London (England) -- Social conditions; Poor -- England -- London
There is a Chinese proverb that if one man lives in laziness another
will die of hunger; and Montesquieu has said, “The fact that many men
are occupied in making clothes for one individual is the cause of there
being many people without clothes.” So one explains the other. We
cannot understand the starved and runty[2] toiler of the East End
(living with his family in a one-room den, and letting out the floor
space for lodgings to other starved and runty toilers) till we look at
the strapping Life Guardsmen of the West End, and come to know that the
one must feed and clothe and groom the other.
[2] “Runt” in America is the equivalent of the English “crowl,” the
dwarf of a litter.
And while in Westminster Abbey the people were taking unto themselves a
king, I, jammed between the Life Guards and Constabulary of Trafalgar
Square, was dwelling upon the time when the people of Israel first took
unto themselves a king. You all know how it runs. The elders came to
the prophet Samuel, and said: “Make us a king to judge us like all the
nations.”
And the Lord said unto Samuel: Now therefore hearken unto their voice;
howbeit thou shalt show them the manner of the king that shall reign
over them.
And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of
him a king, and he said:
This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you; he will
take your sons, and appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to be
his horsemen, and they shall run before his chariots.
And he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and
captains of fifties; and he will set some to plough his ground, and to
reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the
instruments of his chariots.
And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks,
and to be bakers.
And he will take your fields and your vineyards, and your oliveyards,
even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
And he will take a tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give
to his officers, and to his servants.
And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your
goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
He will take a tenth of your flocks; and ye shall be his servants.
And ye shall call out in that day because of your king which ye shall
have chosen you; and the Lord will not answer you in that day.
All of which came to pass in that ancient day, and they did cry out to
Samuel, saying: “Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we
die not; for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a
king.” And after Saul, David, and Solomon, came Rehoboam, who “answered
the people roughly, saying: My father made your yoke heavy, but I will
add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will
chastise you with scorpions.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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