ENGLAND ROTTEN TO THE CORE

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 71, 19 July 1873, Page 3

ENGLAND ROTTEN TO THE CORE

The London correspondent of the Australasian, thus writes: —Unhappily, we live in a time when scarcely any pleasant prospect can be entertained. Under the respectable, brilliant, almost gorgeous appearance we keep up, is concealed a body, not only thoroughly sick but very nearly decomposed. What were formerly nations are now incoherent masses of individuals, hostile to each other, selfish, incapable to* respect or worship anything but money, and boasting of daily increasing wealth, when half of the people around are under-fed, and not a few actually starving. Poor people were probably not better off in former ages, but the sufferings of hunger were not intensified then by the feelings of envy and jealousy, constantly provoked now-a-days, by the impudent display of luxury on the part of the lowest sort of individuals, enriched by successful speculations, in the course of which they have, perhaps, more than once deserved the gallows. Pageant and display of wealth of every sort formerly always represented the State, the Crown, a religion, a hero—in a word, some sort of central idea, around which the poor gathered, by which their emotional feelings were stimulated, and for the support of which they consequently thought it quite natural to make a sacrifice of their miserable selves. But can they feel anything of the sort now when even in the best governed country the state has become but a set of local boards of tipsy vestrymen ? when the Crown has taken the shape of a mere civil list of about half a million of pounds paid to a lady dressed in black and living in Scotland ? when religion turns out to consist of wild speeches by a Mr. Murphy or a Mr. Spurgeon ; and when heroes have become mere fools or madmen engaged in a kind of business that does not pay ? What on earth is there now to suppress or pacify the poor man’s feelings of envy and anger when he sees the shopkeeper enriched by the sale of adulterated victuals,, or by some other fraudulent transactions, displaying a luxury of which a mediaeval king would not have dreamed ? He is told that he is free now, while he would have been a serf then, and that the feeling of a personal independence is the first thing a man is to aim at. As if any sort of independence is possible with an empty stomach, and as if, on the whole, what the serf’s position lacked in dignity was not balanced by what it had in security. Coarse has as always been the language of Chaumette, there was much truth in his saying, that “ every man having a belly, society ought to rest on the principles of the animal instincts and requirements of human nature.” But the marvellous progress of industry, and the overpowering increase of population within the last 100 years, have given quite a new shape to the life of the Old World. Every man is perfectly free now, he has even a political vote; but his claim to have something to eat, since he has been brought into the world without any request or desire on his part, is no more acknowledged as an absolutely legitimate one. He is told that he must submit to the law of the “ survival of the fittest,” which fittest meant anything between a millionnaire of the Manchester school and the laborer with 12s a week in the way of wages. Or, having turned over in his mind what this new law means, he discovers soon that it means war with the wealthy and the powerful; and knowing that he is utterly unable to wage it alone, he strikes with his fellow workmen, and. enters the endless ranks of those furious armies which are now fighting all over Europe their desperate battle for life But in England, with a climate requiring double the average amount of animal food, with national habits and customs which have rendered good eating the great object—at all events, the great fun—of life, and with a population of some 32 millions agglomerated on a plot of territory scarcely fit to support half that number of human beings; no improvement in the position of the vast majority of people, who cannot or will not emigrate, and who are not disposed to starve, can 4»e expected except through the violent remedy to which they begin to have recourse now. The battle between capital and labor is becoming every day "more and more fierce, is spreading all over Europe, and has already shown in burning Paris to what sort of spectacles it may lead. Living far away from us, busym the creation of a new world, with

plenty of everything you want, with high wages aud low prices for provisions, you might easily think all these apprehensions exaggerated. But if you are able to realise to your mind for a single moment the picture of a large family living in this cold and foggy country you know, upon 12s or 15s a week, when meat is at Is a pound, and coal at over 20s a ton, you will at once perceive all the sad importance of that fatal question which must for years and years to come underlie every event of the history of the Old World, political, social, moral, or whatever else. We are by far too many here, and the semblance or education spread among us has increased our desire to feel comfortable without giving us the means of purchasing this comfort. All our social and moral ties are broken; we are sworn enemies to each other, ready to cut each other’s throat at any moment, and peace and prosperity can be brought home to us only when about half of us have gone to some New World to do the work you are doing, or have fallen dead on the battle-field.