If you had a tribe of Red
Indians on the frontier of your settlement, would you take the less guard
against them, because you did not put them there? Not in our parish, and
what of that? They are in our county; they are in England. Has man the
right, has man the power in the sight of God to draw any imaginary line
of demarcation between Englishman and Englishman, especially when that
line is drawn between rich and poor? England knows no line of
demarcation, save the shore of the great sea; and even that her
generosity is overleaping at this moment at the call of mere humanity, in
bounty to sufferers by the West Indian hurricane, and by the Chicago
fire. Will you send your help across the Atlantic; and deny it to the
sufferers at your own doors? At least, if the rich be confined by an
imaginary line across, the poor on the other side will not--they will
cross it freely enough; and what they will bring with them will be
concern enough of ours. Would it not be our concern if there was small-
pox, scarlet fever, cholera among them? Should we not fear lest that
might hurt us? Would you not bestir yourselves then? And do you not
know that it is among such people as these that pestilence is always
bred? And if not, is not the pestilence of the soul more subtle and more
contagious than any pestilence of the body? What is the spreading power
of fever to the spreading power of vice, which springs from tongue to
tongue, from eye to eye, from heart to heart? What matter whether they
be one mile off or five? Will not they corrupt our servants; and those
servants again our children?
And say to them, if you be prudent and thrifty housewives, Do not tell us
that their condition costs you nothing.
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