The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 357: what you’re looking at

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

THE BEGGAR’S STAFF AGAIN 323 white slavery of England is a truth more real, more terrible, and more tremendous than the black slavery of the Southern States of the American Union. Oh, better, better far to be a negro in a Virginian plantation than a “ free-born ”’ peasant on an estate in England; and more preferable is the condition of the purchased African at New Orleans than that of the mechanic of Manchester. For what is the spectacle which Great Britain, with its monarchical and aristocratic institu- tions, presents to the view? An absolute idolatry and the most servile worship paid to royalty and aristocracy on the one hand; while royalty and aristocracy, on the other, reward the sycophantic sentiment by testifying the most sovereign contempt for those who thus crouch at their feet. And to extend the picture, we have two millions of paupers and only one million of voters, more pawnbrokers than butchers, more gin-shops than bakers, and almost as many prisons and workhouses as churches. O _ blessed land of freedom, where such is the aspect presented to the eye. But this is not all; for in our agricultural districts we behold the peasant cheerless, sickly, half-starved, and feeble in the field, and our artisans pining and wasting with want in the factory. Our rural labourers dwell in the most wretched huts imaginable, while the industrious population of our cities and towns are crowded into hovels, and attics and cellars and cells with Pestilence for their companion. No, Great Britain is not free; nor are her institutions good, nor her government just, nor her social system humane. The millions are in bondage, the institutions are worn out, the government is selfish and corrupt, and the social system is rotten to its very core. True, we have enormous wealth in the country; but those who produce it are starving! True, we have all the outward and visible signs of a consum- mate prosperity; but it is the luxuriousness which prevailed at Rome on the eve of her downfall, and amongst the Moors of Granada when the enemy was at their gates. The mocking edifice which fools and rogues call our Temple of Liberty is built upon the bosom of pauperism, and is sur- rounded by the gibbet, the chain, the hulk, the treadmill, and the spies of the law-officers of the Crown. Oh, what can ~ we think of an institution which requires such sentinels and scarecrows to keep off those who will not content themselves with surveying it from the distance, but are venturesome (C(O) mG 6)(0)(©) (C(O)