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Show 90 NOTES ON Nor is this misery confined to England, though it is more aggravated there: there is plenty of it in New York, (see Appendix, K. 6. (l.j, (2.) and (3.),) and in all our Northern cities. . . . k 13ut worst of all, is tho frequent m::~.b1llty to proc~rc wor nt all even at the starvation prices ; sec Appcnlhx, K. 2. (2.) a:ld (4.), an<l G. (3.),). If any one can read the ~' I,ay of the Laborer" and the comments immediately followmg 1t, (Appendix, K. 2. (4.),), with a dry eye, I do not envy him his feelings. And this state of things is working out, or rather, has already worked out, its legitimate results in t~1e mor_a~ and intellectual condition of the people. I say, 1ts legztwwtc results : the author of the letter to the London Times, of Dec. 14th, 1852, before referred to, speaks of " those creature comforts, which, after all the stuff that is uttered by such dirty birds* as Mrs. Beecher Stowe, and such wholesale libellers as :Mr. Charles Dickens, arc tho mnmspnngs not only of human happiness, hut of human order and of the commonest morality;" and tho editor of the London Guardian, (Appendix, K. 2. (1.),) tells us,-and tells us truly,that "although, unfortunately, moral improvement d~es n~t necessarily keep pace with physical comforts, one thmg IS certain, that if any set of human beings be lodged and treated materia.lly as beasts, or worse than boasts, th01r moral and intellectual natures ''"ill soon undergo an analogous degradation." And such is actually the case with largo numbers of the laboring classes of England:-'' Poor palo-looking creatures, wearing out their existence in the cellars of damp ware- * Alluding, no doubt, to the proverb, "It's an ill bird that fouls its own nest,"-a proverb which has had n. fresh cxcmplifiea~ion, in the speech of Prof. Stowe at Liverpool two or three weeks smce. {Sec Appendix, L.) UNCJ~E TOM'S CAUIN. ho~ses, with bleached cheeks and sunken eyes, and sharp pomted red noses, chuckling to themselves-laugh th<''Y cannot; they have forgotten how to do it; they used to laugh when they were children, but tbnt was a long time u?o, and there have been mauy chtlngcs since;" (Appendix, h..' ~· (1. ),)-" M~rc than twenty instances, occurring Withm two months, m London alone, of the most foul and savage attacks, committed mostly by men, on women and defcn~eless children. 'l'lte old cltival?'JJ of common life, tohiclt held zt base to lift a hand against a woman, seernin[J to be extinct," (Appendix, K. 3. (2.),). Children of less than seven years old, t~ainc.d by their fathers a.s pickpockets, that they may be nnpnsoned and maintained at the public charge, (Appendix, K. 3. (3.),). Of the "couples living together," among the costermongers, orily one in ten, (Ap~eudix, K. 1.), an~ among the chimney-sweepers, only one m fifty, (Appendix, K. 3. (5.),), married; the sin of impurit~ "no lcs.s unhappily prevalent among tho country fopulatwn than m the manufacturing districts," (Appendix, K. 3. (6.),); and as the consequence, in part, of this, and in part, ~f abject poverty, infanticide, frightfully prevalent, (Appendix, K. 3. (7.),). 'l'o sum np all, accordin~ to 3 stat~~ent in the .National ~rempcrance Chronicle, (r:thcr a suspicious authonty, by the way; for these "papers of one idea" are prone to exaggeration,) sixteen thousand children in London, trained to crime; five thousand persons, receiver~ of stolen goods; fifteen thousand gamblers by profession ; twcnty~fi\'e thousand beggars; thirty thousand drunkards; one hundred and eighty thousand habitual drinkers (to excess?); one hundred and fifty thousand persons subsistincr on proflig~cy; fifty thousand thieves; making a grand tot~of cnme, of four hundred and seventy-one thousand, or one ~n every five of the entire populn.tion, in the city of London alone ! |