We have reached a point when it is absolutely mischievous to ignore this side of the question. It is not only labour that is affected by the rapid increase in the population; half of the vice and half the crime we deplore in these districts is traceable to the same cause. Did I wish to imitate the French writer and plunge the reader to his eyes in horror, I might tell how the lack of employment brings mere children in these districts into the streets--how girls of eleven and twelve are forced into sin by their wretched parents as the last desperate means of that self-preservation which we are told is the first law of nature. And as the girls in evil times sin at first for bread to eat, so the boys begin to thieve; and we are brought face to face with the fact that we have in our midst vast human warrens, which are simply places where thieves and wantons are bred, and poverty and crime increase and multiply together. I have no desire to argue a vexed question or engage in a controversy on a subject which requires the most delicate handling, but no one who has actual experience of outcast London can keep this one great cause of the teeming misery and vice entirely out of sight. What the remedy for it may be it is no part of my purpose to discuss, but here again I believe that the great hope is in the new race that is coming to replace the old. The next generation will be more cultured, more intellectual, and more refined; mental faculties will be exercised which have been dormant in the poor of to-day, and as we increase in civilization so shall we decrease in numbers. Education will make even the lowest of our citizens something better than they are at present--mere animal reproducers of their species. In the meantime, while we are waiting for that good day to dawn, we can be helping it on. If we begin our task by catering at once for the most hopeful class we can find, we shall make a distinct step in advance. Weed out the slums by degrees--encourage the most decent among the workers first, and get down to the lower strata step by step. Leave the poor wretches who are impossible in any but rookeries a rookery or two to finish their careers in. Encourage everything that will keep their rents down, and encourage everything that will give labour a better return. If the process of elimination is gradual, we shall in time improve the condition of all who are not beyond help. As for the rest, they will solve the riddle in time for themselves by dying off, and leaving the ground free for the well-paid, well-educated, healthy labourer, with two little children and a contented mind, who is the dream of the modern social reformer. CHAPTER III. |A public meeting was held at 'the Farm House,' Harrow Street, in the Mint, some time since, to take into consideration the grievances of the poor people whose homes were about to be demolished to make way for a new street, a railway, and some dwellings for the accommodation of a superior class of tenants.