THE STTIE OF LONDON.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3118, 9 July 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE STTIE OF LONDON.

On" Sundav afternoon, February Mth, Mr Sidney "Webb, LL P,,, candidate for Ueptfoid, gave an address on the subject of the moral aspect of the London County Council election, at the Hornsey Road W csleyan Church, in connection with ■i series of Workers Conferences being held there on Sunday afternoons.

Mr Webb said that the real issue at th". London County Council election was no more matter of parks or drains, but whether this qreat city-state of five million-, of souls was any longer to be abandoned to an anarchy in which every kind of evil influence found its baneful opportunity. It depended upon those who were in r-arno-it in desiring the redemption of lapse.-! L mdon to raise the contest above any natrc.w partisan lino, and by their energetic participation to make it a square fight between »i niiim--ooial reformers and those spiritual blasphemers who despaired of better things. We could not frame an indictment against a whole people, and when Mr Charles U.oth told u-t that a million and a quarter of Londoners were on or below this ' poverty line,' ami that two thirds of these—a whole Manchester or Liverpool—hail but a single room per family for a home, it. was time that the churches took up seriously this question of housing the people as a collective responsibility. For neither family life nor decent citizenship was possible in a oneroom home, and he fearer, that whatever good seed was sown there by their missions was nearly always choked by the tares which our own civic neglect and our own indifference to this particular election would perpetuate. There were those amongst us who seemed to imagine thut a third of the population of the metropolis bad been born with a double dose of original sin. For his part, he preferred to think of them in the spirit which led the eighteenth century evangelist to exclaim, on seeing a criminal led to execution, ' There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.' We could not wriggle out of our responsibility as creators; it was we who were building up the London of the next generation. What kind of a character were we producing with our quarter of a million slum children, our US parishes with half a million souls without a single bath of any kind, our 100,fJOO 1-room homes, our 30,000 homeless men in demoralising fourpenny ' doss house,' aud then as the result and renewing cause of it all London's 10,000 drink shops. A great opportunity was at hand for- genuine believers in the gospel of love, but what were they doing with it ? Were their ministers leading the crusade against the house farmer and the sweater ? Were their churches centres of true light and leading in this civic battle against all the powers of evil ? He was glad to think that in many parts of London, the Wesleyans as well as Baptists, Cengregtionalists and Presbyterians were throwing themselves unreservedly into the fray. If they regarded this great metropolis of oursas a city of God, what a vile slum they had made of it in His nanm ! How, if they did not now fight for its reform, would they answer in their consciences for the ' little ones ' who perished in its midst ?