At
the same time the newsman regularly brought to us the infliction of
other punishments, which were demoralising to the innocent part of
the community, while they did not operate as punishments in
deterring offenders from the perpetration of crimes. In those same
days, also, the newsman brought to us daily accounts of a regularly
accepted and received system of loading the unfortunate insane with
chains, littering them down on straw, starving them on bread and
water, damaging their clothes, and making periodical exhibitions of
them at a small charge; and that on a Sunday one of our public
resorts was a kind of demoniacal zoological gardens. They brought
us accounts at the same time of some damage done to the machinery
which was destined to supply the operative classes with employment.
In the same time they brought us accounts of riots for bread, which
were constantly occurring, and undermining society and the state;
of the most terrible explosions of class against class, and of the
habitual employment of spies for the discovery--if not for the
origination--of plots, in which both sides found in those days some
relief. In the same time the same newsmen were apprising us of a
state of society all around us in which the grossest sensuality and
intemperance were the rule; and not as now, when the ignorant, the
wicked, and the wretched are the inexcusably vicious exceptions--a
state of society in which the professional bully was rampant, and
when deadly duels were daily fought for the most absurd and
disgraceful causes.
Pages:
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152