Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
John Locke · en
One thousand people at salaries ranging from one hundred to ten thousand
dollars a year, to take care of one rickety old woman, who is mortal the
same as is the humblest of those ground into the dust by her and hers,
and who has no more title to the place she occupies than a thief has to
your watch.
[Sidenote: THE PALACE AND THE WORKHOUSE.]
Ireland swarms with soldiers, and, for that matter, every nook and
corner of the British Empire is scarlet with military. Royalty and
nobility, having no reason for existence, have to be maintained by brute
force. Royalty and nobility do not pay for this expenditure; a
subjugated people pay for their own debasement. To every pound of the
expenditure in the British Empire, sixteen shillings four and one-eighth
pence go to the war debt and the support of the army, leaving three
shillings seven and seven-eighth pence for all other purposes
whatsoever. Military power is the basis of despotism everywhere. Germany
groans under it; Russia sweats under it; and wherever a king is
tolerated you will find bayonets and artillery in most uncomfortable
plenty. Some day, let it be hoped, the kings and nobles will experience
the delight of looking down the muzzles of these arms themselves.
Up to the time of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the Irish
were compelled to support the archbishops and bishops of a church whose
religion is as foreign to them as Buddhism, paying therefor the sum of
one hundred and two thousand eight hundred and twenty-five pounds per
annum, and to other attaches, for curacies and all that business, a vast
amount more. This immense amount of money was a tax yearly upon a
starved and overworked people, to keep in luxurious idleness a parcel of
drones whose only functions in life were to eat, sleep and hunt; who
were of no earthly use to the people who supported them, either in a
temporal or a spiritual way. There is one English church at Glengariff,
in a parish in which there are only six Protestants, the rector, his
wife, two children, and two servants. The rector has as fine a house as
there is in the country-side, the cost of which and its support is a
burden on a people struggling for their daily bread.
Pauperism is a certain consequence of royalty and nobility. The Queen of
England cannot have one thousand men and women about her person under
pay without taking bread from the mouths of many people, and the luxury
of a noble must find an echo in the other extreme, the workhouse.
The number of adult paupers in England and Wales in 1880, exclusive of
vagrants, was seven hundred and eleven thousand seven hundred and twelve
and the cost to the labor of the country to relieve them footed up eight
millions eight hundred and nineteen thousand six hundred and
seventy-eight pounds.