THE HOME OF THE BRAVE AND THE FREE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2766, 5 April 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE HOME OF THE BRAVE AND THE FREE.

I clam my readers', favour. Last spring I wrote u long series of articles on the slums of Manchester. I kept as calm as I could while I did the work, and I made the work us practical aud as exhaustive as possible. And when I had done the work I expressed my feeliugs strongly —and I let the matter drop. I ask you now for the oredit due to my forbearance. Have I bored you since about tho slums ? Have I kept harping on that painful subject! 1 claim that I did my work honestly, and that I relinquished it modestly. I hoped to have roused some of the gentry aud clergy of this city to a sense of their duty. , I resolved that I would not weary you by repetition of the appeal; I have kept my. resolution, but

But, oh! A few days since, I was obliged to go again into the slums, and now I am obliged to tell you what I saw. The first house was that of a poor old widow. Gentlemen of the City Conncil, priests of God, when will you do your duty. The woman earns a scanty pittance as a laundress. She pays 2s 9d a week rent. She irons her bits of linen on a board placed across two chairs. She fetches her water from " the end of the street." Her kitchen—her house—is about 11 feet long and 3 feet 9 inches wide. A mere cupboard, with a cracked stoue floor and a mouldering roof. And if she shuts her door the place is filled with smoke ; and if she opens it the fire goes out. And for this "accomodation" the widow pays seven pounds a year. The second house we went to was that of a widow—old, and ill of bronchitis. It was a mere dog-hutch ; but for that dog hutch the woman has paid 3s a week for forty years, and now she says the landlord talks of evicting her. She has paid in rent for that house £310. The house when new was not worth- £50, and is not now worth £5. She has bought the place some seven times over, and now she must be turned out. , And if the place is wanted by the, Corporation, the landlord will get compensation. In another house the husband was dying of consumption. The wife, who has uursed him with scarcely any rest and scarcely any food for seven weeks, fainted with exhaustion duriug our visit. A wretched hovel i-i a wretched street; and the rent was 3s weekly.

in yet another house.l found a prematurely aged man ; pale, sickly, starving. He said he owed three weeks' rent at 3i 3d, and was expecting the bailiffs every minute to come and turn him out. There was a boy in the house, his head tied up in bandages.. "Abscesses; want of proper food." Father got his living by chopping sticks. Could not keep a stock of wood. No money ; no food no work. Asked how much a " stock.',' would cost; he said "five shillings." Asked how much he could clear out of it; he said, "Four shillings." Asked how long it would take him to earn four shillings ; he said, "A week.". A week to get Jour shillings out of a capital of five ! aud his rent is 3s 3d a week !

Now, ladies and gentlemen, this kind of thing makes me miserable. It makes me wild. It makes me want to bite ray flesh and swear every tinpe I hear a church bell clang to see a cushioned carriage drive up to the porch of the " most magnificent town hall in England." It makes me want to go into the houses of these people and tell them what religion is worth, and what honesty means. It makes me burn to rouse these serfs to mutiny and incite them to act out the noble words of the noble old heathen—

Take ye death in preference to slavery. I begged you, ladies and gentlemen, to go and see these houses. I begged you to help these people. ' And you have not seen the houses and you haV6 not helped the people. And I tell you again this thing is a thing accursed. It is barbarism ; it is daylight robbery ; it is legalised murder; aud were there a God: in heaven of the nature your parsons represent Him, He would arise in His wratb and blast your city into ashes.'.

Now, gentlemen of the Council, and pious owners of slum. property, attend to this. This is practical., It would appear that it is the law that any private citizen may summon any landlord to show cause before a magistrate why his proporty should not be condemned and closed as unfit for habitation. And this has been tried iu London but a few weeks since; and the houses wore condemned. Do you understand ? Any private citizen may do this.

So now then whioh of you heartless, godless, pitiless robbers who own the infamous dens of Manchester says " First' Speak up that I may hear you. Which pest-house shall I strike at first? Or will the Council and the Church come forward now at the eleventh hour and show that their honour is not wholly a lie, and their religion not entirely a sham? I pause for a reply.—"Nunquam," in the Manchester Sunday Chronicle.