The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 216: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

186 THE COURT OF LONDON breaking afflictions, and perish in the same way at last. Yes, working men of England, this is your doom, this is your fate. Ye who make silken textures for the indolent wealthy, are shivering in rags yourselves; ye who raise all the choicest fruits of the earth for the pampered, insolent, overbearing aristocrat are starving yourselves. : By the living God, all this is intolerable. It is enough to make ye atheists, infidels, unbelievers; and it assuredly is far more than sufficient to make ye chartists, republicans, and communists. The appalling misery and the monstrous oppression which exist in this country try your faith in God’s mercy to the very uttermost; and if any one were to preach the doctrine that the world was nought save a huge, pitiless machine, uncared for by the Almighty but abandoned to the caprices and iniquities of Satan, ye would not be blamed if, yielding to the influence of your own bitter experience, ye believed therein. But,no; the working men of England require not sophistry, much less metaphysics, to account for the evils which they endure. The causes are too palpable, too glaring, too apparent; and those causes we ourselves have proclaimed and denounced a thousand times, and shall continue to proclaim and denounce so long as there remains the smallest particle of misery in these realms. For the causes thus alluded to exist in our vitiated institutions, and chiefly our aristocracy, with its hereditary titles and its law of primo- geniture, its usurpation of all the governmental and adminis- trative powers of the state, its heartless tyranny and its cold- blooded avarice, its voluptuousness and luxury, maintained at the expense of starving millions and wide-spread injustice, its diabolical despotism, and its insatiable rapacity. But we had almost forgotten that poor family whom we have just seen turned out into the streets, — turned out to beg, or starve. Carriages, splendid equipages, rolled by; and the poor woman said to herself, in the blackness of her despair, ‘“‘ What have the children of that lady done that they should ride in so fine a coach, while mine are shivering and starving here? ”’ ‘‘ Mother,’”’ whispered the eldest boy, and he pointed to his little sister, who had sunk down exhausted upon the cold pavement. “O God, that we were all dead, that we were all dead! ”’ COMmicooolks (C(O)