Even in pocket you are suffering
now--as all England is suffering--from the existence of heathens and
savages, reckless, profligate, pauperized. For if you pay no poor-rates
for their support, the shop-keepers with whom you deal pay poor-rates;
and must and do repay themselves, out of your pockets, in the form of
increased prices for their goods.
And when you have said all this, ladies, and more,--for more will suggest
itself to your woman's wit,--say to them with St Paul--"And yet show we
unto you a more excellent way,"--a nobler argument--and that is Charity.
Not almsgiving. I had almost said, anything but that; making bad worse,
the improvident more improvident, the liar more ready to lie, the idler
more ready to idle. But the Charity which is Humanity, which is the
spirit of pure pity, the Spirit of Christ and of God.
Say then, Even if these poor creatures did us no harm, as they must and
will do--civilize and christianize them for their own sakes, simply
because they must be so very miserable--miserable too often with acute
and conscious misery; too often with a worse misery, dull and
unconscious, which knows not, stupified by ignorance and vice, that it is
miserable, and ought to be more miserable still.
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