressor, the sigh of the down-trodden, the prayer of the poor. Those of us who write and speak for the illiterate and the dumb will be heard; our words will find their way into the secret chambers of palaces; they shall echo through the gilded halls of Pride and Aristocracy; they shall give courage everywhere to the fainting Samaritan, and cheer the innumerable army of the martyred sons of poverty and toil. Oh, my brothers beloved! blessed worshippers at the Shrine of Letters, sanctified to the work which tempted the Son of God from the Palace home of his Father to save a world which had no place to give him to lay his head, no throne to offer him but the malefactor's cross-blessings on ye! Brothers all. Ye hold the only sceptre that cannot be broken. Every line you write in the cause of your fellow-men is eternal. Long after that pen shall have fallen, to be taken up no more, your works will be read by the coming generations. Far in the entrancing vistas I see you moving, like shining ones, over the illuminated multitude of the countless host of earth's redeemed children. From that far-off vision of beauty, draw all your |