And that cost of pauperism is not the full amount,
for there is a vast amount of temporary, casual, and vagrant pauperism
that does not come in to swell that sum.
Then do not you well know--I know it, because I live among the
population of Lancashire, and I doubt not the same may be said of the
population of this city and county--that just above the level of the
1,100,000 there is at least an equal number who are ever oscillating
between independence and pauperism, who, with a heroism which is not
the less heroic because it is secret and unrecorded, are doing their
very utmost to maintain an honourable and independent position before
their fellow men? While Irish labour, notwithstanding the improvement
which has taken place in Ireland, is only paid at the rate of about
1_s_. a day, while in the straths and glens of Scotland there are
hundreds of shepherd families whose whole food almost consists of
oatmeal porridge from day to day, and from week to week; while these
things continue, I say that we have no reason to be self-satisfied and
contented with our position; but that we who are in Parliament and
are more directly responsible for affairs, and you who are also
responsible though in a lower degree, are bound by the sacred duty
which we owe our country to examine why it is that with all this
trade, all this industry, and all this personal freedom, there is
still so much that is unsound at the base of our social fabric?
Let me direct your attention now to another point which I never think
of without feelings which words would altogether fail to express.
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