I have seen forty-eight
drunken people come out of a tavern between half-past eleven and
half-past twelve in one night during the time when sentiment ran mad;
there never were such roaring times for lazy and dissolute scoundrels;
and nearly all the money given by the sentimentalists was spent in
sowing crops of liver complaint or _delirium tremens_, and in filling
the workhouses and the police-cells. Then the fit of charity died out;
the clergyman and the "sisters" went on as usual in their sacredly
secret fashion until a new outburst came. It seems strange to talk of
Charity "raging"--it reminds us of Mr. Mantalini's savage lamb--but I
can use no other word but "rage" to express these frantic gushes of
affection for the poor. During one October month I carefully preserved
and collated all the suggestions which were so liberally put forth in
various London and provincial newspapers; and I observed that
something like four hundred of these suggestions resolve themselves
into a very few definite classes. The most sensible of these follow
the lines laid down by Charles Dickens, and the writers say, "If you
do not want the poor to behave like hogs, why do you house them like
hogs? Clear away the rookeries; buy up the sites; pay reasonable
compensation to those now interested in the miserable buildings, and
then erect decent dwellings.
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