Why should he not be like a gentleman? Why should not his house be like
my house? When I go home from my labour, what do I find? I find a
cheerful wife--I find an elegant, educated woman. I have a daughter; she
is the same. Why should not you find the same happy influences at home?
I want to know, when the working man comes from his daily labour to his
home, why he should not find his table spread as mine is spread; why he
should not find his wife well dressed, cleanly, loving, kind, and his
daughter the same?... We all know that many working men, earning good
wages, spend their money in the beerhouse and in drunkenness, instead of
in clothing their wives and families. Why should not these men spend
their wages as I spend my small stipend, in intellectual pleasures, in
joining with my family in intellectual pursuits? Why should not working
men, after enjoying their dinners and thanking God for what they have
got, turn their attention to intellectual enjoyments, instead of going
out to get drunk in the nearest pothouse! Depend on it these things
ought to go to the heart of a working man; and he is not a friend to the
working man who talks to him and makes him believe that he is a great
man in the State, and who don't tell him what are the duties of his
position."
It is difficult to account for the waste and extravagance of working
people. It must be the hereditary remnant of the original savage. It
must be a survival. The savage feasts and drinks until everything is
gone; and then he hunts or goes to war. Or it may be the survival of
slavery in the State. Slavery was one of the first of human
institutions. The strong man made the weak man work for him. The warlike
race subdued the less warlike race, and made them their slaves. Thus
slavery existed from the earliest times. In Greece and Rome the righting
was done by freemen, the labour by helots and bondsmen. But slavery also
existed in the family. The wife was the slave of her husband as much as
the slave whom he bought in the public market.
Slavery long existed among ourselves. It existed when Caesar lauded. It
existed in Saxon times, when the household work was done by slaves. The
Saxons were notorious slave-dealers, and the Irish were their best
customers. The principal mart was at Bristol, from whence the Saxons
exported large numbers of slaves into Ireland so that, according to
Irish historians, there was scarcely a house in Ireland without a
British slave in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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