Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
"What!" I think I hear some say, "a million sterling! how can any man
out of Bedlam dream of raising such a sum?" Stop a little! A million
may be a great deal to pay for a diamond or a palace, but it is a mere
trifle compared with the sums which Britain lavishes whenever Britons
are in need of deliverance if they happen to be imprisoned abroad.
The King of Ashantee had captive some British subjects--not even of
English birth--in 1869. John Bull despatched General Wolseley with
the pick of the British army, who smashed Koffee Kalkallee, liberated
the captives, and burnt Coomassie, and never winced when the bill came
in for #750,000. But that was a mere trifle. When King Theodore,
of Abyssinia, made captives of a couple of British representatives,
Lord Napier was despatched to rescue. He marched his army to Magdala,
brought back the prisoners, and left King Theodore dead.
The cost of that expedition was over nine millions sterling.
The Egyptian Campaign, that smashed Arabi, cost nearly five millions.
The rush to Khartoum, that arrived too late to rescue General Gordon,
cost at least as much. The Afghan war cost twenty-one millions
sterling. Who dares then to say that Britain cannot provide a million
sterling to rescue, not one or two captives, but a million, whose lot
is quite as doleful as that of the prisoners of savage kings, but who
are to be found, not in the land of the Soudan, or in the swamps of
Ashantee, or in the Mountains of the Moon, but here at our very doors?
Don't talk to me about the impossibility of raising the million.
Nothing is impossible when Britain is in earnest. All talk of
impossibility only means that you don't believe that the nation cares
to enter upon a serious campaign against the enemy at our gates.
When John Bull goes to the wars he does not count the cost. And who
dare deny that the time has fully come for a declaration of war against
the Social Evils which seem to shut out God from this our world?
SECTION 3.--SOME ADVANTAGES STATED.
This Scheme takes into its embrace all kinds and classes of men who may
be in destitute circumstances, irrespective of their character or
conduct, and charges itself with supplying at once their temporal
needs; and then aims at placing them in a permanent position of
comparative comfort, the only stipulation made being a willingness to
work and to conform to discipline on the part of those receiving its
benefit.
While at the commencement, we must impose some limits with respect to
age and sickness, we hope, when fairly at work, to be able to dispense
with even these restrictions, and to receive any unfortunate individual
who has only his misery to recommend him and an honest desire to get
out of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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