"To talk of English happiness, is like talking of Spartan freedom; the _helots_ are overlooked. In no country can such riches be acquired by commerce, but it is the one who grows rich by the labour of the hundred. The hundred human beings like himself, as wonderfully fashioned by nature, gifted with the like capacities, and equally made for immortality, are sacrificed _body and soul_. Horrible as it must needs appear, the assertion is true to the very letter. They are deprived in childhood of all instruction and all enjoyment—of the sports in which childhood instinctively indulges—of fresh air by day and of natural sleep by night. Their health, physical and moral, is alike destroyed; they die of diseases induced by unremitting task-work, by confinement in the impure atmosphere of crowded rooms, by the particles of metallic or vegetable dust which they are continually inhaling; or they live to grow up without decency, without comfort, and without hope—without morals, without religion, and without shame; and bring forth _slaves_ like themselves to tread in the same path of misery." Again, the same distinguished Englishman says, in number twenty-six of Espriella's Letters— "The English boast of their liberty, but there is _no liberty in England for the poor_. They are no longer sold with the soil, it is true; but they cannot quit the soil if there be any probability or suspicion that age or infirmity may disable them. If, in such a case, they endeavour to remove to some situation where they hope more easily to maintain themselves, where work is more plentiful or provisions cheaper, the overseers are alarmed, the intruder is apprehended, as if he were a criminal, and sent back to his own parish. Wherever a pauper dies, that parish must bear the cost of his funeral. Instances, therefore, have not been wanting of wretches, in the last stage of disease, having been hurried away in an open cart, upon straw, and dying upon the road. Nay, even women, in the very pains of labour, have been driven out, and have perished by the wayside, because the birthplace of the child would be its parish!"