“But some day these landed aristocrats ‘whose thin bloods crawl down from some robber in a border brawl,’ who have never lifted their finger to earn a penny in their lives, and who owe all that they have to these same robber ancestors,—these people, I say, will some day be taught the meaning of that same word ‘justice’ by some of the forty-five millions of landless people in our little island. I shall not soon forget how quickly the subscriptions for the poor went up a year or two ago, after the riots. “You have no conception, Miss Brewster, you can have no conception, of the state of things here at present. Six millions of our people are living on the brink of pauperism. I tell you, when I sit down to my omelette and toast in the morning and reflect that there are two hundred thousand human beings within two miles of me who don’t know where they are going to get their next meal, when I read of the hundreds of children who habitually go to school without any breakfast, and who not unfrequently faint dead away over their books, I tell you it doesn’t make my own breakfast relish any better. “One night in the autumn, a year or two ago, I passed through Trafalgar Square at twelve o’clock, and counted four hundred and eighty-three homeless people lying out in the chill air upon the bare stones. Not one of them had fourpence wherewith to pay for a night’s lodging. And this, remember, was only one spot. “There were many others where a similar sight might have been seen. “‘Ah,’ but you say; ‘these are the dissolute and drunken, those who love to be vagabonds.’ “I assure you that you are much mistaken. I have seen and talked with thousands of these people, and a large number of them, probably a fourth, are men from the country who can find no work there, and have found none here—honest, hard-working British laborers. Two thirds of these people are not vicious, or drunken, but they are out of work, they are cold, they are hungry, they are naked, they are outcasts in this Christian (?) land which has enough for all its children. All they ask is work, hard work, dirty work, work for twelve hours a day, but that they cannot get. Why? Because our accursed modern society is irrational, wasteful, utterly selfish. Plenty of money, plenty of things worth doing, plenty of men who would thank God if this work could be given them to do; but what does our mad, maladjusted society say to them? ‘Emigrate! Clear the country! Away with you! We have no use for you.’ Malthus was right, after all, and we must reverse Browning. ‘There’s no God in heaven; All’s wrong with the world.’