Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
Reform, reform, all men see and feel, is imperatively needed. Reform
must either be got, and speedily, or else we die: and nearly all the men
that speak, instruct us, saying, "Have you quite done your interesting
Negroes in the Sugar Islands? Rush to the Jails, then, O ye reformers;
snatch up the interesting scoundrel-population there, to them be
nursing-fathers and nursing-mothers. And oh, wash, and dress, and teach,
and recover to the service of Heaven these poor lost souls: so, we
assure you, will society attain the needful reform, and life be still
possible in this world." Thus sing the oracles everywhere; nearly all
the men that speak, though we doubt not, there are, as usual, immense
majorities consciously or unconsciously wiser who hold their tongue. But
except this of whitewashing the scoundrel-population, one sees little
"reform" going on. There is perhaps some endeavor to do a little
scavengering; and, as the all-including point, to cheapen the terrible
cost of Government: but neither of these enterprises makes progress,
owing to impediments.
"Whitewash your scoundrel-population; sweep out your abominable gutters
(if not in the name of God, ye brutish slatterns, then in the name of
Cholera and the Royal College of Surgeons): do these two things;--and
observe, much cheaper if you please!"--Well, here surely is an Evangel
of Freedom, and real Program of a new Era. What surliest misanthrope
would not find this world lovely, were these things done: scoundrels
whitewashed; some degree of scavengering upon the gutters; and at a
cheap rate, thirdly? That surely is an occasion on which, if ever
on any, the Genius of Reform may pipe all hands!--Poor old Genius of
Reform; bedrid this good while; with little but broken ballot-boxes, and
tattered stripes of Benthamee Constitutions lying round him; and on the
walls mere shadows of clothing-colonels, rates-in-aid, poor-law unions,
defunct potato and the Irish difficulty,--he does not seem long for this
world, piping to that effect?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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