Here, my Lord, are some facts worthy of your consideration. You have
heard a great deal about Millocracy and the cruelties practised in the
manufacturing districts. I live among factories and we have “_A Ten
Hours Bill_,” and our operatives leave work at four, some at two, o’clock
on Saturday, and have the whole Sabbath to themselves. The wages on an
average are quite equal to those of this railway clerk. And yet we are
told that these masters are tyrants, oppressors, and care nothing for
their workpeople. But if so, what shall we say of the “_Railocracy_”
which is springing up among us? The poor railway operative in a great
number of cases has no Saturday afternoon to himself, no Good Friday, no
Christmas-day, no Sunday, no holiday throughout the year. He must never
attend a place of worship, and in some instances he is prohibited from
reading during the hours that he is on the line. Such a monotonous life,
though spent on Parnassus, or in the pleasant vale of Tempe, would prove
fatal to all physical, intellectual, and moral health. And when we
consider that some of the buildings and localities in which these poor
fellows are imprisoned are almost as comfortless as an Irish cabin, and
far worse than many gaols, we must blush for the system which thus
violates all the dictates of humanity and religion. We spend some
thousands a year to send missionaries to the heathen, to teach barbarians
to keep the Sabbath, but how little do those simple hearted savages dream
that, at home, we doom our own Christian brethren to break the Sabbath
and become pagans in a land of Bibles and Gospel light, or that we have
Lords who wish for royal charters to sanction this cruelty and
wickedness!
At the time that our peeresses and other ladies are bestirring themselves
to move the heart of woman in America to feel for her coloured brethren
and sisters in bondage, we, who boast of being quite free from all the
prejudices of colour, wish to doom our own fellow countrymen to the
slavery of the rail and Crystal Palace, and then “thank God that we are
not as other men are,” nor even as those vile Americans!! Is it any
wonder that Brother Jonathan laughs at our philanthropy, or tauntingly
retorts, “Physician, heal thyself!” The most complete specimen of
religious grimace and morbid sentimentalism is to see an Englishman or
Englishwoman alternately shedding tears, or burning with indignation over
the fetters of a negro on the other side of the Atlantic, and yet, at the
same moment, condemning his own free born brethren and fellow citizens to
the murderous slavery of the rail, because it will add to the pelf of
some and minister to the pleasure of others! Talk, indeed, of Judas
being dead; why, Mr. Mayhew, kissing the mob in order that he may induce
them first to doom their brethren and then themselves to all the fatal
consequences of Sabbath labour and Sabbath dissipation, is a sufficient
proof that the spirit of the arch traitor is still living among us!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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